Author Elizabeth George donates $100,000 to save Trillium property – challenges Whidbey Island artists to follow
| Published: April 22, 2010 – 5:04 pm
For Release – April 22, 2010
Whidbey Camano Land Trust
Contact: Pat Powell, Executive Director (360) 222-3310
Langley, WA
Like hundreds of artists and authors, mystery novelist Elizabeth George is inspired by Whidbey Island’s beautiful forests, rural landscapes and pristine beaches. These gifts of nature inspired her to seek refuge on Whidbey five years ago.
This week, the New York Times bestselling author launched her national book tour at the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts by making a $100,000 donation to help protect Whidbey Island’s Trillium forest. She challenged other artists who find sanctuary on Whidbey Island to join her by protecting the unspoiled Island that inspires them.
George’s donation will help the Whidbey Camano Land Trust save the 664-acre Trillium property, the Island’s largest remaining contiguous piece of forest. The Land Trust is currently in the midst of an ambitious campaign to raise $4.2 million dollars and has until June 10 to buy the property, so it won’t be developed. George moved to secluded Whidbey Island after spending 1971-2005 in Orange County, where she watched the “concretization” of the landscape. “Vast expanses of farmland in Southern California are now covered in concrete,” she said. “Once it’s paved, it’s lost forever.”
George’s book tour will take her back to Southern California, following stops in Seattle. The tour promotes her latest book, titled This Body of Death. Coincidentally, part of the story is set in the New Forest, an area in southern England that has the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture and forest in the country. All of her crime novels are set in England and feature very interesting characters including Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers.
George is working on a book that is set in the Lake District of England, which is where Beatrix Potter lived. Like George, Potter was also a conservationist. The English author and illustrator is best known for the Tale of Peter Rabbit and other children’s books. Over the years, Potter bought neighboring farms to preserve them, and when she died in 1943, she left 4,000 acres to England’s National Trust.
“One thing I like about the English is that they recognize and appreciate exactly what they have,” said George. “They’ve preserved the countryside for hundreds of years. I can walk the same trails and visit the same cottages that Jane Austen did. Much of the landscape has remained unchanged. They understand the simple truth about land: God ain’t making any more of it.”
