Local author sees bestseller success

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A local author has landed on the bestsellers list.

Shelley Wood’s novel The Quintland Sisters has been named by the Globe and Mail as a best selling book.

The novel is based on the Dionne Quintuplets of Northern Ontario, the first identical quintuplets to survive birth in the 1930’s.

“It’s amazing, it is totally beyond my wildest dreams,” said Wood, who admits she first burst out laughing and then burst out crying when she  heard the news on an airplane.

The book officially hit store shelves March 5, 2019, and her husband’s company the Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery, held a book launch to mark the occasion.

Wood spent nearly three decades working as a medical journalist writing about Heart Disease, but in 2015 she decided to start writing a novel  after receiving inspiration from the Kelowna Public Library.

“I stumbled across a photograph of them and I’d never heard their story before,” said Wood who added that a lot of non-fiction books have been written on the quintuplets but not a fiction based one, which why she decided to put pen to paper.

The story is told from the perspective of a nurse who cares for the quintuplets for five years.

“I really do hope that it will inspire people to go and look up their real story, which is beyond tragic, even beyond the years that are in my book,” said Wood.