The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel - Softcover

A landmark novel of the Canadian West from one of Canada’s most accomplished writers, author of The Ghost Brush and Fables of Brunswick Avenue

It is 1911, and the coming of the railroad to the Canadian Rockies brings a parade of newcomers to the Bow Valley—coal miners, scientists, runaway aristocrats and remittance men. Among them is poacher Herbie Wishart.

Herbie reinvents himself as a trail guide in the town of Gateway and becomes an outfitter for a fossil-hunting expedition headed by a prominent American archaeologist. Rumour has it that the secrecy-shrouded Hodgson expedition could overturn all previous knowledge about early life forms. Along for the trip are Hodgson’s adult children, mopey Humphrey and the captivating Isabel, with whom Herbie strikes up a campside alliance. But when an early snowstorm hits and trailside grudges come to a head, the expedition mysteriously disappears. The tragedy threatens to stain the Rocky Mountain park’s reputation just as its newly elected government overseers begin to sell the pristine Canadian wilderness to the world. Despite all efforts from that year on to solve, or bury, the mystery, the disappearance will haunt Gateway, and define the futures of Herbie Wishart and his stubbornly female descendants.

The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel is at once sweeping and intimate, bursting with heart, wit and larger-than-life characters whose sheer brio rivals the dazzling and dangerous Rocky Mountains. Katherine Govier proves she is one of Canada’s master storytellers with this groundbreaking portrait of western Canada’s past.

Katherine Govier’s most recent novel, The Ghost Brush, was published in the United States as The Printmaker’s Daughter, and in translation in Romania, Spain, Quebec, and Japan. Her novel Creation was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has won the Marian Engel Award and the Toronto Book Award, and has twice been nominated for the Trillium Book Award. The author of twelve previous books, Katherine Govier divides her time between Toronto, Ontario, and Canmore, Alberta.