The Fire in Fiction (14 page)

Barbara Delinsky's
Lake News
(1999) is another story of returning to a summer home for healing. In this case, the place is Lake Henry in New Hampshire. Two wounded protagonists come back: Lounge singer Lily Blake, who has been devastated by the publicity surrounding an untrue accusation of an affair with a high church official, and John Kipling, a burned-out Boston journalist. Lily hates reporters; John is now running the local newspaper. See the conflict coming?

As
Lake News
opens, John Kipling has been back in Lake Henry for several years. Early one autumn morning before work, John paddles a canoe out on the lake to visit a family of loons that will soon start their winter journey south.

Like everything else at the lake, dawn arrived in its own good time. The flat black of night slowly deepened to a midnight blue that lightened in lazy steps, gradually giving form to the spike of a tree, the eave of a cottage, the tongue of a weathered wood dock—and that was on a clear day. On this day, fog slowed the process of delineation, reducing the lake to a pool of milky glass and the shoreline to a hazy wash of orange, gold, and green where, normally, vibrant fall colors would be. A glimpse of cranberry or navy marked a lakefront home, but details were lost in the mist. Likewise the separation of reflection and shore. The effect, with the air quiet and still, was that of a protective cocoon.

It was a special moment. The only thing John Kipling would change about it was the cold. He wasn't ready for summer to end, but despite his wishes, the days were noticeably shorter than they had been two months before. The sun set sooner and rose later, and the chill of the night lingered. He felt it. His loons felt it. The foursome he watched, two adults and their young, would remain on the lake for another five weeks, but they were growing

restless, looking to the sky lately in ways that had less to do with predators than with thoughts of migration.

In time, the loon closest to him stretched his neck forward and issued a long, low wail. The sound wasn't unlike the cry of a coyote, but John would never confuse the two. The loon's wail was at the same time more elemental and more delicate.

This one was the start of a dialogue, one adult calling the other in a succession of haunting sounds that brought the distant bird gliding closer. Even when they were ten feet apart, they continued to speak, with their beaks nearly shut and their elongated throats swelling around the sound.

Goose bumps rose on his skin. This was why he had returned to the lake—why, after swearing off New Hampshire at fifteen, he had reversed himself at forty. Some said he'd done it for the job, others that he'd done it for his father, but the roundabout truth had to do with these birds. They signified something primal and wild, but simple, straightforward, and safe.

I urge you to read that passage again. It is impressive first of all because Delinsky begins her novel with a big no-no of openings: a description of the scenery. How does she get away with that when less experienced writers would be slapped down by their critique groups? Delinsky's opening is beautifully written, but also notice the subtle tension with which she infuses her images:

Like everything else at the lake, dawn arrived in its own good time.

Analyze that line. It conveys a feeling of the natural rhythm of the lake, yet there is also a note of apprehension, almost impatience, introduced with the phrase "in its own good time." Like there is any other time frame? Well, yes. John lives at a faster pace than the lake itself. Man and nature are at odds. Quicker than our brains can grasp the discord, we're subconsciously ill at ease. We speed ahead to the next line looking, faintly, for relief.

Look at how Delinsky continues to compile tension:

He wasn't ready for summer to end ...

He felt it. His loons felt it. ... they were growing restless, looking to the sky ... with thoughts of migration.

This was why he had returned to the lake ... [why] he had reversed himself at forty ...

Reversed himself at forty? Why exactly? After the tiniest of pauses, Delinsky tells us. Question and answer. Tension raised and relieved without us even being aware of it. Micro-tension (see chapter eight) is the secret behind page-turning fiction, and Delinsky uses it here to make a no-no opening riveting.

Next, take a look at the scenery itself. Is it generic? It would be except that Delinsky filters it through a morning fog, not quite letting us see the usual lakeside sights of autumn leaves, dock, or house but merely a hint of their colors. How would you sum up the mood of a lake on a foggy morning? Delinsky dubs it a "protective cocoon."

No sooner has she presented us with some unusual visuals than Delinsky immediately introduces feelings:

It was a special moment. The only thing John Kipling would change about it was the cold. He wasn't ready for summer to end ...

Now, this regret over the passing of summer is nothing out of the ordinary. If that were the only emotion in the passage, it would be unremarkable. Delinsky, however, does not leave it at that. Have still another look at that last paragraph:

Goose bumps rose on his skin. This was why he had returned to the lake—why, after swearing off New Hampshire at fifteen, he had reversed himself at forty. Some
said he'd done it for the job, others that he's done it for his father, but the roundabout truth had to do with these birds. They signified something primal and wild, but simple, straightforward, and safe.

Look at how much we learn about John Kipling in these few lines: he once hated the lake but came back at forty, there's a cloud in his past, plus he owed something to his father. No wonder John likes the loons. Compared to all that messy stuff the loons are simple. He longs for what is uncomplicated. Family, flight, fog, cold, longing, and contentment just out of reach ... What is Delinsky up to here? Is she setting the scene? Yes, but more than that she is building a metaphor for her protagonist's precarious inner state.

What grabs you more in Delinsky's passage, the specific images or the strong emotions? For me, the author makes both work together. The elements are not cobbled together but instead form a unity of man and nature, lake and loneliness, longing and peace. Scenery openings generally have me reaching for the next book on my pile, but in
Lake News
Delinsky rapidly brings the world of the story alive.

MEASURING CHANGE OVER TIME

There are other ways to bring setting alive. One of them is to measure the change in a place over time. Of course, most places don't change much—only the people observing them do.

Kristin Hannah's
On Mystic Lake
(1999) is yet another heading-home-to-heal novel. Once more the lake in question is on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, which I figure will soon have a lock on ever-so-special childhood places. In this case, however, the wounded heroine of the story, Annie Colwater, is a native of the suburbs of Los Angeles; indeed, the middle of the novel is framed by two sequences set there.

In the first part of the novel, Annie, immediately after her seventeen-year-old daughter's departure for a semester in Europe, is devastated to learn that her husband wants a divorce. Don't be shocked, but he has taken up with a younger woman at the office. It's

a humdrum set up, yet Hannah deftly uses the very ordinariness of Annie's world as a starting point for building tension. In this passage near the novel's beginning, she details springtime in L.A.:

It was March, the doldrums of the year, still and quiet and gray, but the wind had already begun to warm, bringing with it the promise of spring. Trees that only last week had been naked and brittle seemed to have grown six inches over the span of a single, moonless night, and sometimes, if the sunlight hit a limb just so, you could see the red bud of new life stirring at the tips of the crackly brown bark. Any day, the hills behind Malibu would blossom, and for a few short weeks this would be the prettiest place on Earth.

Like the plants and animals, the children of Southern California sensed the coming of the sun. They had begun to dream of ice cream and popsicles and last year's cutoffs. Even determined city dwellers, who lived in glass and concrete high-rises in places with pretentious names like Century City, found themselves veering into the nursery aisles of their local supermarkets. Small, potted geraniums began appearing in the metal shopping carts, alongside the sundried tomatoes and the bottles of Evian water.

For nineteen years, Annie Colwater had awaited spring with the breathless anticipation of a young girl at her first dance. She ordered bulbs from distant lands and shopped for hand-painted ceramic pots to hold her favorite annuals.

But now, all she felt was dread, and a vague, formless panic. ... what did a mother do when her only child left home?

Shows you how much I know. L.A. always feels pretty much the same to me; but then again, I grew up in New England. Who knew that the change of seasons could be measured by visions of Popsicles

and cutoffs? By showing me the minute seasonal changes that a SoCal native would notice, Hannah nails spring as seen by Annie Colwater. But that's not all. This spring, Annie's usual "breathless anticipation" is replaced by dread. The contrast is jarring—in a good way.

In the middle of
On Mystic Lake,
Annie heads home to Mystic Lake, her gruff-but-wise father, and a rendezvous with an old almost-flame, now a local police officer, Nick Delacroix. Nick has grown bitter, distant, and boozy due to the suicide of his manic-depressive wife, Kathy, the third leg of their teenage triumvirate. His morose mood is especially damaging to his six-year-old daughter, Izzy. Izzy has stopped talking, has been suspended from school, and wears black gloves because her fingers are disappearing one by one, or so she thinks. She eats and dresses with two fingers of her right hand, the only two digits that are left.

At Nick's request, Annie begins to babysit Izzy while he's at work, and slowly Izzy begins to come around. (The moment when she can again see her lost fingers is one of the novel's many tear-jerking high moments.) Harder to rehabilitate is Nick. His alcoholism grows worse and eventually he bottoms out. As painful as his decline is, worse still is the news that Annie is pregnant at forty, and not by Nick.

When Annie's remorseful husband himself shows up, dumped by the office hottie, and shortly before their daughter is due to return from Europe, Annie is persuaded to return to L.A. to honor her vows, have their baby, and give their marriage a second chance.

And so Annie returns to L.A. Readers at this point probably are, as I was, screaming,
Don't go!
But Hannah is too good a storyteller to make Annie's choices easy. The wayward husband makes a real effort. Life is comfortable and familiar. Even L.A. itself creates opportunities for healing. In this passage late in the novel, Hannah again paints a change of seasons in Southern California, this time the turning to autumn:

Autumn brought color back to Southern California. Brown grass began to turn green. The gray air, swept clean by September breezes, regained its springtime

blue. The local radio stations started an endless stream of football chatter. The distant whine of leaf blowers filled the air.

It was the season of sharp, sudden changes: days of bright lemon heat followed by cold, starlit nights. Sleeveless summer shirts were packed away in boxes and replaced by crew-neck sweaters. The birds began one by one to disappear, leaving their nests untended. To the Californians, who spent most of their days in clothes as thin as tissue and smaller than washrags, it began to feel cold. They shivered as the wind kicked up, plucking the last dying red leaves from the trees along the road. Sometimes whole minutes went by without a single car turning toward the beach. The crossroads were empty of tourists, and only the stoutest of spirit ventured into the cool Pacific Ocean at this time of year. The stream of surfers at the state beach had dwindled to a few hardy souls a day.

It was time now to let go. But how did you do that, really? Annie had spent seventeen years trying to protect her daughter from the world, and now all of that protection lay in the love she'd given Natalie, in the words she'd used in their talks, and in the examples she'd provided.

Leaf blowers, crew-neck sweaters, empty roads heading to the beach . Hannah uses these details to delineate the change in her protagonist's perception of a place. There is emotion, as well; specifically, Annie's inadequacy in knowing how to protect her now nearly grown daughter and Annie's inability to let go, even now as the turning season demands it.

These two passages on either end of Hannah's novel are one of the ways in which she creates a sense of dynamic movement—movement that doesn't depend on plot. By measuring change by minute degrees she not only heightens the tension in Annie's dilemma but also amplifies the world of the story in ways that make it inseparable from her heroine.

Is the setting a character in
On Mystic Lake,
or is it the character of Annie Colwater whose perceptions make L.A. feel alive? I'd say it's the storytelling skill of Kristin Hannah that makes the question moot. Character and setting meld into one.

HISTORY IS PERSONAL

Historical novelists think a lot about what makes the period of their novels different than ours. They research it endlessly. Indeed, many historical novelists say that is their favorite part of the process. When the research is done and writing begins, though, how specifically do they create a sense of the times on the page?
With details
is the common answer, but which details, exactly, and how many of them?