Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny

In this long-awaited novel, Caroline Woodward returns to her Peace River roots.Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny is a contemporary story about middle-aged love enduring despite many obstacles. It is a retelling of The Odyssey, with a road story looping south from the Peace River region to the West Coast and across the province through the Kootenays before the wanderer struggles to find his way north, and home. The story winds around Penny, inventive and resolute ranch wife, and Wade Toland, reluctant rancher and good man, adrift behind the wheel on his last long haul truck run of the season. The inter-island wars of ancient Greece are replaced by Canadian blizzards, biker gangs, lotus landers, covetous neighbours, not-so-friendly bank managers, a ravishing all-woman country punk band called The Sireens, and fatally malfunctioning truck brakes, amongst other menacing entities. The Goodland Historical Society and local choir, to which Penny belongs, pop up from time to time, like a Greek chorus.

Caroline Woodward lives, works and writes on the Lennard Island Lightstation near Tofino, British Columbia. Prior to her career as a lighthouse keeper she worked in almost every aspect of the literary world from book-reviewer to book-seller and most points on either side and in between. She was raised on a homestead in the north Peace River region of B.C. and has studied, worked and travelled widely ever since. She is the author of five books including Disturbing the Peace (Polestar, 1990), nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and Alaska Highway Two-Step (Polestar, 1993), nominated for the Arthur Ellis Best First Mystery Award.