British Columbiana

FINALIST, 2024 EDNA STAEBLER AWARD

A job as a heritage interpreter at a remote gold rush site propels an insecure and anxious twenty-four-year-old to find what she truly desires from life.

“By turns deadpan and wryly candid, Teed has a keen observational eye and a talent for characterization. An excellent debut.” — ANDRÉ FORGET, author of In the City of Pigs

Unsure of her next steps after graduation, twenty-something Josie Teed accepts a position at Barkerville, a remote heritage site in British Columbia showcasing the nineteenth-century gold rush. She lives in the adjacent village of Wells, population 250. There is no cell reception and the grocery store is an hour away. Once a thriving gold mining community in the 1930s, Wells has become a haven for white Gen-X artists and flower children, struggling actors-turned-heritage-interpreters, and transient miners.

Eager to move on from a master’s thesis that left her questioning her passion for history, Josie dives headlong into her new job and life in a small town. Faced with the prospect of remaining long-term, she must decide if she will fight to carve a place for herself in Wells’s idiosyncratic community. What follows is the story of a young woman trying to find connection and purpose in the twenty-first century while living in a village seemingly frozen in the past.