To Touch a Dream

This warm-hearted memoir tells the story a dream held by many North Americans: to leave a dull job and journey into the wilderness to live off the land. Sunny Wright does exactly that when she decides at age twenty-eight to quit working at a "man-sized job for a female wage" in a Vancouver sawmill. With her young daughter Lisa and friend Betty, they sell off everything from their urban existence and outfit themselves with two trucks full of goods for the journey to northern BC in search of a place to live. After much searching they find land near Vanderhoof and begin the hard but joy-filled labour of constructing their own house, their own barn and setting up as subsistence farmers. Eventually they learn how to run a bootleg still for extra money and become famous in the area for the dogs they raise and the winter trips they take by dogsled. This is a book that readers can enjoy as they live alongside Sunny, Betty and Lisa in the bush, watching them learn to build log houses, make friends with the fiercely individualistic people of the back country, survive the desperately cold winters and enjoy the independence of rural life. The volume includes many black-and-white photos of their life in the bush.