Marie Rioux flings law career and burning causes into the wake of her dead marriage to sail for England and the grand voyage of inner discovery we all secretly crave. But Marie already knows herself; it’s her forbears who are closeted in obscurity. Three generations in England and Quebec answered ‘the call’, caring amidst the carnage of the Boer, ‘Great’, and Second World Wars; their lives and kinship exist only in hints and whispers. Not to mention her father, no hero, who absconded to Europe without trace in her infancy.
In sleuthing the family past, Marie tumbles into an unlikely romance with a whistleblower on the run. Events lead the pair, and their stalker, to the Isle of Wight, where Marie’s esthetic hero, Julia Margaret Cameron, once kept the beacon of ‘beauty’ with her neighbour, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Standing on the High Down, Marie knows she has located her true home. Unless she can thwart the immediate violence cloaking Freshwater Bay, however, Marie will never enjoy what she has discovered: what Gerald Brenan
called ‘a life of one’s own’.Origins of The Ambulance Driver
While doing legal research in Surrey, England, I visited the military cemetery at Brookwood resting place of more than 500 Canadian dead from WWI. There I encountered the grave of Lilian Beatrice Nichols, born in Surrey, served first in Corsica with the British Red Cross, but who later served with the Canadian Army Service Corps as an ambulance driver.
Something about her moved me and I did a quick water-colour on-site ( see opp. p. 27 in my book ) and an article later on my response to the scene. The next weekend, I drifted onto the Isle of Wight and down to Freshwater Bay, only to fall under the mystique of another woman, Julia Margaret Cameron [1] [2], Virginia Woolf's great-aunt & innovative photographer of Victorian intelligentsia.
Cameron's famous neighbour on the I.O.W., Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the 'Freshwater Circle' of great minds and cultural endeavour over which the two so passionately presided, seemed the ideal setting for the core themes and events of The Ambulance Driver.
I decided to link the two 'sisters' through a contemporary, and drew on my escapades in Quebec City and interest in military history to attempt that.
Sub-note
Tennyson's energy obviously struck me, and if I had to encapsulate his imprint on my characters in The Ambulance Driver, it would be with his own words:
"…Come my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,
Push off, and sitting well, smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die "
Reviews
Listen to Chris' interview on CBC 1 on Remembrance Day:
Book-Signing
Chris will next be signing copies of The Ambulance Driver:
- 2009 CANADIAN AUTHORS FESTIVAL
October 16-18, 2009, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.Canadian Aviation Museum (Rockliffe Airport)
Ottawa, Ontario
613.829.5141
2009 Canadian Authors Festival
Purchasing the book
- Baico Publishing
294 Albert Street, suite 103 (Corner of Kent), Ottawa
613.829.5141 - Britton's Books, Glebe
846 Bank Street, Ottawa
613.237.6116 - Books on Beechwood, New Edinburgh
35 Beechwood Ave, Ottawa
613.742.5030 - Chapters - Rideau Centre
47 Rideau Street, Ottawa
613.241.0073 - Glebe Video International
779 Bank Street, 2nd Floor, Ottawa
613.237.6252 - Dimbola Lodge
Julia Margaret Cameron Museum
Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom
per Jan Pumphrey [ jan@dimbola.freeserve.co.uk ]
- Chris@ChrisMcNaught.ca
(especially if you wish an autographed copy),
