Tag: book-reviews

WHISTLER!!!

Guess how it went…

As you may remember, Day of Epiphany was named a finalist for the Whistler Independent Book Award (WIBA) for fiction back in July. It was such an honour for my novel to be counted among the top three fiction titles that, as far as I was concerned, I’d already won.

The awards were to be announced during the Whistler Writers Festival, at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler at the end of October. There was never any doubt that I would attend. I’d never been to Whistler, my conjointe and I were in need of a holiday, and I still had a 33.3% chance of coming home with an award. Any way you cut it, it was going to be fantastic experience. Win/win/win!

“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf. MOUNTAINS!”

We arrived in Vancouver on a rainy Tuesday morning, spent two days exploring the city, the parks, the markets, and every single meal was excellent! The drive to Whistler on Thursday evening was mostly in the dark, so the spectacular scenery of our destination wouldn’t be revealed until the next morning. It was worth the wait!

Friday was the big day. It began with a workshop called Publish Like a Pro. Extremely helpful: made me wish I’d taken it two novels ago. Then a delicious lunch event with the other finalists at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, then back to the Fairmont where the finalists from each category were invited to give a brief talk and a reading from their nominated work before a packed house. Cue butterflies!

Everyone was so brilliant that within minutes I’d convinced myself that there was NO WAY I was going to take home the award. Cue impostors syndrome!

I was scheduled to read fourth. It was a very upbeat affair and the hall was just buzzing, so not wanting to bring down the whole room, I chose to read as happy a section as I could find in my dark novel (not an easy task). I decided on a section where the young orphans commandeer a wheelchair and take turns racing around the common room of the institute. It’s a moment of joyful rebellion and it received a warm response from the audience, but I still felt badly out-classed. Ah well, it was an honour just to be there. Right?

WIBA finalists, left to right: me, Lisa MacDonald, Carolyn Roberts, Diane Kirby, Robin Anne Ettles, Kim Hudson, Anna McCarthy, and Trevor Atkins

The main event was less than an hour later: All Hallows Eve: Murder and Mayhem. Sandwiched between improv sketches and an author panel conversation was the big reveal: the Whistler Independent Book Award winners.

When the award for fiction was announced, I fell immediately into a brief state of paralysis:

“And the winner is: Day of Epiphany, by Jerome J Bourgault!”

I don’t remember much else after that, except for a sudden and steady flow of congratulations, a lot of warm smiles and hugs, and much later on—after book sales and signings in the lobby— being unable to find a place to eat after 10:30 on a Friday night. We ended up splitting half an Oh Henry! and half a KitKat bar in the hotel room.

Saturday morning, another quick breakfast—by the way, I challenge anyone to find a bad cup of coffee in Whistler—and back to the Fairmont for another reading event. The award winner from each category was invited to sit in on the corresponding panel and participate in the discussion. The fiction panel was moderated Antonio Michael Downing, host of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, and featured Clea Young, author of Welcome to the Neighbourhood, and Giller Prize nominee Eddy Boudel Tan, author of The Tiger and the Cosmonaut. And me! In addition to answering questions, I had to give another reading from my novel, this one a bit longer and without the preamble. Needless to say I had nothing prepared—remember, I wasn’t supposed to win—so I’d spent the late hours the previous night and that morning scrambling for something appropriate. I settled on what I consider to be the very soul of the novel—if you’ve read the book, it’s Cassandra’s speech toward the end about cruelty; a heavy read but it’s the very essence of the book, and it was very well received. If anyone in the audience still didn’t know what Day of Epiphany was all about at its core, this explained it.

Fiction panel, seated left to right: Antonio Michael Downing, Eddy Boudel Tan, me, Clea Young.
Photo credit: Joern Rohde Photography

Then, before I knew it, it was over. We sold a few more books after the last reading, then spent the rest of the day wandering around town, visited the Whistler Art Museum (a must-see!), and collapsed after an exquisite dinner at the hotel brasserie.

It was an unforgettable experience! The people of Whistler were perfect hosts, and they are rightfully proud of their town and of their writing community! I’ve taken home some great memories of my time there, and having sold a few copies of both of my novels, I know part of me will remain.

Genesis of a novel: how Day of Epiphany came to be

As early as December, 2018, I’d begun to throw together ideas for my second novel. The Perpetual Now was still over a year away from publication — at this point, it was still a bloated 4th draft that was far too cumbersome to attract any serious consideration from publishers — and I knew I wanted to tell a different kind of story for my follow-up novel, one more rooted in history. 

Over the past few years, I’d been developing an interest in Canadian history of the 1940s and ‘50s, an era when my own parents were in their teens and twenties. Their shared memories of this period had long been incubating in my mind, and while it was never going to be a biographical work, I thought the new novel could be a place where many of their stories might find a voice and live on, while contributing generously to the detail of the picture I wanted to paint. 

As I threw myself into researching the social history of the period, one name dominated from the start: Union nationale party leader Maurice Duplessis.

… this guy

(Credit: Library and Archives Canada / C-031052)

I didn’t know much about Le Chef initially, except that he was premier of Québec for the better part of 20 years, and that he was immensely influential. What they didn’t teach us in high school was his dubious legacy. First, the Duplessis era itself came to be known as La grande noirceur—the Great Darkness—a period of extreme conservatism, sluggish economic growth and stifled cultural development. Second was the scandal of the Duplessis orphans, thousands of children whom he allowed to be deliberately misclassified as mental patients in order to qualify for federal subsidies earmarked for psychiatric hospitals. It was an incredibly compelling and tragic episode which I quickly discovered was largely unknown in English-speaking Canada. I decided this was to be my historical setting. 

Next, the plot. If the story was to be set in 1950s Québec, the Catholic Church would obviously play a central part, one way or another. The Church had a stranglehold on all matters pertaining to social programs, health, and education in the province, and had the full support and protection of the the premier. It was then that I remembered an idea first suggested to me waaaaay back in the ’80s by one of my oldest friends and most valuable collaborators: what happens when a parishioner confesses to a priest in church to committing murder? And what if this person was him/herself a member of the clergy? It was an intriguing plot idea, and forty years later an altered version of it would serve as the opening sequence of my novel. 

In its early iterations, the book that would become Day of Epiphany looked more like a straight-ahead mystery, using the Duplessis era as a backdrop. But as I read more about the period and the tragedy of the Duplessis orphans in particular, it became increasingly important for me to tell more of that story. Aside from Joanna Goodman’s excellent 2018 novel The Home for Unwanted Girls, the subject of the Duplessis orphans has barely been touched in English-language fiction.

Eventually, as it grew in the telling, the novel would focus primarily on the abuse suffered by the children at the hands of nuns and medical staff, and the increasingly desperate efforts of one nun to protect them. No, it’s not an easy book.

Remaining true to its original vision, there is still an element of mystery to Day of Epiphany; call it a historical fiction/mystery cross-over. It is also loosely connected to The Perpetual Now —some people and places will be familiar— and while it doesn’t really delve into the realm of science-fiction, Day of Epiphany resembles its predecessor in that it starts off as one thing, and then—quite subtly—becomes something else entirely. 

More to come…