A woman races into the Canadian frontier in 1905 to safeguard her husband's legacy. It's Mina Hubbard, and she comes to three-dimensional life at the hand of area author Randall Silvis.

In "Heart So Hungry," released last fall, Silvis weaves together historical facts from journals by using fictional details.

The 258-page novel relays the story of Hubbard's devotion to her husband, Laddie, which drives her to finish his quest to chart the interior of Labrador. He died trying, and his partner, Dillon Wallace, was attempting to finish the journey and prove the late Hubbard's mistakes caused the disaster of the first trip.

When we last visited with Silvis, of Clarion County, in early 2001, his seventh book, "On Night's Shore," was just coming out. "Heart So Hungry" is his eighth.

The idea for this book came from work he did in the '90s which took him to the Arctic Circle in Alaska. After he returned, a friend told him the tragic story of the Leonidas Hubbard expedition.

"I researched it, read everything I could find on the subject, and I gradually came to realize that the aspect of the story I found most interesting was not Leonidas Hubbard's adventure, but Mina Hubbard's adventure. And that story, it seemed to me, had never been adequately written," Silvis said.

"Labrador is very similar in climate and topography to northernmost Alaska, around the Arctic Circle," Silvis went on, explaining how his travel experiences contributed to writing the book.

"Since I had spent several weeks there while writing for the Discovery Channel - hiking through the backcountry, flying around with a bush pilot, and so forth - I had swatted more than my share of mosquitoes and black flies. I can still remember the way the black flies swarmed toward my mouth with every bite of freeze-dried lasagna. So I brought my own experiences in the backcountry to bear when writing "Heart So Hungry."

He said the reviews have been excellent and Toronto's major newspaper, The Globe & Mail, named "Heart So Hungry" as one of the best 100 books of 2004.The U.S. hardcover edition and a Vintage Canada paperback edition will be published later this year, he said. The original was published by Random House/Knopf Canada.In December, Leisure Books released Silvis' "Doubly Dead," a slightly re-edited version of his "Disquiet Heart," which followed poet Edgar Allen Poe, the hero of "On Night's Shore.""Poe has always intrigued me - the driven artist, the perfectionist with a streak of contrariness," Silvis said.The second book brings Poe's young friend, Augie Dubbins, more to the forefront."Augie, now 17, soon became the more interesting character for me. He had his own hunger and drive, his own haunting past. When I focused on Augie, the story became fresh for me and I rediscovered my enthusiasm for writing it," Silvis said."At the end of that story, though, there have been several horrendous events, and though the reader knows that Poe will soon die in Baltimore, Augie is still a young man with the fullness of his life ahead of him. This, I think, makes the second Poe novel a more hopeful and less tragic book than the first."Vickie White of Butler, as a member of the Reading Club of Butler, has arranged for Silvis to come and speak to their group. "He was a wonderful speaker and talked about writing and why he writes and how he got started," White recalled. "It was interesting for us as readers to hear the perspective of a writer."Coming this spring, Omnidawn Books will launch their new line of fabulist fiction with Silvis' "In a Town Called Mundomuerto," about a Mexican fishing village where superstition, jealousy and hysteria collide.

Right now Silvis is working on a novel about the Biblical Cain and his wife, "drawing from Jewish and Muslim folk tales, Gnostic and other pre-Biblical texts," he said.Many of his tales would seem to translate well to the big screen. In fact, his first mystery, "An Occasional Hell," was made into a movie starring Tom Berenger. Other books have been optioned as well, he said. And a couple of filmmakers have contacted him already about acquiring the film rights to "Heart So Hungry.""In addition, one of my original screenplays is currently in development with two Hollywood producers and a director. A second script, 'The Algerian,' was awarded a screenwriting fellowship grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts last year, and was previously selected as the grand prize winner of the Screenwriting Showcase Awards," he said."Eventually, if I can put together some serious investors, I would like to start an independent production company to make high-quality independent movies far from the Hollywood madness."Silvis has received many literary awards including the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three National Playwrights Showcase Awards and a 2004 Screenwriting Fellowship Award from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and their two sons.