A Turn of Light (113 page)

The Making of Marrowdell

A TURN OF
LIGHT
takes place in a world of my imagining, but that imagining took its inspiration from a particular period and place in history. I was fascinated by the situation faced by the first European settlers in north-central Ontario. They arrived, many having spent their lives in cities such as London or Paris, hoping for a new and better life. Families climbed from carts and wagons at roads’ end to face a daunting landscape of lakes, rock, and trees. Vast and harsh. Unforgiving and unforgettable. We call it the “land between,” and nothing they’d experienced could have prepared them for it. But they not only endured, they thrived.

Today, you can drive the roads these settlers used, from Ottawa to Renfrew, through the Haliburton Highlands, and, if you keep going, you’ll get to our house. Along the way, you’ll pass what they left behind. Little villages named after battles in another hemisphere, or favored pets. The remnants of cabins made from logs bigger than any tree in sight. Lilacs where the privies had been, for flowers smell better, don’t they? Most of all, the massive barns, older than this country, some in use, others vanishing within new forests.

And in every village, down by the water, you’ll find a mill—or its memory. For the early settlers didn’t stay to their cabins or little farms. They built, having brought more than themselves and their belongings. They brought knowledge and skill. While blizzards howled, they wrote letters home and painted by lamplight. They raised children, to bury too many. On fine summer days, they put aside work to canoe the peerless lakes and learn the names of wildflowers, because this land had captured their hearts.

I’d had the notion for this story for a very long time, but hadn’t a clue where to set it, only that I wanted something special, with capable people who were out of their element. Then, one fall afternoon, we were driving home along the old road with its modern numbers. Mist was pooling in the valleys and the light had that quality my husband the photographer so loves, that makes anything seem possible.

We passed one of the long-abandoned pioneer barns just as the sun found it, burnishing the wood, spreading gold down the slope below, to lose itself in a forest like the edge of night.

And Marrowdell was born.

We Can Help With That

I
set off, quite literally, to learn as much as I could about the people who would have lived then and there; not to recreate an historically accurate village, but to come close enough to make my settlement a rich and workable one. What I knew about pioneers could fit in a thimble. There’d been that month in grade 5, a smattering from a Canadian history class in high school, and the odd bits one gleans about a place by being curious. I won’t get into the joyous months of research that ensued or how many books I read. What matters here? The people who’ve helped me breathe life into Marrowdell, for I didn’t do it alone.

I love water and human ingenuity; no surprise, then, that I fell in love with mills. I happily climbed in and through all the derelict gristmills I could locate, then found a true gem. Watson’s Mill, Manotick, is an operational gristmill on the Rideau River. While it’s far grander than the one in Marrowdell (though what I imagine Radd Nalynn would have owned in Avyo) the principles are the same. I was privileged to interview Master Miller Cam Trueman, not once, but twice. Cam answered my eager questions, volunteered fascinating details I couldn’t have found any other way, and even ran the mill just for me. While Roger documented the visual, I scribbled madly in my notebook. To top it off, just before publication, Cam very kindly read over the mill scenes from
Turn.
While any errors in fact and leaps of fantasy

are mine, I was thrilled beyond words to have his support and approval. Thank you, Cam and Watson’s Mill.

Early on, I discovered I had only to mention I was researching early settlements and farm life to be offered help. My thanks to Judi and Andy Williams for lending me two books that were of immense help:
A History of Domestic Space: Privacy and the Canadian Home
(1999) by W. Peter Ward, UBC Press and
Sisters in the Wilderness—The Lives of Susanne Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill
(1999) by Charlotte Gray, Penguin Books Canada. The latter led me to the books of Susanne Moodie and her sister, as well as their letters.

Also, I must thank Roger’s hockey buds. Several of these fine gentlemen are farmers. When I asked them what to call that little window thing in the top of a barn—a term I couldn’t find in the otherwise excellent
Looking For Old Ontario: Two Centuries of Landscape Change
(1999) by Thomas F. McIlwraith UTP—I was faced with such an earnest combination of goodwill and growing perplexity I felt guilty. (It turns out there’s actually no name for it that everyone uses and we won’t get into the “diamond cut-out” issue at all.) Nothing would do but I be taken to the real thing. Thank you, Jim and Nancy Partridge, for letting me wander through your magnificent barn, and thank you, John and Nancy Nicoll, for the loan of your very helpful book.

I must also thank Ron Gostlin, Manager of Muskoka Heritage Place, Town of Huntsville. Ron unlocked the gates pre-season so I could step back through time. (The wonderful things people do for writers!) It wasn’t until I walked around the log buildings and barns that I came to appreciate what I’d read of how people

lived inside them. Small, yes, but strongly built. Bright, too, so long as the sun was up, with generous windows. Compact by necessity, but well-organized.

My measurements from the pioneer village, coupled with research into the farming and acreage needed to support a settlement like Marrowdell, determined the scale and contents of my model landscape. It took me a month to build and was worth every minute, allowing me to immerse myself not only in fantasy, but place.

Sometimes, it’s getting the small details right that most please an author. Playing with my grandfather’s tools. How to make lye—or beer! Learning the smell of whey. Scourge’s itchy fall shed owes its veracity to the mighty Duncan and Doranna Durgin. The consequence of wandering cattle to a pumpkin patch? Thanks, Lydia Cook! And I owe the names of Rhoth’s rivers to Janet, Willem, Leora, and Mila Chase.

I’ve been changed by what I’ve learned of the lives, loves, and homes of those first settlers. Those familiar with Ontario may notice some unexpectedly familiar names in this book. As my small tribute to the source of my inspiration, most of my character names came from the pioneer settlements and roads in this area, and the families who built them. Anten and Ansnor. Uhthoff and Emms. Devins, Horst, and Zehr. More. By all means look them up.

May their history come to life for you, as it did for me.

We’d Like to Invite You . . .

I love using my next book to formally thank those who’ve had me as a guest at their conventions the preceding year. This time? Years. And exceptional ones at that. I must mention as many people as I can (and production allows). If you skip this section, you’ll miss fabulous folks. I fear, despite my notes and feverish rereading of emails (tricky, through the corpses of three hard drives), I’ll miss more than a few myself. If you know you belong in this list, do me yet another kindness and write yourself in for me.

For hosts past have become the enduring, beloved friends of the present, and I can never thank you enough for that.

Conscription 2009, Auckland, New Zealand: Kevin Maclean, Jan Butterworth, Simon Litten, Stephen Litten, Maree “Salmon” Pavletich, Barbara and Peter Clendon, Sally McLennan, Malcolm Fletcher, Lorain Clark, Alan Parker, Teemu Leeisti, Norman Cates, Lynelle Howell, Nalini Singh, Helen Lowe, the fabulous writers who attended my workshop (SpecFicNZ), Peter and Anne Hamilton, Mike Hansen, Lisa Baird, Russell Kirkpatrick, Joffrey Horler, Andrew Robins, Glenn Younger, and Louise McCully.

Other New Zealand Hosts: Paul Brown of the Manukau (now Auckland) Library. Lyn McConchie (and friends) of Farside Farm. Lance Lones and Henri and Steve Reed of Wellington.

Conjecture 2009, Adelaide, Australia: Damien Warman, Juliette Woods, Adam & Ruth Jenkins, Sean Williams, Judy Downs (Dymocks Books), Alison Barton (and son Joshua) who showed us the Warrawong Sanctuary and platypus, Helen Merrick, Cheryl Morgan, Justin Ackroyd, Ewart Shaw (Radio Adelaide), Catherine and Steve Scholz, Michal Dutkiewicz, and Bill Wright.

While we were Down Under, Karina Sumner-Smith looked after the homestead and my Poppa. Thanks are inadequate. We’re forever grateful.

And then there was Worldcon . . .

Anticipation, 2009, Montreal, Canada: Terry Fong, René Walling, Eugene Heller, Robbie Bourget, Byron Connell, Andrew Gurudata, Sylvain St-Pierre, Lance Sibley, James E. Gunn, Christine Mak, Brian Maged, Dave Anderson, Bruce Farr, Ian Stockdale, Jim Mann, Ruth Leibig, Randy Smith, “Taz,” Ruth Hansen, Linda Ross-Mansfield, John Maizels and Alexandre Simone and all the others who wore black with such exceptional skill (aka the Hugo and Masquerade Video/Tech Crews), masquerade green room staff, and my dapper and eloquent co-hosts: Jean-Pierre Normand, Yves Meynard, and Sébastien Mineau. And the hordes (I kid you not, there were hordes) of hard-working folks who made this a memorable and wonderful experience.

At this point, I confess none of the above would have happened (and I’d likely have left my head in a box at LAX), but for the astonishing competence and calm of one person, Ruth Stuart, Liaison Extraordinaire. Three cheers!!!

Since and before then: Thank you to the concom of Polaris, Ad Astra, and SFContario for your ongoing enthusiasm and support. You are treasures. Thank you, CanCon, for letting me be your Viral GOH. Rick Wilber? It was an honor to participate in your Women Who Write SF conference at USF. Last, and not at all least (nor really in any order by this point), thank you KeyCon, for a wonderful event and for bringing my beloved editor to Canada as GOH.

I’m done. Not because there aren’t more of you to thank, or because I’ve run out of kindnesses to acknowledge, but because in remembering you, I’m truly overwhelmed. I love you guys. And I won’t forget.

The More Usual Acknowledgments

First of all, I want to thank you, my readers and friends (and Roger’s hockey buds), for your patience. When all this started, none of us—especially me—expected
A Turn of Light
would take almost four times as long to write as any of my previous books. I thought I’d need an extra few months, fantasy being something new, but years? Suffice to say I’m extremely grateful for the understanding of those of you who knew I was still alive (there was mail) and even more how those who really really REALLY wanted me to write Esen or Sira next instead (there was, as I mentioned, mail) supported my choice. You all deserve house toads.

Among those who had to be exceptionally patient? David “Digger” James, who won the bid at a charity auction to give names to an entire family in Marrowdell an embarrassingly long time ago. Thank you, David! When he gave me his name and that of four women, I knew the result would be interesting. And it was. Meet the Treff household: “Davi” (David Trefor James), “Lorra” (Lorraine Vivian James), “Wen” (Gwen Veronica James), “Cynd” (Cindy Hodge), and “Frann” (Fran Quesnel). I’m honored to include your names in my story and hope you love the characters who bear them as much as I do. (And don’t mind the strange bits I made up.)

There are three other names in Marrowdell from the real world. “Alyssa” was Alyssa Donovan’s birthday present via another auction. How fun is that? Happy belated birthday! “Palma Anan” was in celebration of our dear friend Shannan Palma’s doctorate. Finally, I owe “Hettie” and her smile to the incomparable Henri Reed of New Zealand. (Made you blush, didn’t I?)

Spending so long, and so much of myself, on one project meant I relied more than usual on my friends, in person and online. Anne Bishop, thank you for all those postal cheer-ups. Kristen Britain and Janny Wurts, thanks for believing I could do that fantasy epic stuff. To the awesome John Howe and incredible Ed Greenwood, thank you for making me cry for the best of reasons. Jana, Ruth, Jihane, Janet, and Chris? Fun ride, wasn’t it? I hope you enjoy the result. Kristine Smith, I owe you more than you`ll ever know. Thanks for sharing the dark as well as the light. Onward, in truth!

As for the rest? To thank you here is impossible. Instead, let me say this, to each and every one, with hugs to follow. YOU ROCK!

When it came to waiting for
Turn,
the one person I worried most about was the one person who knew exactly how long it would take, my editor-dear, Sheila Gilbert. Sheila, being both wise and kind, never burst my endless “oh, I’ll be finished soon” bubbles. Instead, she encouraged me along my wild and wacky genre-shift, surer than I something good would come of it. Such trust. Nothing could have meant more. Thank you, Sheila, for letting me indulge in whimsy. For making toad jokes. For believing in me when I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have dared this leap without you.

I would like to thank Matt Stawicki for his beautiful cover art, Kenneth May for saying such nice things about my first-ever map, and G-Force Design, Dora Mak, Paula Greenberg, and Jackson Typesetting for the incredible quality of this book. Josh, you’re my hero. Marsha Jones? You might be free of questions about contracts and e-pirates, but not of me. Thank you for your help, friendship, and your kindness to my Poppa.

Speaking of family . . .

Thank you, Scott, for your help developing the Ansnan culture and names. And for making us so proud and happy, always. Thank you, Steph, for your encouragement all along. We’re proud of you too. Poppa, thank you for listening to, well, everything.

Roger? Whenever I looked too far ahead and doubted, because every so often I did, you’d cue Wisp’s theme on the big speakers, pour me a glass of my favorite wine, and say: “You’re having fun writing this. Nothing else matters.” For that, even more than your wonderful photographs that brought Marrowdell to life for me and for cheerfully missing holidays and doing extra so I could keep writing, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Always.

This book started with someone. It’s fitting it end with that person too. A few years ago our daughter, Jennifer Lynn, told me she’d enjoy having her name used for a character in one of my books. I said I would, but only if she read “her” story before anyone else. What began as a private mother/daughter notion grew to a true collaboration. Jennifer read every scene, most of them multiple times. She gave me feedback on plot, character, and pacing. (For Xmas, she gave me the stupendous house toad you see in my photo.) We consulted on cover sketches and copy, on every detail imaginable. When Jennifer reached the final page of
A Turn of Light
while sitting in an outdoor café in Thailand, she stopped a rather mystified pair of tourists to take her picture as she read. Why? To send to me, then and there, so I could share the moment.

Jennifer? It’s been a privilege sharing it all. There was always to be a happy ending. Because of you, every word of this story has been filled with joy.

However Far We Are Apart,

Keep Us Close.