Early in the Season: A British Columbia Journal

By 1968, Edward Hoagland had successfully published three novels, including the award-winning Cat Man. Looking for material for his next book, he immersed himself in the British Columbia bush for seven weeks, recording his observations and interviews in a series of diaries that became the widely lauded travel book Notes from the Century Before. Early in the Season is an equally riveting account of his return journey. Early in the Season vividly evokes the vast stands of trees, the fast-flowing rivers, the rocky ridgelines of the province’s unspoiled central interior. Against this dramatic backdrop Hoagland profiles an extraordinary cast of characters from the region’s present and past: fearless, larger-than-life trader Skookum Davidson; self-proclaimed Chinese-Indian medicine man Luke Fowler; indomitable Omineca River Queen Agate Alexander; and many others. Poignant, probing, and historically rich, this book offers a window on the people and places that shaped British Columbia and a transporting read for anyone curious about life in one of the world’s most majestic wildernesses.