Author Jacqueline Guest visits Pincher Creek Library

Author Jacqueline Guest
T. Lucas photos

Toni Lucas, Pincher Creek Voice

Pincher Creek and District Municipal Library hosted author Jacqueline Guest on the evening of March 21, 2013.  The reason Jaqueline Guest decided to become an author hit very close to home.  When her daughter was in grade four, she decided that she liked the 'Sweet Valley High" series of books aimed at pre-teens.  Guest looked into the series herself and then asked her daughter what the appeal was.  Her daughter told her that, "My job is school, and my job is hard.  When I come home from work, I want to relax.  I know right away who is going to be the bad girl, who is the good girl, and I know there is going to be a happy ending.  At the end of it, I can feel good and relax."

Guest decided that she was able to write to what her daughter wanted out of a book, complete with drama, action, a feel-good ending with relateable characters that would contain more substance than the books her daughter was reading at the time.


Guest has since written 17 children and teen books, and is working on two new titles.  She has written books with contemporary and historical settings, with sports or history being major themes.

An interesting aspect to her books is that the protagonist is sometimes a visible minority, often reflecting her own Cree-French Metis heritage.  This has made her books popular with families that have English as their second language.  "Everyone needs a hero. They are good reads first, and culturally based second.   New Canadian kids come in, they look different, they have a different religion, they have a different language.  These (characters) are ones they can relate to.  I want every kid in Canada to read," said Guest.

She proved to be a delightful speaker.  She explained that the secret to success is tied to the ability to read and comprehend what you are reading.  "You may never use a quadratic equation once you leave school, but you will have to read almost every day of your life."  She told the crowd that what she loved about being an author is that "You become the boss of the whole world, at least of the world that you create."

She was promoting the second book in her three part series, 'Outcasts of River Falls'.  The first book, 'Belle of Batoche', was a fictionalized version of the Battle of Batoche during the North-West Rebellion of 1885.  In it the heroine  Belle is a young woman.  In the second book , Belle has grown up and her own niece comes to live with her aunt.  This puts our new young heroine Kathryn, into a culture shock.  She is now labeled as Metis and is living with the road allowance people.  Being identified as Metis exposes her to a level of prejudice that Kathryn has never had to face before.  This book has the Highwayman, a "Metis Robin Hood" masked hero that has helped the Metis road allowance people to survive, and retain their self worth.  Kathryn faces struggles as she is faced with the choice of unmasking the Highwayman for great personal gain, the freedom of her beloved Aunt Belle.  Guest's father, Mr. Tourond grew up in the Pincher Creek area and Guest had the Town of Pincher Creek in mind when she wrote this book.  She fictionalized it become the town of Hopeful.  She did this because she used this book to outline the plight of the road allowance people, who could not live on the reserve or buy land, so they lived on government land, or in the ditches beside the roads.  "It wasn't just one area, it was endemic to all of the prairies, and B.C."

For her presentation she involved young people in the audience to demonstrate early Canadian issues with the help of a table full of props and her stage direction.  Three young people became 'Pierre, the mighty Voyageur', 'Eric the Buffalo', and the 'frisky headstrong pony', much to the delight of both the actors and audience. She focused on the many uses of the Metis sash, and the value of the buffalo.  After this presentation she had kids demonstrate how early toys such as the cup and ball worked.  Then she read from 'Outcasts of River Falls'.

Her books have been winning a number of American Literature awards. "It's fabulous, because kids are reading about Canadian history, and Canadian heroes,"  she enthused.  'Outcasts of River Falls' was recently used in a post graduate class in the University of Saskatchewan on Chidrens Literature  and the socio-economics of early Canada.  There are teachers guides that have been developed to go with a number of her books for novel studies.

Related link: www.jacquelineguest.com