Janette Oke

Janette Oke (born February 18, 1935, in Champion, Alberta, as Janette Steeves) is a Canadian author widely credited with founding the modern inspirational prairie-romance genre. A graduate of Mountain View Bible College in Didsbury, Alberta, where she met her husband Edward, she raised four children before publishing her debut novel, Love Comes Softly, in 1979. That book launched an eight-volume series of the same name and set the pattern she returned to across dozens of subsequent books: unhurried frontier and pioneer settings, quietly devout characters, and courtships that unfold alongside the practical work of homesteading a new community.

Oke has published more than 80 novels and is credited with helping create the Christian romance category as a commercial genre in North American publishing. Several of her series, including Love Comes Softly and Canadian West (published on screen as When Calls the Heart), were adapted for television. In later years she partnered with other writers to extend story-worlds she originated: novelist T. Davis Bunn co-wrote the Song of Acadia and Acts of Faith series with her, while her daughter, Laurel Oke Logan, co-wrote the Return to the Canadian West and When Hope Calls series, both continuations of the original Canadian West world. Oke lives in Alberta, Canada.