Carey Jane Clark

Friday Fiction Fix: A Peek Inside

February 10, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

When I wrote After the Snow Falls, a good portion of the people and locations were from my own imagination, but I did take a trip one year around Christmastime to an area in Quebec close to where my husband grew up. It was this place that became the inspiration for the fictional town of Point-du-Fleuve (in the real region of Pontiac) where Celia and her husband Jeff built their dream home, and where part of the story occurs.

I thought it would be fun to share a few photos of that area so you can what’s so inspiring about this beautiful region.

While Jeff and Celia live on a rural property, they live outside a small town much like this one:

Here is the town church, the kind of church where Father LaFontaine was the parish priest:

When Celia and her husband are driving back and forth to Toronto, they would travel in and out of their town on roads like this:

The railroad no longer runs through this area. In fact, in After the Snow Falls, Celia and Sarah ride bikes down the old rail trail. This is a picture from the railroad’s early days when a working station functioned in the town:

Part of the appeal of the area to me is the water, in some places fierce, in others, beautifully calm.

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into the inspiration behind my story. Some readers are beginning to leave comments at the website for After the Snow Falls. If you enjoyed the read, don’t forget to leave your comments too. I love to connect with readers.

So much to do…So much grace in the process

February 6, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

{Don’t miss the latest review of After the Snow Falls at Mom Loves 2 Read.}

I am counting my gifts to one thousand along with the folks at Ann Voskamp’s blog (author of One Thousand Gifts). Thanks for joining me.

Forgive me if while I count my blessings this week it looks more like a checked-off to-do list. There is no shortage of things to be done these days and the first gift I am thankful for is:

60. More checkmarks on my to-do list.
61. After unpacking and repacking, I managed to fit quite a few more things in THE BINS for THE MOVE.
62. I was able to restore some level of order with most of the items that need sorting gone through and all of the bins safely tucked away in a closet where people aren’t tripping over them
63. JavaMan (gotta love him) and I finished cleaning the house we just moved out of
64. Everyone is safely ensconced at Grandma’s awaiting THE MOVE
65. We have tentative flight dates! This is one of THE biggest blessings of the week. Can’t express how excited we are. We will be leaving in [sct date=”3/13/2012 20:51″ align=”none” size=”1″]
66. After all the chaos was said and done, I had a chance to really connect with my kids this week in some rewarding family time. We played games together and read together. Reading together is such good therapy! I’m so thankful for good books and times to enjoy them with my children.
67. Speaking of good books I enjoy with my children, I participated in last month’s Books that Made me Love Reading Challenge with Emlyn Chand, and yesterday found out I won the prize basket as a result!
68. It’s a gift how blessed I was feeling even before winning the prize simply as a result of the stroll down memory lane with the books I loved from childhood and the chance to share them with my kids.
69. I had a chance to be alone with my youngest for a couple of hours Sunday afternoon: a rare gift indeed. We had a tea party and played her favorite game.
70. I have a wonderful husband who observes me under stress and knows I need his patience. He is more than gracious.
71. Another unexpected blessing this week: I received an email with comments from a reader–a man–who said my book wasn’t his normal fare, but he was glad he read it. He proceeded to tell me how the book touched him. I was blown away, and so humbled.
72. I received my new Mac, and I’m working my way through updates and software and finding programs similar to what I’ve become accustomed to on the PC and feeling so very blessed and grateful.
73. Received another email from a fellow author that was very encouraging.
74. I took a break from my blogging over the weekend to actually breathe and enjoy life, and felt (almost) no guilt about it.
75. We applied for passports, finally. Our old ones were still valid, but didn’t have enough pages left for all the visas and stamps, and would run out before we plan to come back to Canada (The bonus? My passport picture for the new passport looks A LOT better than the old one.)
76. I’ve been so excited about my new novel projects and the ideas have been flowing. Yay! I love this stage. I love all the stages.
77. Had a wonderful (last) visit with some great friends this week.
78. So grateful for the seasons in our lives. My kids and I sat down a couple of weeks ago to list all the wonderful things we were blessed to experience while we’ve been home in Canada–from riding on a combine in Saskatchewan to a road trip to Texas to living in rural Ontario. We were reluctant to come home in the first place, but it has been a blessing after all.
79. We had the opportunity to see the movie Courageous for the second time over the weekend (made me cry just as much or more than the first time). It made me grateful all over again for the wonderful man I married: a good husband and a good father to his children.

Relinquishing Control

February 4, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

I have a recurring dream. I had it again last night. In this particular version of it, our family was driving north. I looked around and suddenly became aware of the fact that we were headed near my inlaws’ home. I had the sense, somehow, that the family was along for the ride while my husband was doing business in the area.

I suddenly came up with the idea that after we dropped my husband off (where, I don’t know) that we should continue on to my inlaws’ and drop in for a surprise visit. I no sooner had this brainwave than I received a call from my own mother (at whose house we are currently staying) who announced that we should come back to her place to eat because she had prepared fruit for us.

I began to kick myself, “Why on earth didn’t I realize this was where we were headed so I could let my mom know there was no need to prepare a meal?” “How could I gracefully bow out of the fruit meal without upsetting my mother?” (Isn’t it great how logical and rational this all is?)

Suddenly, an even greater concern gripped me. I realized the car had no driver. I was in the back seat, and we were approaching an intersection.

Then I woke up.

The me-in-the-backseat-car-has-no-driver part is the part that recurs for me. Seriously, I have this dream a lot. The best thing I could conclude when I woke up, is I’m probably trying to work out some of the lack of control I have over several major aspects of my life right now.

Up until yesterday, because of some complications with figuring out the correct visas we need to apply for, and some fenagling we had to do to work around a national holiday and higher airfares, we didn’t even have flight dates.

But now we do.

JavaMan plans to go ahead of us to locate a suitable apartment and arrange for our things to be moved. The kids and I will follow three weeks later, in the hopes we have allowed him enough time to work out all the details so we have beds to sleep in and utensils to cook and eat with once we arrive.

This means the kids and I are leaving in: [sct date=”3/13/2012 12:18″ align=”none” size=”1″]

Hurray!!!

- Carey Clark

The Quarryman’s Wife by Mary DeMuth

February 3, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

When Mary DeMuth announced that she was putting the first novel she penned, The Quarryman’s Wife into print, I jumped at the chance to review it and interview her about it. I have loved Daisy Chain and A Slow Burn, and I was eager to read her first ever novel.

All month long, I have been putting our household into boxes. It’s been a challenge. A hundred times I’ve had to pick up one of my children’s homemade creations and put it in a pile to be recycled, given away or thrown in the trash. I’ve had to stare beloved toys in the face and box them up for someone else’s child. In the midst of the packing, there was chaos. Once or twice, it slipped my mind that dinner needed preparing.

In the midst of all of this, I read Mary’s book, intent on fulfilling my commitment to read and review it. But I just couldn’t get into it. I disagreed with her that it was more flowery than her current books, that she says are starker. To me, it seemed as though her more recent books are filled with more metaphor.

Every night, I read a little bit. Every day I homeschooled and packed. And packed some more.

I tried to put a finger on what was disturbing me about the book–why I wasn’t loving it like I ought to. The first chapter was riveting, certainly, and propelled the reader into the action, so that wasn’t it. It’s unlike the other books I’ve read, in that there is no mystery to solve here, save the mystery of how this family is going to survive against the odds.

The story is one of grief: Augusta Brinkworth has lost her husband. A quarry manager with a generous heart, in death he has left little behind for his family but debts and the hole of his absence. In the midst of the Depression, despite Augusta’s determination to hold the family together and maintain the house her children grew up in, everything is falling apart. Her sons seem to hate each other, one of her daughters grows daily more distant from her and the banker threatens foreclosure. In the face of the circumstances around her, Augusta withdraws. Physically and emotionally, she pulls away from her children, trapped in her own private grief.

I finally realized, halfway through the book that it was Augusta I didn’t like–not because she wasn’t likeable, but because Mary had drawn her grief so realistically, and her private struggle so truly. I was reacting against her withdrawal, just as her own children did. I identified with her grief on so many levels–personal griefs I have experienced in the last year, and now the quiet grief of saying goodbye to a life we have lived here, in order to move on to another.

As the story progressed, I found myself identifying more and more with each of the characters and making each one of them my friend. As Augusta becomes more self-aware, seeing what her paralyzing grief is doing to her family, I rejected her daughter’s assertions that she was “dead” just like her father, and hoped for her spirit to revive.

Through Augusta’s friendship with the Ukrainian immigrant Olya, Mary takes on tough questions about God and suffering. She tackles them head-on, not drawing the answers simply, but with clarity and beauty.

The climax and ending of the story was so satisfying and artistically rendered, it took me by surprise emotionally. I sat and bawled. And I cheered for Augusta and Olya and Meg and John-John. Even meddling old Aunt Bertie touched me in a surprising way.

In the end, I put this book down with reluctance, as I do every book that has touched me in a meaningful way. And although I see how Mary has matured as a writer, and see how her writing is perhaps more refined in later books, in some ways, this has become my favorite of her novels. It is a touching story of “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning.”

- Carey Clark

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