Told by a natural, seasoned story weaver Quest for Eden is a biographical novel set in the early years of Canada"s 20th century. Four young immigrant families leave the only lives they"d ever known, the Austrian Empire (today"s Ukraine) their people had called home for generations and set out in search of a place to put down new roots...roots in rich, black earth...roots with a future. With temperaments and personalities as different but integral as salt to bread they dreamed, divined and worked together with endless invention, each providing an element utterly necessary to the success of what grew into an audacious adventure. In the process, ordinary people accomplished extraordinary things. Crossing the Atlantic, traversing the treacherous Edson Trail with winter at their heels, depending on the compassion of trappers, traders and the first nations people, clearing land while raising children and chickens under the watchful eyes of hawks and timber wolves, all to the rasp of a gypsy violin would seem to have the makings of a creative work of fantasy-had this book not been based on actual diaries, audio cassettes letters and remembrances re-told around kitchen tables till they became family histories, now at last shared. Claire Powell