Fiction – Page 6

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.

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

Meet Mary DeMuth

January 27, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

Before we left for China, I discovered a great author, but it wasn’t until we returned home I was really able to seriously dig in to her books. She writes with courage. Her stories are fresh, deep and real. The more I’ve learned about writing fiction, the more discriminating I’ve become about what I read, but Mary’s books never disappoint.

After several of her titles published, Mary felt the itch to bring to publication the very first novel she penned. It’s called The Quarryman’s Wife. (I’ll review it here next week.)

Mary graciously agreed to be interviewed here at enCouragement. It’s an honor, as she definitely ranks as one of my favorite authors.

marydemuth — Mary DeMuth, author of The Quarryman's Wife

This novel is based on the story of your great-grandmother. Why did you choose to fictionalize it?

I couldn’t possibly have it be 100% true. This way I could take elements of her story and weave one that made for a little more drama.

Again, the story idea comes from your great-grandmother? How exactly are you related?

She was my father’s grandmother.

How much of the story is true and how much is fiction?

That’s really hard to say. The “truth” is sprinkled throughout the manuscript in historical details and old family stories. But the storyline is mostly my invention.

How was it that you were able to glean so much of your great-grandmother’s story?

I talked to her when I visited her in Ohio. I also had a lot of relatives who sent me information. I had video and audio tapes, and she wrote a lot of poetry which inspired me to make Augusta a poet.

Can you tell more about your relationship with her? What was it about her you most admired and why?

She loved Jesus. I so needed a matriarch like that in my life, so I absorbed her love like a sponge. I didn’t have a close, close relationship because I only visited her in the summer during my weeklong trip to Ohio. (I’m not from Ohio but I vacationed there with my father’s parents nearly every summer).

How did/does your family feel about this book?

I honestly don’t know. I wrote it almost a decade ago and shared it with them then. They liked it. But I haven’t heard recently what they thought.

You said that when you tried to have this novel published, editors said they weren’t interested in Depression-era fiction. How many publishing houses did you try?

It was my agent who shopped the book, not me. Probably 10-15 houses.

You’ve published several novels since then. How did you decide now was the right time for The Quarrymans Wife?

With the “invention” of ebooks, it seemed like an inexpensive way to finally realize the dream of seeing this book in print.

Why did you choose the self-publishing route?

It was an experiment, actually. I hadn’t tried much to re-interest publishers, so I thought I’d just try it on my own.

You made the decision not to edit your original effort, though you feel youve grown as a writer since then. How difficult was that decision? What finally convinced you to leave it as it is?

Well, after I sent the file to Amazon, I re-read it and found several errors. So I did go back and correct those. I had to stop myself from throwing the entire thing away and rewriting it. It truly is me as a new novelist. But if you’ve read my other fiction, it will be interesting for you to see my growth. I’m much less flowery.

How is this book different from your other books?

It’s historical fiction. I will most likely never write that again. I’m a contemporary gal.

Your other books touch on areas of your own personal testimony. Did it take an equal amount of courage to write this story?

Not as much because it was loosely someone else’s story.
What do you hope the reader takes away from reading this book?

That grief is hard on us and we have to find ways to reconnect with life in its aftermath.

Thank you so much, Mary, for chatting with us today.

If you’re interested in The Quarryman’s Wife, you can purchase it here: The Quarryman’s Wife

You may also want to check out Mary’s other books.

- Carey Clark

Saving Grace by Annie Jones: A Review

January 13, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

From the description of Saving Grace, I thought I would love it. It’s billed as the story of Grace Grayson-Wiley, a reclusive old woman. She is the subject of small-town gossip because of her annual vigils on the night of the Splendor Belle Gala on her front porch, dressed in the dress she wore the night her love and hope for marriage stood her up.

The blurb on the book also mentions the story is about four women, introduced in a previous novel who decide to help Grace in an effort to strengthen their bond of their own friendship. “Will their joint project instead tear them apart forever?”

The book itself didn’t seem to live up to this description. First, the story focused much more on the lives of the women in the friendship than it did on the story of Grace Grayson-Wiley, and while her story was interesting–even a mystery of sorts that isn’t unravelled until the end–the story of the women never threatens the dissolution of their friendship, so it didn’t feel that the stakes were as high as suggested.

That’s not to say that the lives of the women don’t spark interest in the story–Naomi is the new bride of a man with a teenage daughter who doesn’t seem impressed with her, Gayle is fighting suspicions that something is wrong with her husband, Rosemary is keeping a beau at bay while dealing with the return of her grown daughter, and Lucy fears she will never find true love, thinking herself unworthy of the right kind of man. Although the story is told from the viewpoint of Naomi, its in Lucy’s voice that the author seems most at home.

But I found it difficult, despite their descriptions to pin down the age of the characters, who seemed to waver between thinking of themselves as senior citizens to acting like giddy teenagers. While I cared about whether Lucy finally gave in to love and what might be wrong with Gayle’s husband, I just wasn’t invested enough in the characters to drive me to keep reading. It wasn’t one of those books that called me from my nightstand when I had to put it down.

At times it felt as if the story were interrupted by fashion news. One paragraph reads: “Lucy tugged her black cardigan on over her white turtle-neck. Her full pink skirt, which shrouded her hips while accenting the inward nip of her waist, swished over her white stockings as her black flaps slapped out a rushed pace as she went to meet Ben.”

I wished I could peel these details away and get to the story, because the story itself had potential and the dynamic between the characters and the mystery of Grace Grayson-Wiley were worth reading about.

To be fair, this was the second in a series of books, the first of which I have not read, and it’s possible that reading the first book would ground me deeper in the character’s identities.

Note: I received this book as an ebook from Multnomah Waterbrook Publishers in exchange for my honest review.

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