• Book Cover: Large block letters show the colours of a sunrise and sit over an oil painting of a purple-hilled scene of prairie hills. Mad Hell-Rush of Days by Natalie Appleton.

Mad Hell-Rush of Days

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9781774391440 | September 2026 | 300 Pages

Saskatchewan, 1895. Spencer Pearse stands outside the cabin he built for a bride he hopes is on the way—or is he still waiting for Val, the boyhood friend who once shared grand dreams of raising horses far from the gaze of their fathers?

On the other side of the Frenchman River is Josie Grant, who has prayed for eight years for a baby. She loves her husband, a deaf homesteader who paints and sings, but this won’t do.

While a half-mad Josie follows a hint from the Lord, Spencer risks losing everything in a secret Vancouver rife with ‘confidence men'.

Mad Hell-Rush of Days is a dark, tautly oiled portrait of life, desire, and loss in a long-forgotten era. A story of two misfits whose worlds collide on a wild, harsh prairie.

“In the first chapter of Natalie Appleton’s Mad Hell-Rush of Days, we know instantly that this young man is our hero and we suspect that our author is one to be trusted. That inkling is confirmed on nearly every subsequent page of a near-perfect novel.” -  Kyle Wyatt, Literary Review of Canada. (full story)

"Drawing on meticulous historical research, the novel follows two outsiders as they navigate hardship, friendship and the struggle for acceptance in a frontier community, weaving fictional lives with real historical figures."—BC Book World (full story)

55 Canadian fiction books we're excited about this fall —CBC Books (Full list)

"A dark, tautly oiled portrait of life, desire, and loss in a long-forgotten era, a story of two misfits whose worlds collide on a wild, harsh prairie." —49th Shelf Staff (full story)