Rocky Mountain Books is pleased to announce that Okanagan Odyssey: Journeys Through Terrain, Terroir and Culture by Don Gayton has won the 2011 Peace Corps Travel Book Award. Before moving to Canada from the United States in the late 1960s, Gayton volunteered with the Peace Corps in Colombia.

Okanagan Odyssey is a quirky and lyrical examination of British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. Sticking to the backroads and byways, Gayton gently pokes and prods local ecosystems, histories, vineyards and people. In his unique version of wine pairing, Gayton matches up local books and landscapes with local vintages, giving terroir a whole new meaning. An ecologist by profession, Gayton deftly negotiates the tension between the Okanagan that is home to many endangered species and ecosystems, and the same Okanagan that is a mecca for developers and urban refugees.

Don Gayton is the 2009/2010 Haig-Brown Centenary Writer in Residence at the University of Victoria and an author of popular non-fiction. Don also writes for Canadian Geographic as well as technical articles on grasslands, climate change and fire ecology. His awards include the Saskatchewan Writers Guild non-fiction award, the US National Outdoor Book Award, the Canadian Science Writers Award and two shortlistings for the BC Book Awards. Gayton lives and works in Summerland, BC.