It's hard to sort out exactly where the novel began, but I'd say it began with the place, the Chilcotin in the interior of British Columbia, where my husband, David, spent some time living in a cabin as a child. How did you start this novel-an image, a word, a general idea? But the main idea came to me because it's supposed to be the first priority in a survival situation.Ģ. The themes so obviously revolve around various types of shelters, both physical and spiritual. Shelter began to seem like the only choice for the title. Some sense of that original title must have seeped into the story. Strangely, the German edition of Shelter came out with the title Der Dufts Des Regens, which I had not chosen myself, but I discovered to my surprise means The Scent of Rain. When I wrote the first draft of the novel not long after my mother died, I was calling it Hard Rain. I wasn't happy with it, but it was a phrase from a Bob Dylan song I liked, so I used it as a working title. Did you have any alternate titles for the book? What made you pick Shelter? Did that come to you fully formed at the start, or later? It was published in various countries and received outstanding reviews-Bobbie Ann Mason says, 'The longing for a lost mother has rarely been expressed so soulfully.' It's a broad, beautiful book (I've been wanting to go and see Potato Mountain since I read it), and I'm glad to have had the chance to ask Francie more about its underpinnings. Her first novel, Shelter, about two sisters growing up in the 1970s in BC's Chilcotin, was Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction pick for 2012. As soon as Francie finalizes the title, I'll pass it on. Inevitably, these back-to-the-landers come face-to-face with the circumscribed worldview of rural communities everywhere. They live a subsistence lifestyle by choice, on a farm with no plumbing, no electricity, no phone. She's since taken on fiction, and is now working on a novel about a child of the sixties, an idealistic young white woman married to an Indian. We were hired at Okanagan College at the same time, and I sat next to her at our first faculty meeting, awed by her ideas about teaching-she came alive when she talked about how to encourage young writers. She's also a thoughtful, honest, and very funny person.

In her autobiographical books, A Pilgrim in Ireland: A Quest for Home and By the Secret Ladder: A Mother's Initiation, she makes sense of her own life, and manages to paint a huge, universal canvas at the same time, bringing up everything from rootlessness to motherhood.

Francie Greenslade is a master of connection.

Shelter by Frances Greenslade