Ruffles on My Longjohns

Autobiographical account of a young couple's adventures homesteading in the Canadian wilderness. Isabel Edwards was in her early twenties when she and her husband Earle began homesteading in British Columbia's remote Bella Coola Valley. What was to be one winter spent in the Northern coastal mountains has become almost fifty years. Witty, whimsical, this is a firsthand account of homesteading in the remote Bella Coola Valley. For a woman in a world of men, isolation had a very special meaning. She coped - lovingly, laughingly - and regales the reader with her memories.

Isabel Edwards was in her early twenties when she and her husband Earle began homesteading in British Columbia's remote Bella Coola Valley. Born in Britain and raised in quiet Victoria, young Isabel had only notions of wilderness life when she and Earle left their home and edged closed and closed to the wilderness. What was to be one winter spent in the northern coastal mountains has become almost fifty years. Mrs. Edwards has a natural talent for spinning yarns about those early days - the former British aristocrats, the eccentric bachelors and the Indians who populated the Valley; packing in the yearly supply of food over remote horse trails; fighting floods; preparing for their first Christmas; and, of course, the isolation and loneliness of being the only woman in a world of men. Mrs. Edwards treats her past with a tender humor.