Diana Phillips recently released her second book, Beyond the Home Ranch, and will be at the Open Book this Monday, Nov. 21 to read passages from the book and sign copies.
The event starts at 2 p.m.
Following the success of her first book, Beyond the Chilcotin, Phillips second memoir moves beyond the cattle ranch to her life with her father, Canadian folk legend Pan Phillips, after he sells the Home Ranch.
She reminisces on her experiences as a guide for a rustic wilderness lodge, what it was like raising a young family and life in the backcountry of the Chilcotin.
Beyond the Home Ranch is a slice of life in the Chilcotin before the advent of global positioning systems, cellular phones and Internet connections.
She had to adapt to life situations as best she could like the time she fell off her horse, belly-first, when she was seven months pregnant as she tried to stop a runaway horse.
Her vivid account of working a ranch and raising her children, as well as helping out a series of new Home Ranch owners creates an unforgettable portrait of life for a cattle rancher. She survives lean times and becomes a masterful rancher in her own right, driving cattle along rugged trails to and from Nazko, leading hunts in the Ilgachuz Mountains and midwifing stubborn calves, not to mention fending off grizzlies and mounting rescue missions for all manner of strays.
Phillips now resides in Vanderhoof and still works in the cattle industry.