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Marion McKinnon Crook writing second novel about nursing in Cariboo Chilcotin

It will be a sequel to Always Pack A Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin
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Retired nurse and author Marion McKinnon Crook attends a book signing at the Open Book on March 2. (Kim Kimberlin photo - Williams Lake Tribune)

Marion McKinnon Crook is writing a sequel to her novel Always Pack A Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

Crook worked in Williams Lake as a public health nurse and her first book in the series covered some of her experiences in the 1960s.

Recently she was in Williams Lake to do some research for the second book, which she said will cover the 1975 to 1976 period of her life.

“It’s about public health nursing. By then I was married with three children. It’s about my family life and my ranching life because we lived on a ranch.”

She started working on the sequel half a year ago, which will also be published by Heritage House Publishing.

Always Pack a Candle won the2021 Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and in February 2023, she received a BC Arts Council Award to further her research for the sequel.

“It was on the best sellers list for a year, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “When it was on for three weeks I was thrilled, but after a while I thought ‘oh gosh, it’s still on.”

After it was published, she heard from many people, including nurses she worked with back in the 1960s.

“A friend from Yellowknife who was a hospital nurse called me and reminded me that I’d taken her with me to Horsefly because she was interested in public health.”

One of the doctors she remembers vividly in Williams Lake was the late William Sterling Haynes, who also wrote about his experiences.

“I sent him my manuscript before I published Always Pack A Candle and said I didn’t know if he remembered me but he had delivered my baby.”

Haynes replied, “of course” he remembered because while Crook had an easy delivery, she bled and needed 12 units of blood.

“This was a small town and we didn’t have a lot of blood around.”

Thirty-five people lined up to donate blood, she recalled, even Mickey Dickie who was seven months pregnant, but they wouldn’t take it from her.

She has a rough draft of the sequel, but is still looking for a title to the book if anyone has any suggestions, she added.

While in Williams Lake she also did a book signing at The Open Book which was well-attended.

READ MORE: New novel explores the life of a Cariboo public health nurse in the early 1960s



monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com

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Monica Lamb-Yorski

About the Author: Monica Lamb-Yorski

A B.C. gal, I was born in Alert Bay, raised in Nelson, graduated from the University of Winnipeg, and wrote my first-ever article for the Prince Rupert Daily News.
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