LIVING BY THE BOOK
Regina author releases her 26th title
As a preteen girl, Alison Lohans read some awful books.
“There was no depth. They were all fluffy romances,” Lohans remembers.
“I was noticing the world around me. There was the civil rights movement in the States — that was never in the books that were available for girls — and the Vietnam thing was starting to happen and I was just so angry.
“I felt so insulted by the contents of what was available for young women at that time, that I quit reading for five years and also decided that, ‘When I grow up and be a writer, I’m going to write about stuff that matters for girls. ’ ”
Lohans’ first book, Who Cares About Karen?, was published in 1983. The Regina-based author is celebrating the release of her 26th book, Timefall, on Saturday.
Lohans grew up in Reedley, Calif., a rural area where she could pick plums and peaches from trees. Her parents, Walt and Mildred Lohans, raised their children to be pacifists.
Mildred’s first teaching job was in a Japanese-american relocation camp, which inspired Lohans’ 2007 book, This Land We Call Home.
“Twenty per cent of my classmates were of Japanese origin; their parents had all been in camps,” said Lohans.
“It was never talked about at school of course, this sanitized education ...
“And the older I grew and learned more about it, I just became more and more angry that any government could uproot loyal citizens under the writ, thinking they were enemy aliens, and just totally incarcerate them.”
The Vietnam War brought Lohans to Canada in 1971. She was 22 and newly married.
“I was suffering a crisis of conscience,” said Lohans.
“My male classmates had to make scary decisions. They’d be drafted or, if they were pacifists also, they had some choices: ‘ Well, do I co-operate with this system and be a conscientious objector? Do I come to Canada?’ And as a young woman, I was totally off the hook.
“I was so torn up about the Vietnam issue that I started writing (a book called Don’t Think Twice) about a month before I graduated from Grade 12 — and it was just a way I could speak up about my feelings about the war ...”
Lohans’ husband, Michael Pirot, was accepted to the University of Victoria to pursue a doctorate in psychology.
Five years later, they moved to Regina, where she immediately joined the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild.
“There’s wonderful people here and such a strong emphasis on the importance of Saskatchewan literature and helping writers grow. That’s extremely important,” said Lohans, who is part of two writers’ groups that include local authors Judith Silverthorne, Sharon Plumb Hamilton and Patricia Miller-schroeder.
When Janet Lunn was the Regina Public Library writer-in-residence in 1982-83, Lohans spent an hour every week with the renowned children’s author.
A year later, Lohans got the idea for her newest book, Timefall.
At the Plains Hospital, spending hours at her husband’s bedside, “This wild idea hit me over the head and wouldn’t let me go.”
She saw an image of a teen mom with her baby, and a “weird guy in a robe wants her baby. And I thought, ‘What?!’ ”
That’s the gist of Timefall, which was previously published as two separate books, Collapse of the Veil (2010) and Crossings (2012). Lohans heavily reworked them for this new publication, alongside editor Robert Runte.
The “weird guy” is Iannik. He lives in what was once Regina, centuries in the future, where the sunshine blisters the skin and every man’s “seed” has dried up. A long-ago ecological apocalypse killed most of the population and tornadoes broke down all infrastructure.
“I was just dreaming, what must this place have been like before civilization? What was it like to be on the prairies?” Lohans said.
“And I think that’s what led me to: What happens if there’s a total collapse and a few people survive and come up when it’s safe? It was just ideas coalescing, and you need two or three ideas at least to get one book going.”
The teen mom is Katie. Her baby, Tyler, is the T’laaure — the saviour of time-travelling Iannik and his community.
Lohans is hosting a Timefall launch party on Saturday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m., at India Palace — her favourite restaurant.
While Lohans’ 26 books to date have been geared to children and young adults — including her sons, John and Christopher — she now is working on something completely different: a romance novel for adults.
Three years ago at a writing conference in Calgary, Lohans was hit with “a shining image of something I had seen in Egypt,” a gold statue at the Abu Simbel temples. She saw it twice in her mind’s eye, both times as she was headed to a session on romance writing.
It inspired Lohans to concoct a story about a woman grieving her partner’s suicide and a man whose wife left him. They meet on a tour of Egypt.
“I know how to do the grief thing, the widowed left-behind thing and so I was playing with characters in their 40s,” said Lohans.
She hopes to publish using the pen name Adrienne Christopher.
Her working title is Strong As A Pharaoh, “because they’re both rebuilding themselves.”
I felt so insulted by the contents of what was available for young women at that time, that I quit reading for five years.
ALISON LOHANS