As a third generation Vancouverite, Valerie Rolfe Lupini fled the city to raise her family on Bowen and Vancouver islands. After the birth of her second son came the publication of her first book There Goes the Neighbourhood, followed by a decade of mothering and homeschooling. After that she wrote her second book, The Whistle, though fiction, developed after she delved into her family's colourfull homesteading history.