Nancy J. Hughes is the granddaughter of Walter Luney. Her grandfather's company Luney Bros. Ltd. was Victoria's major construction company for decades and built many of its most significant historical buildings. Hughes' book called Built by Luney Bros. Ltd.: Building a City and a Legacy Brick by Brick, Victoria B. C. 1885 - 1962 (Wildflower Publishing, 2010 $30) recalls William and Walter Luney's setbacks, struggles and successes in reaching the pinnacle of the commercial construction industry in Victoria. It chronicles, for the first time, the buildings Luney Bros. constructed and gives an overview of the construction business in Victoria from 1885-1962. 978-0-9813995-0-8

Nancy J. Hughes's second book, Found Art of the Clans Erskine & Holland 1710-1965 (Victoria: Wildflower Publishing House, 2017 $30) concerns ancestors of the author's birth mother's grandfather, David Erskine Gellatley of Westbank, Kelowna, reaching back to 1710. We follow heirlooms that belonged to the Erskine & Holland families in Scotland and England as an art collection passes through three hundred years of descendants. Along the way relatives become Lord Advocates of Scotland, Lord High Chancellor of the United Kingdom and judicial advisors to the King of Siam. Sprinkle in some adultery, illegitimacy and connections with Sir Isaac Newton, Rudyard Kipling, George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi and Sir Walter Scott, Sigmund Freud, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler.

Nancy Hughes grew up in Victoria and attended St. Ann's Academy and Oak Bay High School. She was a stay-at-home mother and later attended the University of Victoria in the Pacific and Oriental Studies department and spent four months studying Mandarin Chinese at China's East China Normal University in Shanghai.

[BCBW 2017]