An inspiring and eye-opening collection of true stories about fourteen women who blazed their own trails in life and contributed in a fundamental way to the history of Vancouver Island and the surrounding islands.

In this fascinating follow-up to On Their Own Terms, author Haley Healey chronicles the lives of a whole new crop of resilient, hard-working, rule-breaking, diverse women who lived on and around Vancouver Island. Flourishing and Free introduces readers to Sylvia Stark (1839–1944), who was born into slavery in Missouri and went on to become a homesteader on Salt Spring Island; Mary Ann Croft (1865–1935), the first female lighthouse keeper in all of Canada; Victoria Chung (1897–1966), the first Asian-Canadian person to earn a medical degree, who provided urgent care during the Second World War; Dr. Ellen White (1922–2018), a renowned Coast Salish educator, author, and storyteller; and Isabel Kimoto (1921–), a cook, who was sent to a Japanese-Canadian internment camp in 1942 with her three-month-old baby; and many more. Uplifting, empowering, and entertaining, this concise collection of stories will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the unsung heroines of the West Coast.