Montana-based author, Maggie Plummer’s latest book takes readers on a journey in northwest B.C.’s pristine wilderness back in the 70’s.
Plummer’s book Eagle in Flight, which is the third in a four-part series, is semi-autobiographical and borrows heavily from the author’s experience in B.C.
The novel begins in May 1975, as protagonist Jessie Morgan escapes to the remote wilds of northern British Columbia. Traumatized by her ex-boyfriend’s violent attack, she takes to the sea and to the rugged Stikine River, voyaging solo into the off-the-grid North Country – where she hopes he cannot find her.
Up the Stikine, she visits her brother, a back-to-the-lander who packs all of his supplies up a four-mile-long trail to his hand-built cabin. From there, the protagonist journeys on to Sitka, Alaska, where she works at a fish processing plant, has adventures on commercial fishing boats.
The 70-year-old Plummer started writing the book as a way to record her many stranger than fiction adventures.
While the plot is fictional, Plummer says that the travel and adventures are authentic and took place in her life.
Describing life in the 70’s is central to the story.
“It was a very different time back then,” said Plummer who lived in San Francisco in the early 70’s.
She travelled to Seattle from there and got on jet boat and ended up spending time in Alaska as well as Telegraph Creek in northwest B.C.
Talking about her time near Telegraph Creek, Plummer still remembers that the Stikine River was almost like a way of life for people who lived in the area back then.
“I had never experienced true remote wilderness before,” said Plummer who was 25-years-old at the time.
It was an eye-opener for her.
“I think a person can idolize the wilderness… but is not that easy to deal with,” Plummer said, adding, her real- life experiences were more intense than what she has written in the book.
Plummer said her books are about taking readers to these place where not many have gone before, she said, adding,”How many fictional characters (or real ones, for that matter) voyaged up the Stikine River in the 1970s?”
Binny Paul, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Terrace Standard