Miss-Delectable
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The Charter: Breaking the silence
Upon stumbling on old letters, belonging to his mother, he realized that this might be a nice idea for a novel.
"The two proudest words that I will write on my book, when it’s finally done and ready to be printed, won’t be the end but it will be the dedication, for Bessie my mom. Her name is Elizabeth O’Keefe but everyone used to call her Bessie. In 1926, she was admitted into the Halifax School for the Deaf because she was born profoundly deaf in Barasway on the Cape Shore. Arrangements had to be made to send her to the school in Halifax. I remember reading these old letters that used to be in this old purse. These are the letters that were exchanged between my grandmother and the principal for the School for the Deaf in Halifax back in 1926. At the age of ten she (Elizabeth O’Keefe) would get on a train, go to St. John’s, then get on a boat there, then three days later they would arrive in Halifax and she would stay from September to June of the following year. This was a big thing for a girl who was only ten years of age. So what I did a few years ago is I got these letters out and I started looking at them and I thought this could be an idea for a book. Basically, the characters in my novel are inspired by the people in these letters and by the story of my mom and her going to school."
Mr. Rowe, an English teacher at Laval high school, is very excited about his novel and gave the Charter a brief summary of what to expect when The Silent Time hits store shelves.
"It starts with the mother and she’s this young woman who lives in a community called Three Brookes, which is basically Point Verde. She’s not in a very good situation because her mother has long since died and she has four brothers and a father who are pretty hard on her and make her to do all the work around the house. She’s very anxious to get out of there. An older man from the Cape Shore notices her and asks her to marry him. She agrees to go with him and she went down the shore to this fictional community called Knock Harbour and while she was there, they started to have a family together, but something tragic happens. There’s a shipwreck on the Virgin Rock’s, which are the rocks along the Cape Shore, and she does something impulsive which results in a tragedy being precipitated upon her family and upon him and so that dream of having a new family and a new life basically becomes lost. So then we come back twenty years later and she is now an older woman. We meet the politician, who is a very disillusioned person. He goes into this community and meets this woman and she now has a young deaf child. People aren’t actually sure where this child has come from but that’s her only remaining child and her husband is dead. She has been a solitary figure in the house who is selling rum illegally through to pay bills. He (the politician) decides he wants to help her. This begins a process of healing and growth.”
Writing this novel was a very long process for Rowe.
About ten years ago he started reading the letters, then he spent two to three years researching what Newfoundland was like in the 1920's, then he had to teach himself how to write a novel. He kept his determination even when he began to have his doubts about completing The Silent Time.
"It took a long time, about eight years but since 2004 I went to the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts. It was like I turned a corner there because at Banff I was there for five weeks and I got to work with a lot of people who were professional writers, who knew what they were doing. Since 2004, I kind of turned a corner and became really determined that I was going to finish the book. I found it very daunting for a long time, the whole prospect of writing a novel seemed very daunting for me. Even though I soldiered out for a long time it was hard for me to believe that it was actually going to happen," explains Rowe.
The truly daunting task of writing a novel, especially one that is so personal, finally became a reality for Rowe. The author will get to see the fruits of his labour in October when The Silent Time hits shelves in bookstores everywhere.
Upon stumbling on old letters, belonging to his mother, he realized that this might be a nice idea for a novel.
"The two proudest words that I will write on my book, when it’s finally done and ready to be printed, won’t be the end but it will be the dedication, for Bessie my mom. Her name is Elizabeth O’Keefe but everyone used to call her Bessie. In 1926, she was admitted into the Halifax School for the Deaf because she was born profoundly deaf in Barasway on the Cape Shore. Arrangements had to be made to send her to the school in Halifax. I remember reading these old letters that used to be in this old purse. These are the letters that were exchanged between my grandmother and the principal for the School for the Deaf in Halifax back in 1926. At the age of ten she (Elizabeth O’Keefe) would get on a train, go to St. John’s, then get on a boat there, then three days later they would arrive in Halifax and she would stay from September to June of the following year. This was a big thing for a girl who was only ten years of age. So what I did a few years ago is I got these letters out and I started looking at them and I thought this could be an idea for a book. Basically, the characters in my novel are inspired by the people in these letters and by the story of my mom and her going to school."
Mr. Rowe, an English teacher at Laval high school, is very excited about his novel and gave the Charter a brief summary of what to expect when The Silent Time hits store shelves.
"It starts with the mother and she’s this young woman who lives in a community called Three Brookes, which is basically Point Verde. She’s not in a very good situation because her mother has long since died and she has four brothers and a father who are pretty hard on her and make her to do all the work around the house. She’s very anxious to get out of there. An older man from the Cape Shore notices her and asks her to marry him. She agrees to go with him and she went down the shore to this fictional community called Knock Harbour and while she was there, they started to have a family together, but something tragic happens. There’s a shipwreck on the Virgin Rock’s, which are the rocks along the Cape Shore, and she does something impulsive which results in a tragedy being precipitated upon her family and upon him and so that dream of having a new family and a new life basically becomes lost. So then we come back twenty years later and she is now an older woman. We meet the politician, who is a very disillusioned person. He goes into this community and meets this woman and she now has a young deaf child. People aren’t actually sure where this child has come from but that’s her only remaining child and her husband is dead. She has been a solitary figure in the house who is selling rum illegally through to pay bills. He (the politician) decides he wants to help her. This begins a process of healing and growth.”
Writing this novel was a very long process for Rowe.
About ten years ago he started reading the letters, then he spent two to three years researching what Newfoundland was like in the 1920's, then he had to teach himself how to write a novel. He kept his determination even when he began to have his doubts about completing The Silent Time.
"It took a long time, about eight years but since 2004 I went to the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts. It was like I turned a corner there because at Banff I was there for five weeks and I got to work with a lot of people who were professional writers, who knew what they were doing. Since 2004, I kind of turned a corner and became really determined that I was going to finish the book. I found it very daunting for a long time, the whole prospect of writing a novel seemed very daunting for me. Even though I soldiered out for a long time it was hard for me to believe that it was actually going to happen," explains Rowe.
The truly daunting task of writing a novel, especially one that is so personal, finally became a reality for Rowe. The author will get to see the fruits of his labour in October when The Silent Time hits shelves in bookstores everywhere.