When Lopez native Todd Foley started writing his novel two years ago, he decided his main character should be admirable, but when he put pen to paper the character evolved into someone far more human with good and bad traits.

“He became a very frustrating friend who I desperately wanted to see happy and at peace,” Foley said. “I kept rooting for him, though, because I wanted him to get past his flaws and become the hero of the story, which may or may not happen; I’ll let the reader decide that.”

Foley’s debut novel “Eastbound Sailing” tells the story of Aiden Lawrence and his journey to his late father’s cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest. During the trip he meets an old-soul store cashier, a free-spirited hippie and a nihilistic carpenter who drastically shape his path. Aiden seeks to find redemption or what Foley calls “a pursuit that forces him backwards before letting him rest.”

Foley, who graduated from Lopez Island High School in 2005, said the book is inspired by Lopez’s culture and geography, but decided to base the story around the fictional island ‘Cielo’ to reflect the general feel of the San Juan and Gulf Islands.

The characters in the novel are also fictitious because Foley felt otherwise they would become exact replications of actual people.

“That wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing, but I wanted the characters to represent ideas rather than friends or acquaintances,” he said.

The three characters that Aiden meets along the way represent qualities that Aiden lacks and desperately needs, Foley added.

The cashier possesses wisdom, the hippie possesses freedom and the carpenter possesses strength.

The novel not only reflects what Foley gleaned from his time on Lopez, but also from his own personality.

“Life is messy and at times seems hopeless, regardless if we hold to a particular belief system. My faith points me toward the hope that everything will one day be reconciled back to how it was supposed to be, where broken relationships are restored,” Foley said. “Aiden is on that journey, and it’s my intention that readers will see some hope in his seemingly hopeless situation.”

Foley has a bachelor of arts in communications from Trinity Western University, where he also worked as an assistant news editor at the student newspaper and completed a journalism internship with a major daily paper in Ottawa, Ontario. He has since worked in the nonprofit sector as a communications coordinator and now works as a full-time editor at a national organization in British Columbia.