Come Looking For Me (46 page)

COOPER: A story of captivity and escape could unfold in any century, in any country, but not one similar to
Come Looking for Me.
I like to think that my story goes beyond these themes, and is unique to the War of 1812, or at least to the period of the Napoleonic Wars. If you simply take into consideration the vast opportunities available to women in the western world today, and given our contemporary global communication networks, a character such as Emily would not have lived such a confined, unsatisfying life in England, nor been lost to her family, or to Trevelyan, for so long a time. Moreover, I cannot think of a present-day setting that has more scope for imagination than the sailing ships of yore.

Your decision to place virtually all the action at sea creates a closed universe. Did such a confined setting help you to dramatize the plights and possibilities more vividly?

COOPER: It did. I did not want the distractions of the outside world. I wanted to create a “closed universe” in order to heighten Emily's sense of captivity and the men's desperate realization that if they did not make the best of their circumstances, their only escape was death in battle or a watery grave. Making stops in various ports would have not only provided my characters with a potential means of escape, but also set before them pleasures and adventures that were not available on their ships.

While in captivity, Emily took comfort in reading
Sense and Sensibility.
If you were held in captivity and had only one book to read, what would you choose?

COOPER:
Wuthering Heights.
I've read a lot of good books – classics and contemporary novels – but there are soul-stirring passages in Emily Brontë's book, and poignant images of isolation and graveyards and the windswept moors that have remained with me since I first read it at age fourteen.

If you were able to organize an afternoon of tea and literary conversation with any five novelists – dead or alive – whom would you invite?

COOPER: It would probably come as no surprise that I would invite Jane Austen and all three of the Brontë sisters. I would also invite my favourite Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. I adored Montgomery's novels as a child, but her personal journals – edited for publication in recent years by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston – reveal an astonishing woman whom I've placed on a pedestal and would love to have known personally. Now if you were to ask me with whom I would like to have dinner and drinks, I'd say Leon Uris. I always hoped I'd meet him one day. I've admired his heroic characters, his universal themes, and the way he was able to brilliantly convey human emotions in his writing.

About this Book

In
Come Looking for Me
, a mysterious young English woman named Emily risks a crossing of the Atlantic during the War of 1812 for the promise of a new adventure in Canada. But she never arrives.

Captured by Captain Trevelyan, a man as cold-blooded as his frigate is menacing, Emily is held prisoner aboard the USS
Serendipity
. Seeking to save herself, she makes a desperate escape overboard in the midst of a raging sea battle and is rescued by the British crew of HMS
Isabelle.
Yet Emily has only exchanged one form of captivity for another, and remains in peril as England escalates its fight against the United States on the Atlantic.

Aboard the
Isabelle
, Emily encounters a crew of fascinating seamen and strikes up unexpected friendships, but life on a man-of-war is full of deprivations and dangers to which she is unaccustomed. Amidst heartache and tragedy at sea, she struggles to find her place among the men until a turn of events reveals her true identity. And when Trevelyan's ship once again looms on the horizon, Emily fears losing the only man she has ever loved and falling into the hands of the only man she has ever loathed.

Come Looking for Me
is a rich and compelling story of love and courage, friendship and treachery, triumph and loss. With humour and poignancy, author Cheryl Cooper captures all the colour, detail, and excitement of the great ships from the golden age of sail, while bringing to life those who fought upon them. She tells a story of the bravery of the men locked in the epic, brutal struggle that was the War of 1812, and the courage of a woman who, with extraordinary determination, labours to make her own way in life and in love.