A NOVEL IN PROGRESS
Five Days in November
They sent her to build a respectable life. Annie intended to build one of her own.
When 18-year-old Annie Weaver boarded the bride-ship in Liverpool, all that mattered was that she was finally free from the factory where she’d worked since she was a girl. Her arrival in 1884, on the site that later became Vancouver challenged all she knew about her place as an Englishwoman on the edge of the Empire,
PASSENGER MANIFEST
Passenger
Annie Weaver, 18, factory worker
Origin
Liverpool, England
Destination
Granville, British Columbia
Prospects
A new life in a settlement of sawmills and saloons
THE STORY
About Five Days in November
When 18-year-old Annie Weaver boarded the bride-ship in Liverpool she didn’t care where it was bound. All that mattered was that she was free from the factory where she’d worked since she was a girl.
And if, in exchange, the sponsors who financed her passage to the wilds of Canada expected her to marry, have children, and stop the colony’s slide into depravity, she considered it a fair trade.
Still, the idea that she would have a civilizing influence on Vancouver strikes Annie as humorous. She is no innocent, but if she can curb her factory-girl predilections, she can break free of her old life, even in a place that is little more than a preponderance of saloons and a sawmill.
But when a remarkable change occurs in the city of Vancouver’s fortunes, the tiny settlement is transformed into a thriving metropolis.
Almost overnight, hundreds of eligible young men start arriving in Vancouver, land speculators ambitious to cash in on the windfall anticipated with the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s arrival. Men wearing fine suits instead of grease-stained overalls. Men with soft hands, instead of rough and calloused ones. Men with a future beyond the manual labour of the sawmill. Annie sees the chance for a life of comfort and leisure better than she’d ever imagined.
Amid the disruption of a riotous mob storming the sawmill, a hotly contested municipal election, and a fire that decimates the young city, Annie gets married just in time to avoid a scandal.
But all is not well and after only a few years, her husband Robbie’s obsession with climbing the social ladder at the expense of his family reaches a breaking point and Annie’s loyalty begins to waver. Years later, over five snowy days in November when the streetcars stop running, telephones are down, and Annie is stranded, alone in the West End, she faces the difficult decision about creating her own happiness.
Interweaving authentic local characters and historical events with fictionalized ones, and with a background of land speculation, labour disputes, and the illegal purchase of Senakw, Five Days in November tells of a little-known era in Vancouver’s history and the changing place of women in Edwardian society.
STORIES FROM THE ARCHIVE
Authentic history interwoven with fictional characters and events, and this excerpt is yours to keep.
Subscribe for updates on Five Days in November and receive a free excerpt from the novel.