The Widow's Walk (32 page)

The next morning when I took my coffee out onto the porch and sat in one of the generous rockers, for some reason I began wondering what it was like for these women as they waited for their husbands to return. How often would they climb up to their widow's walks and search the ocean for their husbands' ships? And even more curiously, from such great distances how could they possibly discern whether a ship was indeed his? For those of you who have read the book, it was from that unanswered question that the great red pennant Adam took along on his final voyage was born.

I also began wondering whether any of these women from the nineteenth century had perhaps ever fallen from her widow's walk. Given the constant assaults by the elements, surely some of those widow's walks had grown weak, and perhaps even rotten over time. What if a wife fell from her broken widow's walk and crashed onto the shoreline? Would she survive the fall? I wondered.

Along with those questions, more soon arrived. And what of her husband? I wondered. What might he be doing at the precise time of his wife's death? Was he half a world away? Might he be in danger himself? If he was, and if he died at the same precise moment as she, might that have some possible effect upon time itself? And if the fabric of time was in fact disturbed, even for only an instant, might one of them die while the other perhaps remained caught between worlds? Might the “survivor” ever have any hope of escape? With such questions now rattling around inside my head,
The Widow's Walk
was finally born.

Even so, the premise was not fully developed enough for me to begin writing. I still needed a hero, a heroine, and a supporting cast of characters. I also needed to do a good bit of research into the whaling era and the customs of those times, and to figure out how to save Constance, our heroine, from being trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead, in a way that would be both believable and understandable to the reader. While thinking in this vein I was soon reminded of Nostradamus, and of the many surprisingly accurate quatrains he wrote. After doing more research, I was able to find a quatrain that could be adapted to the story. Before I knew it the book seemed to be writing itself, the plot and people sometimes surprising me, but always reminding me that it was a pleasure knowing them.

It may also interest the reader to know that this book contains some real-life things from my own experience. Like Garrett and his father, Dale, my father also took me pheasant hunting. And like Dale's dog, our best bird dog was also named Freckles. Soon I found additional facets from my own life creeping their way into the story, such as Garrett's nieces, Allison and Elizabeth; Garrett's enjoyment of Jack Daniel's and good cigars mirrors my own.

In the end, writing a novel always boils down to the question, “What if . . . ?” What if some character behaves this way, instead of that; what if the pacing seems too fast or too slow; what if this person dies, or this person lives? That having been said, I never work from a collection of notes, or from some outline that has been etched in stone. Instead I have no set plan. I prefer to come to the computer each morning to
find out
what's going to happen, rather than
already knowing
what's going to happen. I cannot say that this is the recommended method of writing a novel, because I honestly don't know. I only know that it's my way of doing it, and it seems to work for me. The same can be said for the method (or perhaps I should say the
lack
of one) that garners my ideas.

If you have not already read
The Widow's Walk
, then I hope that you will enjoy it. And if you have already read it, I trust that some of what you found here in “The Story Behind the Book” will provide additional insight into the various methods that produced it. In the end,
The Widow's Walk
is proof positive that a premise for a novel need not spring only from overwrought and convoluted thought processes. It can also be born from something so simple and pleasurable as enjoying a cup of coffee on a southern veranda.

As I write this article, I am now again in my “happy time.” With the prospect of another premise for a novel now on the “back burner” of my mind, I am once again going about my regular daily business while waiting for another worthwhile idea to surface.

And that is quite all right with me.

Best regards and happy reading,
Robert Barclay

Reading Group Discussion Questions

1.  The book makes great mention of a concept called “unconditional love.” What is your definition of unconditional love? Do you believe that you have ever loved someone unconditionally? And if so, do you still love him or her that way to this very day?

2.  When Garrett and Constance visit Brooke Wentworth, Brooke is not at all what Garrett expects. And when she takes them into her secret study, they are amazed to find that she seems to have many of the answers to their questions. Would you have believed Brooke? If not, why not? And if you chose not to believe her, then what would you have done instead? Did Garrett and Constance really have any other choice but to accept Brooke's pronouncements?

3.  When Brooke first tells them that in order to break the grip of the
mora mortis
they must both risk their lives by re-creating Constance's death, Garrett is appalled. Would you have had enough faith in your own brand of unconditional love to take the leap like they did?

4.  Constance tells Garrett on more than one occasion that despite all of the world's advancements and the great gains made in women's rights, she still prefers her world of 1840, and she unashamedly gives her reasons. As a modern-day woman do you ever long to live in a more genteel time, when things were less harried and complicated? Or are you the sort who much prefers the many advantages of the here and now, despite how hectic life has become?

5.  Constance is the wife of a whaling captain who is sometimes gone at sea for as long as two years at a time. Could you abide such an existence? Would your love be strong enough for you to wait faithfully for him, while every day you hoped and prayed that he might soon return? Despite the customs of those days, was it too much for a husband to ask of his wife? Have you ever been in such a situation, perhaps with a husband who is serving in the military, or whose job requires that he be gone for long stretches at a time?

6.  When Jack Rackham insults Adam, Adam immediately challenges Jack to a duel to the death with pistols. Despite that dueling was an accepted custom, was Adam right to insist upon his satisfaction in this way? Was it fair to Constance? If you had been a woman living during those times, do you think that you could have accepted your husband's need to do such a thing, even if it meant possibly losing him forever?

7.  At the end of the book it is revealed that Garrett Richmond is really Adam Canfield reincarnated. Do you believe in reincarnation? Have you ever felt like you are the reincarnation of some other person who once wandered the earth before your time?

8.  What do you believe will become of Garrett and Constance? Do you suppose that they will “live happily ever after” in the past? Or will their knowledge of the future cause them to regret leaving that time? Have you ever felt that you might prefer living in the past, and if so, why?

Read on

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Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE WIDOWS
'
S WALK
. Copyright © 2014 by Robert Newcomb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.