Interview with author Pearl Luke

Learn more about the Canadian Living Book Club.

Our July Canadian Living Book Club pick is Madame Zee, a historical novel about the infamous mistress of B.C. cult leader Brother, XII. (Click here to read an excerpt.) We spoke with the author, Pearl Luke, about the history, the story and the joy of writing.

Canadian Living: How did you first come across Madame Zee?

Pearl Luke: I first encountered Madame Zee on a History Channel documentary by History Television. The documentary title is "Edward Arthur Wilson -- Brother 12." The Canadians: Biographies of a Nation series.

CL: Why did it become important to tell her story from a different point of
view?

PL: My interest in Madame Zee was with the way historical accounts disparaged her, as there existed a sort of gleeful maligning that made me uncomfortable. I wondered if that attitude had more to do with misogyny or resentment than with actual fact. She was a strong, apparently outspoken woman. I could imagine the colonists resenting that. I could also easily imagine them resenting her position of power. Some of them may also have been jealous or envious because the Brother did not choose them -- either to be his lover or his lieutenant, and possibly their accounts were biased by that. Also, she had already approached middle age, and her previous lover, Roger Painter, had brutally beaten her. It seemed to me that given these factors, she might be prone to bizarre behaviour, caused either by hormones or by psychological pain, and that the behaviour might not necessarily define her. We are all sympathetic at some level, even if monstrous at others, and common sense and intuition tells me that she must have been a product of her environment, subject to the same hurts and stress as anyone else.

CL: It took you five years to write this book. What was your research process
like for creating a believable background of a real person?

PL: I began by researching the Brother, XII, as there are many books and articles written about him. I spent hours in the Nanaimo archives sifting through letters, manuscripts, articles, and other fascinating written material; I searched libraries for old newspaper stories on microfiche. I hoped that in learning about him, I would also learn something more about Madame Zee, but instead I found the same anecdotes repeated. I spoke to Ron MacIsaac, one of the authors of The Devil of DeCourcy Island: The Brother XII, I searched court records, and I went to Cedar by the Sea to speak to residents there, one who remembered the colony. I also read numerous books about Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Astrology, and searched out and read books and articles written by the Brother, XII, and members of the colony and its supporters. I familiarized myself with similar Theosophical colonies started in the U.S., most notably Katherine Tingley's 1897 founding of Point Loma, near San Diego. There, as at Cedar by the Sea, women were meant to escape the hierarchy of gender and receive equal treatment, something that happened in neither failed utopia. Nevertheless, combined with the recorded facts about Madame Zee, these accounts allowed me to recreate scenes as they might have occurred at the colony.

CL: Was your goal to create an accurate portrait of Madame Zee or to utilize
her life to weave an engaging story?

PL: I wanted to include as much period information as possible and also any historical information about Zee and her time with the Brother, XII, but my strongest motivation was always to create an engaging fictional backstory for Zee that would be plausible when paired with historical accounts of her. If she was cruel, I wanted to understand why she may have resorted to cruelty, and have readers understand as well. I was specifically interested in Madame Zee, not in the Brother, XII, or his colony, which for me were peripheral to the story that interested me: How did Mabel Rowbotham become the much maligned mistress of Brother, XII, and why was she not remembered with more compassion?

CL: Mabel met the Brother, XII, in the 1920s and became Madame Zee. How do you think her person and actions were affected by that time period?

PL: Women had only just attained the right to vote, and while more women were entering the workforce and making a name for themselves in other ways -- Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Amelia Earhart -- in general, women were not expected to equal or surpass the accomplishments of men, and were not easily accepted in power positions. As an assertive woman willing to state her opinions and disagree with men when necessary, I think Zee would have faced a great deal of resentment and opposition even before the Brother, XII, made her his second-in-command.

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