British Columbiana - by Josie Teed (Paperback)

About the Book

A young woman leaves the city for a remote mountain town to work in an immersive gold rush heritage site where she becomes embroiled in local culture while navigating her own place in the rapidly evolving twenty-first-century world.

Book Synopsis

FINALIST, 2024 EDNA STAEBLER AWARD

A job as a heritage interpreter at a remote gold rush site propels an insecure and anxious twenty-four-year-old to find what she truly desires from life.

"By turns deadpan and wryly candid, Teed has a keen observational eye and a talent for characterization. An excellent debut." -- ANDRÉ FORGET, author of In the City of Pigs

Unsure of her next steps after graduation, twenty-something Josie Teed accepts a position at Barkerville, a remote heritage site in British Columbia showcasing the nineteenth-century gold rush. She lives in the adjacent village of Wells, population 250. There is no cell reception and the grocery store is an hour away. Once a thriving gold mining community in the 1930s, Wells has become a haven for white Gen-X artists and flower children, struggling actors-turned-heritage-interpreters, and transient miners.

Eager to move on from a master's thesis that left her questioning her passion for history, Josie dives headlong into her new job and life in a small town. Faced with the prospect of remaining long-term, she must decide if she will fight to carve a place for herself in Wells's idiosyncratic community. What follows is the story of a young woman trying to find connection and purpose in the twenty-first century while living in a village seemingly frozen in the past.

Review Quotes

British Columbiana is a book about out-of-placeness: a town out of place both in time and altitude, young people out of place in their own skin, transient friendships of circumstance, dishes in the sink and mismatched romances. It's here that Josie Teed makes her funny, unique debut, interpreting her recent past the way she and the people of Barkerville interpret Victorian history. Like learning the obscure German word that pins an elusive feeling down, Teed is able to capture, with sneaky humour and emotional clarity, what it means to still be coming-of-age past the point that others mythologize it. No one else has a voice like this.-- "Rebecca Alter, writer at Vulture"

A hilarious and refreshing debut. Teed captures the anxiety and irritation of everyday life with wit and talent. Her cast of characters are equal parts unbelievable and so very real. Set against the quirky and quaint backdrop of Wells, an arts community in rural BC, British Columbiana is a moving portrait of alienation and identity.-- "Fawn Parker, author of What We Both Know"

By turns deadpan and wryly candid, Teed has a keen observational eye and a talent for characterization. An excellent debut.-- "André Forget, author of In the City of Pigs"

Hilarious, bold, and unabashedly intimate, British Columbiana turns our eyes away from the predictability of literary memoir truth-telling and guides us towards the difficult and necessary work of truth-questioning; truth-searching; truth-deconstructing. Josie Teed asks the questions that we are all afraid to ask -- confesses the unique-yet-universal doubts and desires that plague early adulthood and creates space for us to take what we need and leave the rest. A bright light of a book from an author with an immense amount of laughter, insight, and hard-won wisdom to offer the world.-- "Sydney Hegele, author of The Pump"

Teed's memoir is an exploration of her journey to discover what she wants from life, and how to assert herself, acknowledge agency, and take up space.-- "Booklist"

About the Author

Josie Teed was born and raised in Pelham, Ontario, and attended McGill University before completing her master's in archaeology at the University of York. Her work has been published in Bad Nudes Magazine and Graphite Publications. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.