Donna Milner
Author of After River
Works by Donna Milner
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Milner, Donna
- Legal name
- Milner, Donna Jonas
- Birthdate
- 1947
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Canada
- Birthplace
- Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
- Places of residence
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Rossland, British Columbia, Canada - Occupations
- real estate agent
novelist - Short biography
- Donna Jonas Milner, who has been referred to as the, 'Oh, so Canadian author,' was born in Victoria British Columbia and grew up in South Vancouver. As a young woman she relocated to a small town in the West Kootenays where she married and started a family. In 1972 she settled in the central interior of British Columbia and has resided there since. It wasn't until after she had raised four children and retired from a 25 year career in Real Estate that she pursued her secret passion for writing. Her debut novel AFTER RIVER, was picked out of the slush pile at Gregory & Co Agency, and subsequently sold and published in twelve countries. It has been translated into six different languages, and made into an audio book.
Milner makes no apologies for using the British Columbia locations where she has lived as inspiration for the settings of her novels. It is no secret that the town of Rossland where she resided for seven years, was the prototype for the border town of Atwood in AFTER RIVER, and in her new novel, THE PROMISE OF RAIN, her childhood home in a Fraserview subdivision of 'wartime houses' served as the backdrop for the Vancouver scenes.
Milner and her husband now live north of Williams Lake, off the grid in an eco friendly timber frame home. And of course, she admits, she is using a similar isolated setting on a pristine lake as the location of her third novel, which she is currently at work on.
Members
Reviews
I read Donna Milner's debut novel, After River, back in 2008. In re-reading my review, I see that I described Milner's writing as "quite simply, beautiful."
Her newest book, A Place Called Sorry, has just released - and Milner's writing has only gotten better.
1930's British Columbia. Young Addie Beale makes her home on a cattle ranch in the bush in British Columbia. Sorry is " a scanty little settlement located twelve hard bush miles from our ranch....the place where a number of side roads, not much more than widened paths, converged onto the trail that once led to the Cariboo goldfields."
Addie loves the land as much as her grandfather and father. Her grandfather has only ever hinted at the life he led before the ranch. As age creeps up on him, he slowly begins to reveal his secrets to Addie as she reads him the journals he wrote as a boy. Milner employs a then and now narrative that moves the story forward until past and present intersect. I quite enjoy this story within a story style.
I loved Milner's characters - I became so invested in them and their lives. The gentle wisdom of Addie's father and grandfather, the interactions between the three, the burgeoning friendship between Alan and Addie, hurt and heartache and joy. There is one exception - Mrs. Parsons the malicious, vitriolic schoolteacher. I simply wanted to rip her from the pages and throttle her.
It took me over a week to read A Place Called Sorry. Why? Because I became so emotionally involved in the book - I was so angry at the prejudice and so saddened at the injustice and treatment of the First Nations people. I became completely caught up in both the past and the present lives of Chauncey and Addie and found myself many times with tears running down my face. I was so tempted to flip ahead to the last pages and assure myself of the ending. But instead, I put the book down and walked away, returning to unfold the story as Milner wrote it. The ending? Couldn't have been better. "Loving someone does not require their presence in your life. Sometimes forgiveness is simply remembering that love."
Milner herself makes her home in British Columbia. Her descriptions of the land painted vivid mental images for me. Her exploration of the past was simply outstanding, blending fact and fiction together. "We're the newcomers here. There's something to be said about our European arrogance of believing it's our God-given right to go wherever and however we please. "The Chilcotin War was real - and the reverberations have echoed across the decades. The B.C. government only last year apologized to the Tsilhqot’in people.
Readers will know of my love for book covers - this one is absolutely perfect for the story. As is the book itself - A Place Called Sorry was a five star read for me - absolutely recommended!… (more)
Her newest book, A Place Called Sorry, has just released - and Milner's writing has only gotten better.
1930's British Columbia. Young Addie Beale makes her home on a cattle ranch in the bush in British Columbia. Sorry is " a scanty little settlement located twelve hard bush miles from our ranch....the place where a number of side roads, not much more than widened paths, converged onto the trail that once led to the Cariboo goldfields."
Addie loves the land as much as her grandfather and father. Her grandfather has only ever hinted at the life he led before the ranch. As age creeps up on him, he slowly begins to reveal his secrets to Addie as she reads him the journals he wrote as a boy. Milner employs a then and now narrative that moves the story forward until past and present intersect. I quite enjoy this story within a story style.
I loved Milner's characters - I became so invested in them and their lives. The gentle wisdom of Addie's father and grandfather, the interactions between the three, the burgeoning friendship between Alan and Addie, hurt and heartache and joy. There is one exception - Mrs. Parsons the malicious, vitriolic schoolteacher. I simply wanted to rip her from the pages and throttle her.
It took me over a week to read A Place Called Sorry. Why? Because I became so emotionally involved in the book - I was so angry at the prejudice and so saddened at the injustice and treatment of the First Nations people. I became completely caught up in both the past and the present lives of Chauncey and Addie and found myself many times with tears running down my face. I was so tempted to flip ahead to the last pages and assure myself of the ending. But instead, I put the book down and walked away, returning to unfold the story as Milner wrote it. The ending? Couldn't have been better. "Loving someone does not require their presence in your life. Sometimes forgiveness is simply remembering that love."
Milner herself makes her home in British Columbia. Her descriptions of the land painted vivid mental images for me. Her exploration of the past was simply outstanding, blending fact and fiction together. "We're the newcomers here. There's something to be said about our European arrogance of believing it's our God-given right to go wherever and however we please. "The Chilcotin War was real - and the reverberations have echoed across the decades. The B.C. government only last year apologized to the Tsilhqot’in people.
Readers will know of my love for book covers - this one is absolutely perfect for the story. As is the book itself - A Place Called Sorry was a five star read for me - absolutely recommended!… (more)
This is a book that held such promise - a small dairy farm in British Columbia near the US Border. It's 1966. A stranger comes to the farm to work, a young man against the Vietnam war, fleeing the draft. He's a charmer; everyone seems to fall in love with him, not just Natalie, the 15 year-old daughter, but EVeryone.
The story is told by an adult Natalie, thirty-some years later, trying to sort out how her family was so badly broken by the events of that summer of '66 and the two years following. There is a lot of stuff in here about very dysfunctional families, innocence lost, rape, acts of hate and intolerance, pregnancies out of wedlock, a myriad of misunderstandings. Geeze, what a tangled web we weave. And all these elements should have made for a really gripping story. But instead the narrative seems to lumber along in jerky starts, stops, and flashbacks. And as it nears its conclusion it just gets sappier and syrupy-er (is that a word?) and more and more unbelievable in its determination to make everyone live happily ever after (except for one particularly despicable villain). I can't believe I kept on reading to that highly unlikely and sappy end. But I did, and it left me feeling kinda suckered and dumb.
This is a book for women who like romances with clearly defined villains and persevering heroines. It's not that the writing is bad, it's just that the story becomes much too contrived and, well, sappy. Too Hallmark, if you will, or maybe Lifetime even. Nope.… (more)
The story is told by an adult Natalie, thirty-some years later, trying to sort out how her family was so badly broken by the events of that summer of '66 and the two years following. There is a lot of stuff in here about very dysfunctional families, innocence lost, rape, acts of hate and intolerance, pregnancies out of wedlock, a myriad of misunderstandings. Geeze, what a tangled web we weave. And all these elements should have made for a really gripping story. But instead the narrative seems to lumber along in jerky starts, stops, and flashbacks. And as it nears its conclusion it just gets sappier and syrupy-er (is that a word?) and more and more unbelievable in its determination to make everyone live happily ever after (except for one particularly despicable villain). I can't believe I kept on reading to that highly unlikely and sappy end. But I did, and it left me feeling kinda suckered and dumb.
This is a book for women who like romances with clearly defined villains and persevering heroines. It's not that the writing is bad, it's just that the story becomes much too contrived and, well, sappy. Too Hallmark, if you will, or maybe Lifetime even. Nope.… (more)
A good story is clearly in safe hands with this author, she writes with a quiet confidence, with an eye for small detail. She brings together different stories from different times to converge neatly at the end. Both the bereavement and the POW strands of the plot were heartrending. Definitely an author I would read more by.
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Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 283
- Popularity
- #82,295
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 18
- ISBNs
- 43
- Languages
- 4
This novel has dual storylines; the present-day of the 1930s-1950, and the journal entries and memories of the protagonist's grandfather from 1864. It took me half the book to realize that the 1864 events actually happened. This was well-written, apart from the over-frequent use of lines such as '...a decision I would come to regret', and I found it moving and emotionally truthful.