Like Jordan in When Fenelon Falls, Dorothy Palmer was likely conceived during Hurricane Hazel and adopted at age three. She grew up in and near Toronto and spent childhood summers in Ontarioâ??s cottage country, just north of Fenelon Falls, where there really was a caged bear. In her twenty-three years as a drama/English teacher, Dorothy taught in a Mennonite colony, a four-room schoolhouse in rural Alberta, and an adult learning centre attached to a prison. She coaches for the Canadian Improv Games. When Fenelon Falls is her first novel.