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Saanich history author making fiction debut

Well published historian Valerie Green has three books in the hopper
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Valerie Green sits in the study where she’s written more than 20 books and hundreds of history columns. Travis Paterson/News Staff

Valerie Green might be Saanich’s most prolific author and the historian has no plans of slowing down.

Now in her 70s, Green has published more than 20 books, mostly historical but also true crime. And after a ‘life of writing,’ Green is about to publish her first work of fiction, one of three books to be released in the coming year, with a fourth coming shortly after that.

“I’ve always got ideas going through my head,” said Green, who had never ruled out fiction. “I’ll be in my rocking chair in my 90s writing, it’s like mental aerobics, really.”

Green’s fictional debut set to print later this year (hopefully) is called The House of Tomorrow Chronicles: Providence, and it’s the first of a two-part series. It will be completed with the 2018 follow up House of Tomorrow Chronicles: Destiny (Sandra Jonas Publishing House, Boulder, Col.).

“It’s a four-generation family saga, set all over B.C., with a focus in Victoria,” Green said. “Starting in England and Scotland in the 1830s, it moves to the 1860s in B.C. and goes on until 2000.”

Also coming up for Green is Fifty Conversations From The Past - Imaginary Interviews of a Time-Travelling Reporter (Seaside Holdings, Sidney), which is a historically accurate but creatively written non-fiction.

“The idea is you get to talk to people you would have liked to sit down and talk with, famous and less famous,” Green said.

“I interview Sir James Douglas, Jennie Butchart, Kathleen and Peter O’Reilly, and visitors too [such as] Rudyard Kipling and Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s daughter,” Green said. “I’ve always believed history is best told with the voices of the people who lived it and I’m hearing it’s a fresh way to read history.”

As it’s Canada’s 150th, it seemed appropriate to do the book now.

Her third upcoming book is a commissioned work on the historical house Dunmora, in Central Saanich. The owner of the house commissioned Green to create the book for family and friends but the publisher, Hancock House, told Green they believe it’s a seller. The Dunmora book is due by September.

Documenting heritage homes is where Green originally made her mark. She captured dozens of homes in her 2001 book If These Walls Could Talk, and then If More Walls Could Talk in 2004. The first includes storied homes of Greater Victoria while More Walls extends outside the region to include Goldstream, Nanaimo, Caleb Pike and Maple Bay homes. Each house is sketched by local artist Lynn Gordon-Findlay.

Green recaptured these stories and more in a history column she wrote in the Saanich News for 19 years.

In addition, Green published two significant pieces of Saanich history, Saanich Centennial 1906-2006 – 100 Years 100 Stories in 2005, and a recount of Gordon Head Elementary School, 1891-2006, also in 2005.

Fore more information visit valeriegreen.ca.