Perdita
By
Hilary Scharper
Sourcebooks Landmark
January 20, 2015
$16.99 Trade Paperback
“Stunning… richly complex and unpredictable.” —Historical Novel Review
Marged Brice is 134 years old. She’d be ready to go, if it weren’t for
Perdita . . .The Georgian Bay lighthouse’s single eye keeps watch over storm and
calm, and Marged grew up in its shadow, learning the language of the wind and
the trees. There’s blustery beauty there, where sea and sky incite each other
to mischief… or worse…Garth Hellyer of the Longevity Project doesn’t believe Marged was a
girl coming of age in the 1890s, but reading her diaries in the same wild and
unpredictable location where she wrote them might be enough to cast doubt on
his common sense.Everyone knows about death. It’s life that’s much more mysterious…
Why did you pick a lighthouse for the setting of your novel?
There is something almost “magical” about lighthouses.
One of my favorite writers, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) – author of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, The Body Snatchers – used scenes from lighthouses for his wonderful stories.
Lighthouses
are a symbol of not only welcome, but also a “civilized” society. They tell mariners
through weather fair and foul that
they are not alone—that people are close by, thinking of them and helping guide
them to safety.
The oldest
lighthouse was the one built at Alexandria, a great fire built atop a large
tower at the mouth of the Nile, guiding ancient mariners to their destinations.
So
lighthouses have something both wild and domestic about them. They pierce the
darkness and shine across stormy waters, but they are also places of home: both home in the sense of coming
safely into port, as well as places where
lighthouse-keepers and their families settled
in amidst the tempest-tossed world around them.
 |
| Cabot Head Lighthouse, northern Ontario, Canada, c. 1900. |
When I
first went to the Cabot Head lighthouse, I imagined what it was like when the first
light-keepers of the late 18oos had to snake their way through a dark forest to
get to the light station. The story of “Perdita” began to come to me as I
reflected on this journey; and the characters took shape around the history of
lighthouse-keepers, shipwrecks, the triumphs and setbacks experienced on this
wild promontory overlooking Georgian Bay.
Tell us about the “Eco-Gothic.”
My husband,
Stephen, hatched this term after he read a draft of “Perdita.”
The Eco-Gothic
blends the mysterious, atmospheric and unpredictable genre the gothic assumes
in such novels as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Rebecca, but adds something different.
It adds
nature as a character, not simply as backdrop
or setting. As readers can see in “Perdita,” Marged has a “real” relationship
with the trees and the Bay. For her, they are not simply features of a
landscape; rather, they are mysterious, mercurial presences, both befriending
and bewitching Marged as she searches for love and truth at her lighthouse.
 |
| Nature as “character” in the Eco-Gothic. (Photo taken at the Cabot Lighthouse by author.) |
More on the writing of “Perdita” at http://perditanovel.com/writing-with-the-wild/
**Buy Perdita now : Amazon
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| BAM
|!ndigo
| IndieBound | Kobo
About the Author: Hilary Scharper, who lives in Toronto, spent a decade as a lighthouse
keeper on the Bruce Peninsula with her husband. She also is the author of a
story collection, Dream Dresses, and God and Caesar at the Rio Grande
(University of Minnesota Press) which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book
Award. She received her Ph.D. from Yale and is currently Associate Professor of
Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
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Excerpt from Perdita:
MARGED BRICE
Cape Prius—1897
July 3
Seven hours passed, and the waves were—Mr. Thompson said they were
fifteen feet or more in front of the Lodge. The rain had not ceased, but the
sky had turned an evil gray, and we heard thunder far off in the distance….
“The storm is moving fast,” said Mr. Thompson, and he shook his head
glumly.
I began to pray fervently. It was but three o’clock in the afternoon,
but the entire sky had turned a livid gray, and it seemed as if night had
dropped upon us like a curtain falling. Now we could see lightning blaze across
the horizon….
The rain came down in sheets, and the waves took on an even more
ominous and angry aspect. My heart sank as I thought of the boats in that
water.
Then—“There,” shouted Mr. Thompson, gesturing toward the eastern
skyline.
And appearing suddenly from around the Point, we could see the outline
of a large boat. Its foremast was rolling horribly—up and down, back and
forth—and we could see, as it neared, that the first jib sheet was ripped to
pieces. The mainsail was shredding rapidly in the wind, and the waves were
pushing it toward the shore, where it would surely be smashed into pieces
against the rocks. We saw the men lowering the lifeboats and then push off,
desperately making for shore.
“Allan,” I cried. He had run out into the storm without warning toward
the boats, and I leaped out after him.
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Giveaway:
3 signed copies of Perdita by Hilary Scharper (open
December 15, 2014 – February 7, 2015) – US only.
Kristin, thank you so much for hosting this wonderful giveaway. I will add it to the list of book giveaways on my blog. I am also a fan of lighthouses. They are quite beautiful and mysterious.
This sounds like a great book! I wanted to enter the giveaway but you only have it open to twitter users. I will have to look for it in the bookstore, thanks.
I'm with R. Hunt…why not more choices for those of us who don't twitter, coo, peep or gobble! Not good PR IMHO.
Don't enter me as I've read this — and loved it! — in its first Canadian edition. I hope more people will pick it up now that it's available to you all as well in the US!