Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dobbie immigrated to Canada in 1957. She started Dowco Consultants, a steel detailing business, with her husband and received her B.A. from SFU as a mature student. Living both in Langley and Harrison Lake, she has been a Volunteer at the Langley Centennial Museum since 1993. Her first novel is When Eagles Call (Ronsdale Press, 2003), the story of Kimo, a young Hawaiian native living in the 19th century who signs up for duty with the Hudson's Bay Company. He meets a half-Kwantlen, half-French-Canadian woman named Rose and decides to stay as a pioneer in the Langley area.

Dobbie next published a sequel entitled River of Gold (Ronsdale Press, 2009). In this sequel, two Hawaiian labourers - Kimo Kanui and his friend Moku - end their contract with the Hudson's Bay Company in Fort Langley and trek north to join the great Cariboo gold rush of the early 1860s. Along with a black man from the Carolinas and a native Sto:lo woman won and freed in a card game, they face dangers and challenges along the trail as winter sets in. Gun-toting Californians, drunken miners, hostile natives as well as characters from British Columbia's history - James Douglas, Judge Begbie, Ovid Allard and Cataline - stride through the novel.

Reviews of the author's work by BC Studies:
River of Gold

BOOKS:

When Eagles Call (Ronsdale Press, 2003)

River of Gold (Ronsdale 2009) 978-1-55380-071-2 Price $19.95

[BCBW 2012] "Fiction"