I'd like to welcome Rhiann Wynn-Nolet to the blog today. She recently found her dream agent, Stephanie Lieberman at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. After reading about what inspired her book, I can understand why she was snatched out of the query trenches. Please give her a warm welcome.
Twitter @RhiannWynnNolet
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First, thank you to Angie for inviting me to
participate in Share Our Voices. I’d also like to thank her for being very friendly
back when I was floundering in the querying/contest trenches. She had an agent
already, so I was immensely flattered that she’d even chat with me.
When asked to speak about how culture and
environment inspire my writing, I thought immediately of an instance where
truth and my own fiction collided at that very intersection.
New England and I go way back. All the way to the
1630s, when my ancestors arrived from “Old” England. Four years ago I decided
to write a book. I knew it would have some connection to the Salem witchcraft
trials of 1692, during which my ancestor Mary Estey was hanged.
Here is a photo of the house where Mary’s sister,
Rebecca Nurse lived. She was also hanged.
During my research, I learned that land-hungry English
settlers spread out from Boston and Salem to southern Maine, then known as The Eastward.
This caused conflict with the Abenaki. Bloodshed and tragic losses followed
(for both sides). Traumatized Colonial refugees poured into Salem and the surrounding
towns, telling horror stories. Who among the God-fearing Puritans had brought
God’s wrath down upon them? Witches, of course.
I now live in southern Maine, where the novel is
set.
Here’s a photo I took on a walk near my house. This
rock is called Tyler’s Back because it formed the rear wall of Mr. Tyler’s home
during the early 1700s. One of the Tylers’ neighbors, Mrs. Batson was killed by
the Abenaki. Incidentally, a surprising number of the women and children who
were captured by native tribes chose not to return to English Colonial life
when they were given the chance.
I decided my MC would be descended from accused
witch Margaret Jacobs, whose letters to the court and to her father during her
imprisonment survived. They’re both inspirational and heartbreaking. The boy my
MC falls for has both Abenaki heritage and an ancestor who was a prominent witch
persecutor. Here’s the premise of UNQUIET SOULS—restless spirits may inhabit
the bodies of the living, attempting to satisfy thwarted desires for love or
vengeance.
To learn more about modern day Abenaki, my family
and I went to a pow wow. We were admiring the crafts when the music started. It
was a vocal performance with drum accompaniment. After the song ended, my
husband said he didn’t understand why he’d gotten all teary, but the song had
filled his heart with sadness and longing. I should mention that my husband’s surname
was always assumed to be French (his father was born in Quebec).
I don’t know what the name of the song was, but it sounded much like this
Flash forward to a recent family wedding. I was
seated by my father-in-law and we began talking genealogy. He told me his
father had claimed to have Native American blood. Interesting. Once I got home
I hit the internet. Lo and behold, Nolet is a shortened version of Wawanolet, a
surname frequently found on reservations around Quebec, where most of the
Abenaki ended up.
This is a passage from my book, written two years
before the wedding.
As
we rumbled over a patch of cobblestones revealed by balding asphalt, she said,
“Sometimes I can’t help but think of all the people who’ve passed along these
twisting roads before us. I feel their presence, those travelers throughout
time. Imagine all the cars, and before them all the horses and wagons, and
before them the native tribes. Underneath the pavement lies cobblestone, below
that the dirt roads of the original colonial settlement, and buried deeper
still are the trails made by moccasins. Each generation adds a new layer,
obscuring the past and altering the road slightly—yet we follow the paths made
by our predecessors, repeating their journeys without conscious thought.”
Twitter @RhiannWynnNolet
