From Peace River to Peace Crossing: The True Story Behind My Small-Town Romance Books

My Books & Writing

Apr 28

From Peace River to Peace Crossing title pin

In 2005, my husband and I and our three little boys—who were aged three, almost two, and one month old—moved over six hundred kilometres north of our bustling tourist hometown to a place that felt a bit like the ends of the earth.

Of course, Peace River isn’t the end of the earth—there’s a lot of highway going north of here. But since the nearest Walmart at the time was two hours away, it certainly felt like it to my central-Alberta-grown heart.

Still, we were determined to make the best of it. Because despite its distance from our families, it had so many benefits we soon grew to love—a slower pace of life, a tight-knit community who were there for each other when you needed them, and stunning landscapes and views that people travelled to experience.

View of the Peace River from the Twelve Foot Davis gravesite.

The River Runs Deep

This area has long been home to Indigenous peoples who have cared for it and whose traditions still run deep. Once Europeans entered the scene, a fort was built that became a key trading point along the Peace River, established by Sir Alexander Mackenzie and his crew while they were looking for the Northwest Passage.

While some historical conflicts are still being worked out in the present, the people who live here often have the same resourceful, independent, and community-minded spirit of those early inhabitants and pioneers. After all, while First Nations and pioneer families remain, many of the current residents of the Peace Country are also transplants like we were—who came, intending to stay less than five years, and either never left or tried to leave and returned.

There’s a local saying handed down from the First Nations people in this area—once you drink the water of the Peace River, you’ll always come back.

This certainly proved true for us. We moved away in 2007 for a business venture in the USA. But when the economy crashed and changed our plans, we could have gone anywhere in Canada upon our return only a few months later—and we chose to come back to the Peace River.

The Peace River and bridge from River Road on the south side in autumn.

The Family We Found

Since moving back, the people of this community have reaffirmed that we made the right choice over and over again.

In the way they celebrated with us and the birth family of our fourth son when we adopted him. And then later when he died, how they surrounded us with love and care. How they’ve helped us get on our feet not once, but twice. How they’ve helped make the place that our kids grew up in a place they love to come home to. Or in how we’ve received opportunities here that more populated centres wouldn’t offer—such as me being hired to write for a regional magazine with little to my portfolio beyond a long-running mommy blog and my first inspirational romance novel (now a newsletter freebie).

I wrote for Move UP magazine from mid-2016 to early 2021. Their mandate—to promote business, tourism, and life in the Alberta Peace Country—was a perfect way for me to get to know this region even better.

The Peace Country is a geographically massive area that covers the entire northwest corner of Alberta (and a little into BC, but we didn’t cover that area when I was with Move UP). Over the four-and-a-half years I worked for the magazine, I got to interview dozens (maybe more than a hundred?) ambitious, hard-working, resilient, creative, and warm-hearted people from all over the region.

And when I finally stepped away from that position, I knew I wanted to pay homage to the people of this area that I love so much in my fiction.

The Truth in the Fiction

That’s a good part of the heart behind the Peace Country Romance series. While the stories in my analog town of Peace Crossing (inspired by Peace River’s original name of Peace River Crossing) are completely fictional, the spark of truth inside them is the resourcefulness, resilience, and inspiration provided by the amazing people of this area.

Whether they’re farmers, truckers, forestry workers, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, hard-working blue-collar folks, professionals, and so much more, my series shows both the joys and the challenges of living in a remote-ish northern community like Peace Crossing through their eyes—all wrapped in a cozy love story that feels as warm as the people of this town.

Coming soon! Every Rose that Blooms by Talena Winters. Link goes to book page.

In my next title, Every Rose that Blooms, my heroine, Maddie, is a florist who wants to buy the flower shop she manages from the retiring owner. And the hero, Luke, wants to find a way to make a living from his art in an area that supports creativity but whose population makes living as an artist more of a struggle than most.

I have several more titles planned to wrap up the current stories, but you never know where the future will take me. Since I’ve definitely drunk the water, I might keeping coming back to the Peace Country forever.

And I hope you do, too.

Thank you for coming along on this adventure with me. If you’d like to get started on the Peace Country Romance series, please check out the series page.