Canadian novelist’s new book finds friends in Fort McMurray

Bear With Me, by Dorris Heffron, is a realistic and favourable portrayal of the people and

industry of Fort McMurray

The places and animals of Fort McMurray shine in a new novel by a Canadian author with an important story to tell about the country and its people.

Dorris Heffron released her sixth novel in October, 2024, inspired in part by a visit to Fort

McMurray in 2014 and travels in Canada's high Arctic.

Fresh off the launch of her previous novel, City Wolves, a work of historical fiction set in the

Klondike Gold Rush, Heffron was interested in Fort McMurray as Canada’s modern “oil rush” city.

An introduction to Indigenous entrepreneur, David Bouchier, led to an airplane tour of the oil sands and an insider's view of the industry and its real people that was ultimately written in Heffron’s latest book, Bear With Me.

It is the story of Clare, a wildlife photographer in a long second marriage that has become

dangerous.

After life-altering actions, Clare discovers the different nature of love in old age, the harmony, peace and intimate pleasure it can bring. Yet the story ends with fireworks, Canadian style.

Fort McMurray is not the only focus or theme in the novel, but it is major, and Heffron writes a realistic and favourable portrayal of the people and industry of Fort McMurray: a place that holds a special part of her heart.

“The people of Fort McMurray have been through epic calamities. Economic downturn, fire, and flood. They have endured extremist environmentalist's bad press,” says Heffron. “But now we have a new Prime Minister and an opposition who agree, that there needs to be corridors of energy going west and east of Fort McMurray to supply Canadian markets and to reach the markets in Europe and Asia"

Bear With Me is published by Rock’s Mills Press and is available on the publisher’s website, in bookstores and libraries, or Amazon.ca.