Olive, Gabe, and Samir have so much at stake in their lives in the novel GO HOME. Everything. The people they love. Their dreams. Olive, almost 17, loves the natural world. She lives by the sea and loves the trees in the forest. I walk the same woods that Olive, Gabe, and Samir walk. I wanted to give you glimpses of their story. I began collecting leaves in Olive’s forest and shells by the ocean to make nature prints with quotes and dreams of these teenagers. The novel takes place in a single summer. The first print shows all I knew before I began writing. I write in order to figure out the story. Maybe you’re temped to think of your stories in images, too. You might be an artist. But maybe we don’t have to be painters if we can make images from the natural world. I’m loving this nature printing. Come on along. I’ll post new prints all summer. Maybe making nature prints could help you write a story or understand a story you don’t have an ending for yet.
My editor called the stretch of beach across from the island here – Lady Isle – a liminal space, a threshold. The novel we worked on was GO HOME about a contemporary time when two cultures meet. The meeting place is across from Lady Isle – also called Belle Isle – in Little Harbor, a real place in portsmouth, nh, though I’ve fictionalized the setting. Over the map of the island above, I placed drawings by a New Hampshire newcomer from Bhutan, a grandfather. This is now his new home. He brings his food and drawings like Samir’s hajurba does in the novel. There’s a moment where Hajurba’s grandson also comes here and so does someone else who claims the beach is his own. We wanted the novel to hold them for a while on the threshold.