In Karen Hood-Caddy’s third inspiring novel featuring environmentalist heroine Jessie Dearborn, Jessie is concerned about the health of the water in her northern town. Harley, Jessie’s Ojibway partner, declares he wants to move further north to where the real wilderness is. She is torn between her allegiance to Harley and her devotion to the land. The Guerrilla Grannies, a group of feisty seniors, start a door-to-door campaign to raise environmental awareness. Trouble erupts when Jessie and Elfy, one of the more cantankerous seniors, get into a scrap with a local hockey hero and end up getting arrested. But this is also the story of Dan Goreman, whose life is in disarray from a bitter divorce. He decides to to accept a job his father has arranged for him at a water-treatment plant near Jessie’s home town. Dan falls in love with Meagan, whose family owns a resort in the area. Dan becomes very attached to Meagan’s six year-old son, but she is concerned about Dan’s unresolved past and asks him to see a therapist. Begrudgingly, Dan agrees and meets Jessie, who challenges him to be more truthful about his past. When the resort’s sewage lagoons burst and some of the waste gets into the town’s water, Dan makes a fatal mistake that could kill someone that he loves. Now Jessie has many more problems to solve in her quest to save Elfy from a jail term, help protect the lands and lakes which she loves and begin to understand the patterns in her own life.

Karen Hood-Caddy was born in Toronto and educated at Toronto schools. Although she lived in the city as a child, she spent her summers and as many weekends as possible at the family cottage in Muskoka. Her love of the wilderness and particularly of the Muskoka region of Ontario developed early and greatly influenced her entire life. Karen graduated from York University, where she was vice-president of the student’s council, with a degree in sociology. She began her career as a social worker in Toronto, but after several years, feeling jaded and burnt-out, she moved to Scotland. There she lived for seven years at the Findhorn Institute, an international spiritual community, where she was soon leading workshops in meditation and self-empowerment. Her experiences there and her extensive travels throughout India, Greece, Central Europe, Ireland, Morocco and the United States have proven to be important influences in her writing. As a writer, Karen has had poems, short stories and articles published in Canada, the United States and Scotland, but her real passion is for reading and writing novels. A few years ago, John Robert Columbo stated in the Globe and Mail that Karen Hood-Caddy was ”a writer to keep an eye on“. Karen currently lives in Muskoka. She still loves the wilderness and believes passionately in the importance of the preservation of our environment. The fact that she is able to live and work in Muskoka, one of the most beautiful regions in Canada, provides her with a continuing source of satisfaction and happiness.

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