Some people are born with an internal compass. Spin them around in the dark in a foreign land, and they can point to true north. I'm not one of those people.
I have an illustrious history of getting lost. Spectacularly lost. When I was six, I took a wrong turn walking to a neighbor's house and ended up, two hours later, at the police station in another town. At nine, I chose the wrong trail while hiking down Mount Marcy, the highest mountain in New York. I made it back just as the ranger arrived to begin the search. You get the idea.
These days, GPS compensates for my woeful sense of direction. However, I had to face my demons head on when I embarked on the historical novel, If the Sea Must Be Your Home.
I was drawn into the project by the honesty, heartache and humor expressed by lovers and family members whose voices resonated through time in their own words. To stitch them together into a story, I had to understand where in the world they were.
As I poured over documents written by this seafaring family in the 1800s, I realized I would need to become intimate with hand-drawn maps depicting places that had changed dramatically over the centuries.
Ship's logs and many of the letters written from sea indicated their location by latitude and longitude expressed in degrees and minutes. Many of the place names, particularly those of foreign ports, have changed or were spelled phonetically. Try searching online for Foo Chow, and you'll likely get a restaurant menu, not Fuzhou, China.
Enter Bob Elder: expert navigator, sailor and (lucky me) supportive husband. He plotted the latitude and longitude on GoogleMaps to help me track the path of voyages.
We drove together to West Barnstable with our daughter Emily to explore the town and walk in the woods, following the footsteps of their ancestors.
We toured the village with Bob's cousins, John and Deb Esborne, speculating on which patch of dirt and pile of rocks might contain the remnants of the foundation for the family's original farmhouse on the "Plains" of West Barnstable, where the Jenkins family lived.
I could hear the voices of the past echoing off the floorboards of the 1717 Meetinghouse during our tour with Nancy Shoemaker, President of the West Barnstable Historical Society, and Steve Howland, Trustee of the 1717 Meetinghouse Foundation.
Gradually, the points on a map came into focus as real places inhabited by real people.
The writer's life is often described as a solitary existence. I love the quiet hours spent crafting words into a story, but I'm grateful when work pulls me away from my desk and out into the world. Like many acts of creativity, If the Sea Must Be Your Home is a collective achievement. Thanks to all who helped me navigate this chapter of history.
I am currently seeking a publisher for If the Sea Must Be Your Home. All inquiries welcome at cynthia@cynthiaelder.com.
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