"Dunk the dead by lightning in a cold water bath for two hours and if still dead, add vinegar and soak for an hour more." -- from The Cure for Death by Lightning

Born in 1963, the fifth of five daughters, Gail Anderson-Dargatz grew up in Salmon Arm, B.C. where she realized in her teens that her father Eric Anderson, a sheep farmer, was not her biological father. Her mother Irene Anderson confirmed this. Her parents divorced in 1981. "Dad never made me feel anything other than his daughter," she told Maclean's magazine in 1998. That situation was mirrored in her novel A Recipe for Bees. After Anderson-Dargatz showed each of them a copy of the manuscript separately, the former spouses starting talking to one another again and remarried, on the sly, sending faxes to their children to spread the news. When she married Floyd Dargatz in 1990, the author adopted her double-barrelled name. They lived on a dairy farm near Parksville. [See Personal Background information below.] Her first collection of fiction in 1994 was nominated for the Leacock Medal for Humour. In 1996, her folksy magic realism was immediately cheered by readers who made her first novel a surprise bestseller. Expanded from an award-winning short story, The Cure for Death by Lightning ($28.95) is a whimsical, bold, moving tale of 15-year-old Beth Weeks, growing up on an isolated farm in fictitious Turtle Valley, near Kamloops, during the Second World War. Bizarre events and eccentric characters abound. Replete with remedies and recipes, The Cure for Death by Lightning won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the VanCity Book Prize, the Betty Trask Prize and was shortlisted for the 1996 Giller Prize and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

During the writing of that first novel, Anderson-Dargatz' husband suffered from a brain tumour and underwent surgery. Royalties from the book allowed the couple to purchase a farm near Millet, Alberta where he recuperated and learned beekeeping. A Recipe for Bees ($32.95), nominated for the Giller Prize, is the life story of elderly, Courtenay-based Augusta Olsen and her enduring marriage to her husband Karl, a farmer near Kamloops. Their daughter is the product of an adulterous relationship that Augusta had, but Karl loves her anyway. A testament to the 'farm marriage', the story includes lots of information and lore about bees along the way, as well as a character who undergoes brain surgery. Anderson-Dargatz' third novel, A Rhinestone Button ($35.95), follows the fortunes of Job Sunstrum, a shy, angelic-looking blond who loves to cook. His skill as a farmer allows him to survive in the rough-and-tumble Baptist world of Gosfinnger, Alberta. Although her stories are full of fantastical elements, Anderson-Dargatz remains grounded in the family farm of the recent past for her inspiration.

"My mother was hit by lightning when she was a girl," she recalled in 1996. "She talked about ghosts and premonitions. I was surrounded by stories of a time that completely disappeared." Anderson-Dargatz does for the family farm or ranch in B.C. what many authors have already done for rural life in the prairies or smalltown life in Ontario, magnifying the elements of life that are special, revealing, in that process, some of the psychology of the region.

From the work of born-and-raised-in-B.C. novelists such as Anderson-Dargatz, Jack Hodgins and Anne Cameron, it's possible to surmise that constancy is not an option in British Columbia. It is a place for conflicts, epiphanies and assorted transformations.

The Miss Hereford Stories. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1994.
The Cure for Death by Lightning. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1996.
A Recipe for Bees. Toronto: Knopf, 1998.
A Rhinestone Button (Knopf, 2002)

Awards:

Shortlisted, Giller Prize, for The Cure for Death by Lightning, 1996.
Shortlisted, Stephen Leacock Humour Award, The Miss Hereford Stories, 1995.
CBC Radio's Literary Competition, short fiction, for "The Girl With the Bell Necklace.