What was the inspiration for After River?
After River started out more or less as a writing exercise. A four-word sentence popped into my mind early one morning when I was outside working in the garden. Mulling those words over and over, I recalled an incident that happened to someone I knew briefly in the 1960s. I mentally played with the 'what ifs' of the aftermath of that incident then went inside and used those four words as the start to a free writing exercise.
What came out was completely different from where I thought I was going with it when I sat down. I had expected those four words to be the lead-in to a short story with the main characters being a priest and a confessor. Ten pages later I still hadn't mentioned those two. But I did like the characters, the entire family, who showed up. I had the immediate feeling that this could be the beginning of a novel. So I followed where those characters led.
Those first 10 pages, starting with that four-word sentence, ended up being the second chapter of After River. Of all the chapters in the finished novel it is the least revised. The priest and confessor finally did make it into the story but in a much smaller role.
The setting of After River truly sets the tone for the novel. Why was it important that the novel take place on a dairy farm in the Cascades?
During the 1960s, many Vietnam War resistors took refuge in that area of the province. Although I grew up in Vancouver, as a young girl I spent summers with an aunt in a small town in the mountains of the West Kootenays. After I graduated from high school I moved there, married and lived on a small dairy farm for a few years. Although the town of Atwood, and the Ward family are entirely fictional, I drew on my vivid – if not somewhat romanticised – memories of that era and setting to create them.
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