Canadian romance author Carley Fortune has built a bestselling career by embracing what many publishers once considered a liability: authentic Canadian settings. Her four novels have sold over three million copies worldwide, per Penguin Random House Canada, her publisher. Here, she discusses her commitment to Canadian identity and the global appeal of lakeside nostalgia.

What do Canadian settings offer that other locations don’t?

Before I published my first novel, I’d heard over the years that American audiences are just not interested in stories set in Canada—a Canadian agent flat-out told me to set the book in an American seaside town, which I would never do. But when I found my agent Taylor Haggerty at Root Literary, she saw how much Barry’s Bay was a character in that book. What the books have done is show how desirable, how beautiful, spots in this country are. For Americans the settings are familiar, but different, so they are fresh. But I’ve heard it is the same for readers from Italy to Brazil.

Now readers are making pilgrimages to your book locations.

Somebody at an event in Toronto told me she never considered traveling within Canada until she read my books. My third book is set on Prince Edward Island, and she went to visit, and now she was moving there. Americans are driving nine or 19 hours to come up to cottage country for the first time. A real estate agent I know in Barry’s Bay told me an American client is buying a cottage because of the books. I heard from this great bookseller, Cedar Canoe Books in Muskoka, that people are visiting because of the books.

How do you transport readers?

I hope when you read one of my books it can kind of play in your mind like a movie—that you feel that you’re there. I work really hard to capture the vegetation, the smells, what the wind is like, how the sun lands, all of those really specific details. With romance, because you have these heightened stories rooted in place and rooted in real emotion, it makes it feel like a real story. I want you to feel like you are experiencing that summer, even if you’re in your apartment.

The Amazon adaptation of Every Summer After is filming in British Columbia instead of Ontario. How did you handle that geographic change?

I’m so sick of Canadian places in film and TV standing in for other locations, usually American. But we’re filming in British Columbia, which does not look like Ontario. So, I thought, let’s just let British Columbia be British Columbia: we reset it as Barry’s Bay. I didn’t want them to crop out the mountains. It’s just so beautiful!

You’ve spoken about your irritation that romance is dismissed as disposable.

I still think there’s a lot of feeling that the books are “just another summer romance.” When someone says that it breaks my heart. I work very hard on these books. I’m not a fast writer, and they’re not conveyor-belt books. It’s challenging enough to create characters millions of people can fall in love with.

Return to main feature.