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Treading Water
Anne DeGrace will launch her novel "Treading Water,"; the chronicle of a fictional community on the shores of lower Arrow Lake, on Saturday, October 1st at 7:30 p.m. at the Nelson Municipal Library (Victoria Street entrance).
The voices of the Bear Creek residents surface in this first novel, among them trapper Gus Sanders, who arrives in Bear Creek to seek his fortune in 1904 and finds more than he bargained for. Others include Mennonite Jake Schroeder, suffragette Isobel Grey, Dutch war bride Aliesje Milner and young Paul Doyleis, who has a summer job demolishing houses to make way for the new dam.
The indomintable personality of Ursula Hartmann, first child born in Bear Creek and among the last of the residents to leave, threads through the stories that trace a community from its hopeful beginnings until the day the waters rise. Through these stories, told through eleven chapters covering a timespan of 63 years, the reader is able to develop a relationship with the community, and, along with its residents, grieve its demise.
DeGrace's story of Bear Creek was inspired by the real-life chronicle of Renata, B.C., a tiny community which once flourished and was submerged under 35 feet of water to make way for hydroelectric dam development in the 1960's. When the water from the Hugh Keenlyside dam is drawn to its lowest point each spring, it is possible to walk the original Renata townsite, accessible only by boat.
DeGrace writes, "In June, when the dam increases its flow, all this will be under water. Now, I can see the bones of tree stumps, rows traced through the sand. Here, the foundation of a house has left a depression; there, an empty stretch that may have been a road lies like a whisper. The remains of a wharf, pilings like broken teeth, stretches beneath the water from the shore.
"In exploring the fictional community of Bear Creek through the writing of this manuscript, the concept of home became more than where you hang your hat....it is the accumulation of history, the births, deaths, small rebellions and personal triumphs.";
Anne DeGrace is a Nelson librarian, columnist, writer and illustrator who has co-authored two books of photography of the West Kootenay. Her fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room of One's Own, and Wisconsin Review.
TreadingWater is published by McArthur & Co., Toronto. To promote her work, DeGrace is embarking on a five-city tour including Vancouver, Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal and Wolfville, Nova Scotia, her mother's hometown. .
The Nelson launch, reading and book signing is co-hosted by the Nelson Fine Arts Centre and the Kootenay School of Writing and co-sponsored by the Nelson Municipal Library, the Nelson and District Arts Council and the Federation of B.C Writers.
The voices of the Bear Creek residents surface in this first novel, among them trapper Gus Sanders, who arrives in Bear Creek to seek his fortune in 1904 and finds more than he bargained for. Others include Mennonite Jake Schroeder, suffragette Isobel Grey, Dutch war bride Aliesje Milner and young Paul Doyleis, who has a summer job demolishing houses to make way for the new dam.
The indomintable personality of Ursula Hartmann, first child born in Bear Creek and among the last of the residents to leave, threads through the stories that trace a community from its hopeful beginnings until the day the waters rise. Through these stories, told through eleven chapters covering a timespan of 63 years, the reader is able to develop a relationship with the community, and, along with its residents, grieve its demise.
DeGrace's story of Bear Creek was inspired by the real-life chronicle of Renata, B.C., a tiny community which once flourished and was submerged under 35 feet of water to make way for hydroelectric dam development in the 1960's. When the water from the Hugh Keenlyside dam is drawn to its lowest point each spring, it is possible to walk the original Renata townsite, accessible only by boat.
DeGrace writes, "In June, when the dam increases its flow, all this will be under water. Now, I can see the bones of tree stumps, rows traced through the sand. Here, the foundation of a house has left a depression; there, an empty stretch that may have been a road lies like a whisper. The remains of a wharf, pilings like broken teeth, stretches beneath the water from the shore.
"In exploring the fictional community of Bear Creek through the writing of this manuscript, the concept of home became more than where you hang your hat....it is the accumulation of history, the births, deaths, small rebellions and personal triumphs.";
Anne DeGrace is a Nelson librarian, columnist, writer and illustrator who has co-authored two books of photography of the West Kootenay. Her fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room of One's Own, and Wisconsin Review.
TreadingWater is published by McArthur & Co., Toronto. To promote her work, DeGrace is embarking on a five-city tour including Vancouver, Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal and Wolfville, Nova Scotia, her mother's hometown. .
The Nelson launch, reading and book signing is co-hosted by the Nelson Fine Arts Centre and the Kootenay School of Writing and co-sponsored by the Nelson Municipal Library, the Nelson and District Arts Council and the Federation of B.C Writers.
Submitted on September 23, 2005 in By David.
