The Garden Club and the Kumquat Campaign

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

This humorous novel derives its plot from the many anti-logging
campaigns in the old growth forest of Vancouver Island, one of the most
newsworthy of which was the fight to save the trees in the Carmanah
Valley.

Upshot Island (the fictional stand-in for Denman Island, one of
B.C.’s Gulf Islands, where the author lives) lies in the rainshadow of
the “Big Island” (Vancouver Island). Island resident Joe Jones and
some of his neighbors decide to join a group of environmentalists who
are attempting to block the logging activities in Kumquat Sound on the
Big Island. Jones, the story’s narrator, is a bit of a wimp. For
several years he lived in the Brothers of Blessed Columkille the Lesser
monastery where he learned, above all, obedience and the importance of
authority. But the awakening of his sexual appetites, stimulated by his
beautiful neighbor, Caitlin Slaney, has also awakened a manly side and
prompted his descent into civil disobedience.

The Garden Club and the Kumquat Campaign, with its quirky characters
and tongue-in-cheek wit, would be good choice for public libraries.