Drift Child
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2010
- Category
- Literary
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781897126714
- Publish Date
- Sep 2010
- List Price
- $19.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781897126981
- Publish Date
- Sep 2010
- List Price
- $11.99
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Description
Emma Phillips is a 35-year-old divorcée with an undemanding job, a rustic old house, and a friend who provides all the benefits she needs. She’s comfortable, complacent, and accustomed to getting her own way—until she is shipwrecked during a violent storm in the Queen Charlotte Strait off Vancouver Island and is forced to assume temporary guardianship of three traumatized, newly orphaned children.
From the author of The Goat Lady’s Daughter comes a moving new story, set against the rugged backdrop of coastal British Columbia, of a woman determined to manage her own destiny, and a child whose own strong nature defies those who would take control of her fate.
About the author
Rosella Leslie was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and grew up in small towns throughout Alberta and British Columbia. She worked in Merritt and Vancouver, before moving in 1980 to a floathouse at Clowhom Falls on Salmon Inlet to focus on her writing career. In 1991, Leslie moved with her husband and son to Sechelt. Leslie’s hobbies include gardening, pulling up crab traps, and early morning mountain walks.
She is also the author of The Sunshine Coast: A Place to Be, and has co-authored Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits: The Sunshine Coast, and Sea Silver: Inside British Columbia’s Salmon-Farming Industry with Betty Keller. Leslie is also one of the authors of Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Fishing, which won The Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize at the 2005 British Columbia Book Awards. Her first solo novel, The Goat Lady's Daughter, was published in the Fall of 2006, and her second novel, Drift Child, was released in September 2010, and her third novel, The Federov Legacy was published in April 2013. In 2014 she published The Cougar Lady: Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet.
Excerpt: Drift Child (by (author) Rosella Leslie)
Prologue
The father sat on the boat’s only seat, his broad shoulders bent to the task of rowing. The girl fixed her eyes on the back of his red plaid shirt as he reached and pulled, reached and pulled.
My daddy.
She wore his denim jacket beneath her plastic poncho and life jacket, and she wriggled so that she could feel the fabric of the sleeves, as if his arms were holding her, keeping her safe. So long as he was there, she was not alone. Not a drift child.
Whenever the zodiac rocked wildly in the trough of the giant grey waves, she gripped the ropes fastened to the starboard pontoon and braced the heels of her runners against a plastic floorboard. The bow leapt high in the air and smashed back into the trough, pitching the girl against her two siblings. She pulled herself free, leaving them clinging to each other and the blanket they shared.
“Those two have each other,” her aunt had once told a neighbour, “but this one is alone. A drift child.”
A gust of wind blew rain into the girl’s face. I can’t see! I can’t see! She blinked and blinked, but every time she raised her head, her face was drowned anew. She couldn’t breathe. I can’t see! Bending forward, she swiped her face against the plastic covering her knee, then, looking up, squinted until she found the red plaid of his back again. Strong. Purposeful. Working the oars.
My daddy! The words screamed inside her head.
