Heather has published more than a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, and has contributed to most of Canada's leading magazines. Her first novel, Willie: A Romance, won the Books in Canada prize for best first novel and the Canadian Authors' Association Fiction Prize for 1983; Driving Force: the
McLaughlin Family and the Age of the Car won the National Business Book Award in 1995. She is a contributor to the Beaver magazine. Heather is an active member of Canadian writers' organizations. In 1998, the University of Manitoba recognized her contribution by awarding her an honorary doctor of laws degree.

An Ontario resident since 1973, Heather lives in King City with her husband, Andrew Marshall.

"As lifelong summer campers in the Lake of the Woods watershed, writing this book was a labour of love. And as Canadians most familiar with the lake's northern shores, it was an eye-opener for us to travel up the Rainy River, part of the boundary between Canada and the United States, and through Minnesota to the Northwest Angle. Lake of the Woods is the heart of the continent; for 8,000 years before railroads began to crisscross North America, it was the hub of a network of rivers, lakes and trails that took Aboriginal people, fur traders and explorers from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico. Their burial mounds, campsites, rock carvings and paintings and written accounts of their adventures make the lake's unique history rich and varied." (Jan. '04)