The Story Behind the Story with Author Anna Dowdall of Toronto, ON, Canada.

 

It’s a real pleasure to have Anna back as our featured guest.

She’s sharing the SBTS of her newest novel this week.

If you missed her previous visit, please go HERE.

I’m looking forward to reading this story.

Read on my friends.

 

Anna Dowdall was born in Montreal and currently lives in Toronto.  She likes to write mystery novels infused with a kind of otherworldly Canadiana, creating characters that seem real and fairy tale-ish at once.  The Suspension Bridge is her fourth novel and the first to feature reluctant amateur sleuth Sister Harriet of Bingham, whom she cautiously asserts to be Canada’s first nun sleuth.

 

 

Title:  The Suspension Bridge (Radiant Press, October 2024)

 

Synopsis:
In this irreverent and immersive pilgrim’s progress set in a Canadian river city, Sister Harriet plunges into new teaching duties at a boarding school where girls ominously begin to disappear. Between sleuthing and teaching, Harriet hardly has time for her secret identity crisis. But it’s 1962, and the whole world is restless. Hellbent on glory, Bothonville (pronounced Buttonville) is building a gigantic bridge, unaware everyone is falling victim to its destructive influence. Amid the dreams and double lives, the monsters and mayhem, who will make it out alive?

 

The Story Behind the Story:

When I was young I had a series of dreams about supernatural bridges I was trying to cross.  If they weren’t ill-intentioned like the highway to hell bridge in my new book, they were certainly mysterious and portentous.  That’s one source.  I was raised very Catholic, by Irish parents in a traditional French Canadian community.  When I was ruminating one day about how to write a mystery that’s little off-beat and historical while doing hardly any research--being a lazy soul—I had a “duh” moment regarding mining all that unique cultural experience.  In fact, I love books featuring clerical sleuths; they range from cozy to darkly metaphysical and I love them all.  As for what one of my book sponsors referred to as my quietly droll narrative voice, I’ve been accused of flippancy and similar all my life, but now I get to go with it in my stories. 

 

            Website – please go HERE

A question before you go, Anna:

Scribbler: Your books have been called literary mysteries. What the heck does that mean?

Anna: I rely on the conventions of the mystery novel and then bend and bend again and see where that goes. My books are middlebrow, but with secret depths. I enjoy description and the use of what one literary agent accusingly termed “big words,” I play with themes and symbols, and the wrapping up of the mystery features deliberate improbabilities and dangling threads. But The Suspension Bridge is still discernibly a mystery. You can certainly read it for its twisting and turning plot and final reveal, also its recognizable character types like the hapless detective and the relatable amateur sleuth.

An Excerpt from The Suspension Bridge.

Sister Harriet had doubts about what she was about to undertake, but the arrival of the fire department early the next day for a timely inspection—they were going to have a couple of overdue fire drills once the girls were back—seemed to her a propitious sign. Perpetua assembled a band of nuns to do a walkabout with the inspectors, but some of the nuns were in the middle of things and so others were substituted. The resulting mild bedlam, making her absence easier to miss, smiled on her endeavour.

The keys to the senior girls’ dorms were simple to extract from the office, with only Lester the cat to witness the act. The fire team had moved on to another part of the school by the time Harriet let herself into Laura Rome’s old room. Each boarder had an alcove of her own, with a bed, a closet and a desk. It wasn’t hard to find Laura’s cubicle, the attractive clothes set it apart.

Harriet felt odd, going through the dead girl’s effects, but how else could she leave the school grounds without being noticed by the reporters still camped out front? Things were being boxed up for the Rome family to pick up, and someone was coming tomorrow. Harriet could have borrowed some other girl’s clothes. But with the first students coming back at the end of the week that could lead to complications. A little voice told her she would hang onto what she borrowed today.

Trying on Laura’s clothes felt even odder. She ignored the dress up clothes and uniform, the latter somehow hardest to look at. She wanted casual and warm. She settled on a woolen turtleneck and corduroy pants that she only had to roll up a little at the ankles. She grabbed a shoulder bag as an afterthought. She burrowed through the boxes before she found an oversized pompom beret she could pull down over her face, and an insulated pea jacket. The whole thing worked. The hat hid her no-style choppy hair, and with a scarf to cover her lower face she was unrecognizable. A boyish young woman in a modish getup stared back at her in the mirror. She swung by her room to pick up the Marimekko bag—better than Laura’s purse—and slipped out the back exit.

She scaled the wall behind the barn where the trespassing journalist had entered. When she emerged in full view of the news teams out front her heart was thumping. She got a glance or two, but there was nothing to interest them in this young woman with a tote, probably a Vivamus coed, crossing the intersection.

Harriet was practically giddy with success when she got the same reaction on the half-filled bus: casual glances, but so different from the furtive no-look looks that greeted her as a nun. She’d never ridden a Bothonville bus before and she enjoyed the passing scene in the sunshine. She knew where to transfer for the bus to Turpentine Flats.

It had occurred to her that Florene must be there, if she was anywhere. The shanty towns had an on-again off-again, but mostly off-again, relationship to civilization and officialdom, for everything from taxes to electricity supply. The police had known to go to the River Flats address. Roger had been described as a resident of River Flats. Did anyone even know about the existence of a second cabin at Turpentine Flats? If Florene was missing, and not in the hands of welfare authorities or the supposed cousin, it was possible she was there.

The second bus let her off at the mouth of Factory Alley. The walk through towering grey walls and belching stacks was eerie, and she almost lost her way when she was once again crossing the frozen fields. I’m always here, always doing this. A peculiar thought, perhaps not even true, and yet it felt true. Her booted feet balancing on the snow-crusted ridges, the fence of trees rising up on the horizon. Surely she’d done this before.

She plunged into the twilit world under the canopy. She remembered the footpaths leading to the Sherwoods’ place. She knocked on the sagging door. The weasel-faced boy gave her a shock when he suddenly wrenched open the door. She didn’t introduce herself. What could she say? “You won’t recognize me but I am one of the sisters who visited?” Confidence was the key.

“I’m looking for Florene Pellerin.” No reaction. She gestured to her bag. “I’ve brought her some things.” The boy’s eyes dropped to the bulging bag, back up to Harriet’s face. He frowned, as if something nagged at him but he couldn’t think what.

“Things she needs.” Harriet hefted the Marimekko. “I know she’s being helped by neighbours, but you can’t do it all by yourselves.”

The hostility lessened. He looked behind him into the house, made up his mind. He grabbed a coat and stepped outside.

“I’ll take you.” He gave her a shove along the path.

He was bigger than he’d seemed before, and she didn’t much care for walking ahead of him through the semi-darkness. The back of her neck and the space between her shoulder blades tingled. He occasionally called out “left” or “right.” The place was big, it went on and on. Cabins and huts crouched amid the roots of great trees in a way that made River Flats look positively suburban. She became disoriented. It grew darker, as if evening could decide to come whenever it felt like it in this alternate world.

When he told her to stop, she didn’t see the dwelling at first, for the rudimentary door was half concealed down a tunnel of vines. She could just see the shape of a structure behind it, camouflaged by trunks and shrubbery. She wouldn’t have thought anyone lived there.

“Is this where she lives?” But Harriet spoke to herself.

She knocked. Presently she heard slight noises. There were cracks in the wood and she tried to look benign. The door opened, and Florene appeared.

“I’d know you anywhere, Sister.”

Thank you for being our guest this week, Anna. We wish you tremendous success with your writing.

And a Special Thank You to all our visitors and readers.

Tell us your thoughts in the comment section below. I know Anna would love to hear from you.