The Secret History of My Hometown reinvents the history of Cranbrook, British Columbia, through an alternative, magical realist lens. What if, when the Sells Floto Circus lost six elephants into the Cranbrook wilderness in 1926, a young, lovesick Ernest Hemingway came to hunt the missing pachyderms? What if Leon Trotsky retreated not to Mexico City, but to Cranbrook while it was embroiled in labour unrest during the Depression? What if, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Chinese family's grocery in Cranbrook depended on the intervention of the legendary Monkey King? By drawing on historically attested events such as the real-life Cranbrook elephant hunt or worries over nuclear war in the 1980s and adding a counterfactual twist, The Secret History of My Hometown presents the surprising and deep history of a small town in a new light. Boden's characters -- a jazz-loving Nazi hunter, a talking dog, a young girl helping in her parents' grocery store -- are drawn with nuance and sympathy, providing a diverse array of original voices that add humour and personality to Boden's imagined history. The result is a powerful collection of stories that demonstrate the deep, often unremembered history of a small town and Boden's affection for its life and history.