A resident of Mayne Island, B.C., Ireland published her first novel partially set on a farm in the Fraser Valley called Fox's Nose. At the outset a girl named Julia makes love with her cousin in the attic and discovers her grandmother's diary about events during the Siege of Leningrad. Back in school in Vancouver she creates a play about the seige for drama class with her German friend Ursula, much to the distress of Ursula's troubled brother Willi. Back to the farm for Easter holidays, Julia and her grandfather are at odds over a maimed fox he has caught in a leghold trap. Sally Ireland was born in 1948. The novel arose from her visit to the Soviet Union in 1977 in order to learn Russian, at which time she discovered a maimed fox in a pen as well as a sign near St. Petersburg showing the way to Lisii Nos (Fox's Nose).

BOOKS:

Fox's Nose (Cormorant 1997)

[BCBW 2003] "Fiction"