Ross Klate Book Launch

Most of us know that in the 60s and 70s, the Kootenays saw an influx of Americans coming to the Kootenays for a piece of land and a bit of peace. But have you ever wondered what that experience was like for those beatniks, hippies and other counter-cultural seekers? Curious folks can expect an authentic exploration of that very question at author Ross Klatte’s book launch of his historical novel Waiting for the Revolution.

Waiting for the Revolution is a love story that begins in Mexico and ends in a hippie commune in the Kootenays. Although set in a far earlier time period, the novel explores topics that feel entirely too relevant to our current age. It explores the question of how we live an authentic life in the context of drugs, sexual ethics and political dissent. Klatte found inspiration close to home: “I was moved, as a writer and as an amateur historian, to make up a story set in the tempestuous period of the 1960s and early ’70s, loosely based on aspects of my wife’s and my personal experience as back-to-the-landers. We came to Canada in 1970, leaving what was happening in the US behind us, and lived communally. I used aspects of that in writing the novel. Otherwise, what happens is entirely imagined.”