‘I’m deeply nerdy about research’
Kelowna author Alix Hawley delves into the story of frontiersman Daniel Boone a second time
Kelowna writer Alix Hawley had a hit with her first novel All True Not a Lie In It. In the 2015 award-winning book American pioneer Daniel Boone tells his own raucous life story. Now Hawley is back with My Name Is A Knife and the legendary folk hero is front and centre but this time the perspective of his wife comes into play. As Hawley’s second book hits the stands Postmedia News got a chance to ask Hawley a few questions.
QI guess the first question has to be what is it about Daniel Boone that inspired you to write your novels?
AThere’s not much sense to it, but I’ve learned to accept my illogic! I knew nothing about him when I was thinking about what I wanted to write, and I was suddenly hit by the memory of an image from a National Geographic I’d seen as a kid (in 1985, ahem). It was an illustration of a man holding his son’s bleeding body. That became the centre of the story for me — the questions of what happened, how Dan got there, and what it would feel like to be in that position. Also, in the second book, I wanted to know more about what it would feel like to be married to that person, as we get more of his wife Rebecca’s perspective.
QWhat made him such a unique and legendary character?
AThe legendary part comes from his leadership and exploration during a wildly tumultuous period, and his captivity and adoption by Shawnee people. The unique part is how famous he was in his own day. Pretty odd, for a guy roaming the backwoods most of the time. So I was interested in the nature of fame, but also, more deeply, in what it does to someone.
QWhat about Boone surprised you as you were learning about him?
AHow broke he was, in spite of all his efforts. Which is also easy to relate to, in the gig economy!
QYour books are filled with frontier colour and details. What is your research process?
AI’m deeply nerdy about research. Librarians are my heroes. I first dig up just about anything on the subject that I can find. Then, when I find myself going down tiny crooked paths (about the best type of wood for a spinning wheel, say), I know I have to cut myself off. I draft without looking at the research, using just what I’ve kept in my head. This lets me fill in the gaps and holes in the history, where novelists do their work. Then I go back to my notes to see what I need to fix and add.
QIf you could talk to Boone what would you ask him?
AI’d have a lot of questions, not least about his love life. But if I were being polite, I’d probably ask for a joke. He seems to have had a pretty good sense of humour. And I’d love to hear his actual voice, and his laugh.
QWhat was it about his wife Rebecca that interested you?
AThe fact that we know so little about her both frustrated and fascinated me. She’s a strong but often absent presence in All True Not a Lie In It, and she occupies much more of My Name is a Knife (she tells half the story). She was a good midwife and medic, and raised a huge number of children, many not her own. And despite feeling connected to her as a mother, it took me a long time to get her voice right. She’s quieter than Dan, but more perspicacious. Her life was just as dramatic as his. And she can hold her own in all their arguing over how their lives should be.
QWhile doing your research what was some information or historical detail you discovered that you couldn’t wait to share with others?
AIt’s a little too easy for me to pour on my enthusiasm for historical detail, so I have to remind myself I’m writing for people to read now. If the characters wouldn’t pay much attention to what was an everyday thing for them, I know I need to minimize it. As much as I love all the arcane stuff (and spinning wheels).
I was excited, though, to be able to describe Indigenous and frontier medicine, including wound care and childbirth! Death’s frequent proximity to these people was very powerful for me when I was writing.
QWhat are the biggest pros and cons of using a real life and such a larger than life character in your books?
AI think writing about anyone like that comes with the fear of any sense of actual personality being irretrievable, and that you’ll inevitably create some kind of robot (or of your subject coming back from the dead to lecture you everything you got wrong). The big pro is that you have a scaffold to begin with — the events of a life.
QWant kind of settler do you think you would have made?
AI’m a descendant of B.C. settlers, who first went from England to the eastern U.S., like the Boones. I was very conscious of that, and of the fact that the story is told through white settlers’ eyes. We know that Dan was very close to some Delaware and Shawnee people, including his adoptive father, Chief Black Fish, and I tried to show those relationships in all their complexity — love, paternalism, blindness, destructiveness.
In this novel, I missed being able to portray the everyday life of the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, the place that Dan problematically turns into a kind of dream.
One of the other major characters, Pompey, the “black Shawnee,” is a former slave who is very angry about his impossible situation, so that root of North American history is present too.
If I’d lived on the frontier, I’m not sure I’d have understood the complications and horror of what was going on. Like a lot of settlers, I might have just carried on moving into whatever territory I saw fit to, as Dan does. Then again, being a vegetarian weakling, I probably wouldn’t have survived very long either.
QWhat are you working on now?
AA new novel, set this time in Europe in the early 19th century. Funnily enough, it includes real and larger-thanlife types again, albeit much wilder ones.
QWhat are you reading right now?
AI’ll read most things, and I’ve just been sent a box of recent Canadian fiction for a project (hooray). My newest library stack includes Madeleine Miller’s Circe, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. Can’t wait.