INTO THE RAINFOREST
Wilderness an ideal backdrop for suspense novel The Almost Widow
The Almost Widow Gail Anderson-dargatz Harper Avenue
The novel begins with a death — the death of a tree in the B.C. interior. The victim is an old-growth red cedar, brought down illegally by poachers.
“The tree had survived hundreds of years, storms and fires, and then a century more of logging within this rare inland rainforest.” These words, from novelist Gail Anderson-dargatz, are in mourning for a ravaged landscape. “It had been a giant, an ancient, an old soul, alive in a way no puny human mind could ever comprehend. And now, senselessly, it was dead.”
The title of this award-winning British Columbia writer's latest book is The Almost Widow. It is, most assuredly, a novel of suspense, but it also defies convenient classification as a mere wilderness thriller. It can also qualify as a work of serious literary fiction.
“The boundaries are getting less and less distinct,” Anderson-dargatz says. “This is not just a thriller. It's more of a character-driven narrative.” It's also a narrative that tackles some daunting issues — from the crisis facing the environment to the highly personal anguish of grief and loss.
“I've always been ready to borrow from other genres,” says Anderson-dargatz, who is both a writer and teacher laden with critical accolades from both sides of the Atlantic. “I think it strengthens you as a writer, and I really encourage my students to dip into other genres.”
So The Almost Widow delivers more than just a taut mystery about a husband who goes missing in the snowbound B.C. wilderness and a determined wife named Piper who continues searching for him long after the rescue teams have given up. It's also drenched in a particular culture, a way of life inextricably connected with the massive inland rainforest that extends upward through the province.
“I live very close to what I'm writing about.” Anderson-dargatz is on the phone from her home near the mountain town of Salmon Arm. “What you encounter in the rainforest is beautiful but it's also haunting and full of myths. You really feel you're being watched all the time. So it was a perfect setting for a novel of suspense.”
It's also a place where Piper's missing husband, Ben, can make spectral appearances, yet when this happens it doesn't endanger the novel's naturalistic underpinnings. Horatio, a key character in Hamlet, would be completely at home in the rainforest, believing as he does that there are more things in heaven and hell than are ever dreamt of in our philosophy.
“Ghosts, dark deeds, odd characters.” Anderson-dargatz, musing aloud about the nature of the “very specific landscape” she's writing about, is ready to defend Piper's ghostly encounters with Ben as something more than hallucination. “We don't give value to such experiences. But they can be a part of life ... Hearing, seeing, talking to loved ones after they've gone can be so important, so fundamental, as a way of processing grief and finding a way through it.”
A driving force in the novel is Piper's response to the loss of Ben, a natural resources officer in ongoing battle against the destruction of old-growth trees. Has his vigilance cost him his life? And how is Piper dealing with it?
“I almost did lose my husband to illness in 2017, so I do understand what it's like to contemplate becoming a widow,” Anderson-dargatz says. “I don't think I was even aware at the time I was writing this book that there was a kind of emotional motivation there, but of course once I got into it, and certainly now that I've stepped back from it, I realize that what I went through at that time was very much behind it.”
That's the reason why the text of the novel is prefaced by a quote from C.S. Lewis's book A Grief Observed: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Hence, the emotions that beset Piper as she engages in an often reckless and dangerous quest for the truth about her vanished husband.
“When I chose that epigraph from C.S. Lewis it really resonated with me because of course anybody who has experienced grief also knows fear,” Anderson-dargatz says. “There is loss but the emotional reaction is fear. So that was the emotional drive behind the book.”
But there was also her fear for the place she calls home.
“I'm 59 now, and even in my lifetime, I've watched great sections of forest being clearcut and endangered. So there was another emotional connection for me — writing about this incredible rainforest that hasn't had that much attention in the media and the public eye.”
The novel depicts the conflict between those like Piper and Ben, who are passionate about safeguarding old-growth trees and see a wilderness park as the salvation for an economically troubled community, and forces that simply want to plunder the forests.
“These trees are a thousand-plus years old,” Anderson-dargatz points out. “To have them just cut down is heartbreaking, and it's happening all the time. We're losing our forests to the point where there's no turning back. So I definitely wanted to get across another sense of grief and loss as well — not only for someone you love but also for landscape and in this case, an individual tree.”
Even so, the novel doesn't ignore the social and economic factors underlying what is happening.
“Poaching is a huge problem, not only here in B.C. but globally. And in B.C. it's really complex because it can happen in places where the financial support for any given community has been pulled away. In the case of this novel, it's closure of a mill, so people who stay in such a community find very few ways to make a living. So people turn to poaching because they have no other resources.”
Anderson-dargatz first wanted to write when she was seven years old.
Now, following a successful journalistic career and seven novels, she has learned an important lesson — one she also imparts to the students she teaches online.
“Never be afraid to try different things and find your own comfort zone. Push past the things that may make ourselves uncomfortable — that's where the really good writing comes from.”
What you encounter in the rainforest is beautiful but it's also haunting and full of myths. You really feel you're being watched all the time.