“I refused to be a war bride.” Or: Why I set my novels in Nova Scotia ‹ Literary Hub

July 12, 2024

They are all in their graves today, but in late winter 1979 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I recorded conversations with six women who had arrived from Europe on three different steamships in 1938, just before Canada’s entry into World War II, ostensibly as war brides. Their marriage contracts were signed on the basis of a photograph or a letter from their future husband. Their Atlantic crossing was paid in advance. All but two were of Dutch descent.

We recorded for about six hours. Each of their stories painted a vivid picture of the unbearable circumstances at home: fear, exile, doubt, steadfastness. But in the end they all had one thing in common. When they arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax, they refused to become war brides. The consequences of this refusal were strikingly different. Several women spent time in prison.

But perhaps I was particularly fascinated by Sophe Apperlo’s story, which read in part:

My comrade was called Paul Middler. I noticed him when I was about halfway up the gangway. His photo was accurate. At that moment I thought: “Life will soon be painful. You must be honest and fearless.” How difficult it would be to turn away this Paul Middler than if I had stayed in Holland as a Jew. But Paul Middler had financed my trip. Of course he had expectations. I went straight up to him. I held his photo in my hand. The woman, who I soon learned was his sister, was standing next to him. He was nicely dressed. He reached out to take my suitcase, but I didn’t let her. That frightened him. I had practiced English and now said: “I refuse to be a war bride.” I thought what will happen now. Immediately his sister grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. She spoke to him. It was as if his sister understood everything with a look. But Paul Middler looked as if he couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if it was out of anger or what. My heart was beating fast. I was surrounded by the tumult of the harbor, the noise, the shouting and the voices.

When Paul came towards me, his sister was standing right behind me. “Do you understand the word disappointment?” he said. “Yes, I have had some myself,” I said. His sister stepped back. He held out an envelope and pressed it into my hand. He put his hands on my shoulders and said, “This life is impossible for you, isn’t it?” I said, yes, it is. He said, “You see, we might have got along.” I said I would work to pay him what I owed him. I am not a beggar.” He shook his head negatively and then walked away. His sister said, “The Baptist Spa Rooming House. They take in Jews. If you have your papers. The Baptist Spa Rooming House. Go there at once.” There was money in the envelope. She sobbed. The sister sobbed, I think, for her brother. She caught up with him. I thought, the world is cruel, but what a generous thing. I was this little person in the shadow of this huge steamer. That was how it was that day.

I’m working on a book that features these remarkable women. If you dig deep enough, if you’re persistent in your research, if you talk to people, every place reveals its past. But I chose to do these things in Nova Scotia. So when someone asks, “Why did you set your novel in the Canadian Maritime Provinces?” I immediately feel like I’ve failed in some way – if the book had come alive, there would be no reason for such a question.

I believe that good writing is good writing. It is not about the identity of the author, but about his or her talent as a writer, or lack thereof.

Every sentence is a conscious decision, every passage of dialogue, every description of landscape and weather, every piece of historical listening. As obvious as it sounds, the story could not have taken place anywhere else. Because Come to the windowwhich comes out this month, I studied a photograph of a beached whale from 1918 in the Bay of Fundy village of Parrsboro, where part of the novel is set. I studied church records; I studied court records. I read dozens of reports of “unsolved” murders.

But for me, writing the novel was ultimately a sustained act of narrative displacement; I brought my research home to Vermont and wrote the novel in my farmhouse there. Each day the photographs, notebooks and diaries materialized in 1918 Nova Scotia, like a two-year séance.

Nova Scotia is where I’ve been discovering amazing stories for five decades. And when someone sometimes asks me – especially in Canada – “Why Nova Scotia?” I feel like the real question is, “As an American author, why are your books set in Nova Scotia?” And that’s a nod to the elusive and sometimes painfully redundant concept of origin. I just think that good writing is good writing; it’s not about an author’s identity, but about their gift as a writer, or lack of it.

As Zadie Smith wrote, “No geographical or racial qualification guarantees an author his subject… only interest, knowledge, and love can.” As for provenance, allow me to say that I admire Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels; I am so grateful that she wrote them, even though she never lived in the future years in which they are set; her imagination transports readers there with an immediacy that one also finds in HG Wells The time machine.

Thoreau once said, “I have been around Walden a lot.” I have lived in Nova Scotia and have been around a lot. This sweltering weather, this rugged coastline, this history on a grand scale, the fundamental strangeness of life that can be discovered in Nova Scotia folklore but also in personal anecdotes – all of this, everything, everything – I have found amazingly generous as a writer. I have set most of my novels in Nova Scotia because it is the place that most inspires my narrative imagination.

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