Cambium Blue

<p><strong>Set in the British Columbia Interior, the novel </strong><em><strong>Cambium Blue</strong></em><strong> is an homage to resource towns, independent women and local newspapers.</strong> </p><p>In 1994, at the outset of the bark beetle epidemic that will decimate millions of acres of pine forest in western North America, a fiercely independent lumber town faces a bleak future when its only sawmill is shuttered. Encouraged by a provincial government intent on transitioning the region from timber to tourism, the town council embraces a resort developer as their last, best hope. A failure to anticipate the human cost of that choice ignites a struggle for the very soul of the community.</p><p><em>Cambium Blue</em>’s narrative alternates between three viewpoints. Stevie Jeffers is a timid, 24-year-old single mom who stakes her future on the town after a traumatic break-up. Nash Malone is a reclusive Spanish Civil War veteran who supplements his pension with salvage from the local dump—an occupation that puts him on a collision course with the town’s plan to beautify itself. At 54 years old, cash-strapped and short-staffed Maggie Evans is treading water while waiting to sell her dead husband’s newspaper, the barely solvent <em>Chronicle</em>. As the characters’ lives intertwine and the conflict heats up, they will each be challenged to traverse the ambiguous divide between substance and hype, past and future, hope and despair.</p><p>Rich with unforgettable characters and set in the Interior hinterland of British Columbia, <em>Cambium Blue</em> is a masterful and compassionate illumination of the human politics of a small town, and the intersection of individual lives with political agendas and environmental catastrophes.</p>