The Road to Appledore: Or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place

Acclaimed author Tom Wayman’s account of his shift from urban to rural.

The recent pandemic accelerated an existing trend among urbanites to move to the country. Yet to quote from a 2022 Globe and Mail article, “People from cities don’t always realize what they’re getting into.”

For anyone setting out in that direction, or dreaming of doing so, Tom Wayman’s The Road to Appledore: Or How How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place is rewarding reading. The book follows Wayman from Vancouver to southeastern BC’s Slocan Valley, deep in the Selkirk Mountains, and presents with his characteristic humor and philosophical insight his ensuing major shifts of perspective and knowledge. Mishaps, misadventures and moments of delight and wonder abound in Wayman’s prose reflections on his decades of living immersed in nature and the contemporary rural—from having to deal with a bear cub in his kitchen, to engaging in a vigilante action to protect a community water system, to the quiet satisfaction of growing his own food and flowers.

Wayman depicts the rural southwest of Canada in intimate detail, transporting readers alongside him.

Tom Wayman’s prolific literary career includes writing more than twenty poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction and a novel, as well as editing six poetry anthologies. He received British Columbia’s 2022 George Woodcock Award for Lifetime Achievement in the literary arts. In 2015, he was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city’s Commercial Drive commemorating his championing of people writing for themselves about their daily employment. His own work life involved a range of blue- and white-collar jobs across North America, including teaching in both alternative and mainstream post-secondary institutions. He won the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards prize for fiction in 2016 (for the short story collection, The Shadows We Mistake for Love) and for poetry in 2023 (for Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time). Wayman lives in Winlaw, BC, and his website is www.tomwayman.com.