Most of us know that in the 60s and 70s, the Kootenays saw an influx of Americans coming to the Kootenays for a piece of land and a bit of peace. But have you ever wondered what that experience was like for those beatniks, hippies and other counter-cultural seekers? Curious folks can expect an authentic exploration of that very question at author Ross Klatte’s book launch of his historical novel Waiting for the Revolution. The launch is a free event happening on Wednesday, August 21st, 7pm at the Nelson Public Library.
Waiting for the Revolution is a love story that begins in Mexico and ends in a hippie commune in the Kootenays. Although set in a far earlier time period, the novel explores topics that feel entirely too relevant to our current age. It explores the question of how we live an authentic life in the context of drugs, sexual ethics and political dissent. Klatte found inspiration close to home: “I was moved, as a writer and as an amateur historian, to make up a story set in the tempestuous period of the 1960s and early ’70s, loosely based on aspects of my wife’s and my personal experience as back-to-the-landers. We came to Canada in 1970, leaving what was happening in the US behind us, and lived communally. I used aspects of that in writing the novel. Otherwise, what happens is entirely imagined.”
Although he has a background in journalism, once he and his wife settled on a mountainside above the West Arm of Kootenay Lake in the 1970s, Klatte turned to the literary arts. He won first prize in the personal essay division of the annual CBC Literary competition for the first chapter of his memoir, Leaving the Farm. In 2011, for a short story previously published in The New Orphic Review, he was shortlisted for Canada’s Journey Prize. After a long career at Selkirk College, Klatte is now retired and spends his time hiking the local mountains, travelling and writing novels.
Nelson Public Library