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I suppose it might
have been the fact that my siblings and I grew up in culturally and racially
diverse neighborhood of Philadelphia that we developed a real appreciation of
diverse cultures. I ended up marrying a
Cornishman, my one brother married a Thai and the other a half Jewish half
Native American and my sister a Cuban.
I spent the first years of my married life in rural Cornwall and parts
of the UK, until circumstances brought us back to the US, where my love of
history led me to a Masters in Library Science and a PhD in Women’s History and
I found a job at the Presbyterian Historical Society. It was a dream come true
to handle artifacts, letters, diaries, journals, reports, photographs and other
records of missionaries, church officials and prominent people that revealed
the lives of so many different people all over the world. I remember when I stumbled across a letter long
tucked away and forgotten, written in the 1850s by a young Prince Chulalongkorn,
the Thai royal who was made famous in the book Anna and the King of Siam and The
King and I. His tutor had been a Presbyterian missionary.
The archives also contained records
of the missionaries’ work among Native Americans, including the Native
Alaskans. Because of my family
connections I also worked with Native Americans to repatriate some of their sacred
objects contained in the museum. That
led me to help a Tlingit Native Alaskan group to establish evidence of their
settlement in certain areas in Alaska in order to reclaim land. Government records had recorded vast land
tracts as uninhabited, when in fact missionaries had filed records, taken
photos and written letters back to their supporters when working with these
people in the very territory that had been declared uninhabited. During this work I began to realize there was
so little that documented the actual voice of the Native American in the
collections. There were no reports,
letters, or diaries written by them. No
oral interviews even. The Tlingit elder
I was helping at the time told me many stories that his people had passed down
to him and I became more and more interested in their culture and the whole
story of their experience with the missionaries.
Stories were so important to me and
I was delighted to hear this elder’s stories.
His belief of their importance fit into my growing determination to
share stories in different ways, particular through the Irish harp. In the years since I had moved back to the US
I had started playing the harp, supported by the years of piano and organ
lessons I’d had growing up. I soon began
to play gigs, and eventually developed my own blend of storytelling while
playing the harp. I played schools,
libraries and festivals as well as the bread and butter of playing weddings and
other celebrations.
I left the historical society, drawn
to a desire to play my music and spin my tales, and took a job as a part-time
children’s librarian. It was a wonderful
time to discover the fun and joy of telling stories to children through picture
books and through the harp. Once, when I was doing some much needed weeding in
the collections I came across a book that told about the legend of Prince Madog
of Wales’ voyage to America in 1170. It
wasn’t a picture book, laid out in a beautifully illustrated manner; it was a
nonfiction text that investigated the legend in order to substantiate its
truth.
I was so intrigued I took it home and read it in a night. I have to confess I’d never heard of the
legend before this. I’d heard of Leif
Ericson’s 11th century voyage along Labrador and that area and of course I
heard of the 6th century voyage of St. Brendan which again was most likely up
in the northern areas of the Americas.
Madog’s voyage, as the legend goes, ended up in Mobile Bay, in what is
now Alabama and he sailed up what is now called the Mad Dog River. All very intriguing.
At the same time, I was writing a novel that looked at the blond-haired
plaid clothed mummies that were discovered in the Xinxiang Province in western
China. They dated back to about 1500
B.C., long before any archaeological evidence of “Celts” or what we group as
Celts, though they seemed to share many of the same characteristics in their
burial patterns, clothing composition and other items. I loved the idea of it
and my novel evolved as two parallel narratives, one in the ancient past that
brought a small proto Tlingit group and a proto Irish/Celtic group together and
the present that brought an Irish woman and a Tlingit man together. The novel
is called Raven Brought the Light and
it will be out soon.
In the many centuries in-between those periods I thought I would write
other novels that told the story of similar encounters between the two groups
where I could show the two cultures in different periods and the aspects of
prejudices and assumptions that each time period might have. Linking all this
there would be a medallion passed down through the centuries and back and forth
between people and appearing in each novel as a connection that means something
strongly to one of the characters.
The first novel I published as part of that linked series was Selkie Dreams. One of the songs I had
sung and played on the harp after telling the tale of the selkie (seals that
take on human form at the summer solstice) was the ‘Selkie of Sule Skerrie.’
It’s a haunting song and seemed a perfect structure for the first tale I wanted
to tell that could show the Tlingit side of the story in Alaska while also
keeping the mission viewpoint by telling it through the eyes of an Irish
missionary.
The other novel to link in was structured around the Madog tale. It
seemed like a wonderful event to use as part of this novel chain and became the
novel, Along the Far Shores,
published last fall. It tells the story
of Aisling, an Irish noblewoman who escapes the turmoil in her country only to
find a similar situation in Wales where her brother is serving one of the many
princes but is determined to be part of Madog’s voyage. Aisling stows away on Madog’s ship in order to
be with her brother and is tossed overboard during a storm. She is rescued by a Tlingit trader, Caxna,
who reluctantly takes her along his trading journey first to the declining
Mayan city of Xicallanca and then later to Etowah, the powerful city of the
Mississippian empire. For Caxna a
successful journey means his clan’s freedom.
But Aisling changes everything.
I didn’t write Along the Far
Shores until I came to Ireland. My passion for Celtic music, particularly
Irish music had been part of the draw to the harp and I had picked up the
fiddle and bodhran as well in the ensuing years. So when it became possible to move to the
West Cork Gaeltacht, to one of the vibrant hearts of traditional Irish music, I
seized the opportunity. Here, I’ve been
fortunate to be living in a wonderful community full of so much music,
beautiful landscape and good people while I pursue my writing, music and also
teaching art to adults. And when time
permits I get to do a little painting of my own. I couldn’t ask for more.
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