Dagmars Daughter (23 page)

ABOUT THE BOOK

As the legend goes, a barrel of musical instruments washed ashore on the island of Millstone Nether. The entire community, already obsessed by music, started to play fiddles, spoons, bass—anything they could get their hands on. Music is the heart of this community, binding the people together and keeping their traditions alive. Music, too, plays a central role in Kim Echlin’s courageous second novel, which effortlessly blends the ups and downs of music-making into a narrative that spans decades.

Centred on the people of Millstone Nether, and following three generations of Nolan family women,
Dagmar’s Daughter
is a lush tale of female strength, duty, and love—at times fantastical and at others beautifully realistic. The story begins with the outsider, Moll, an abused and frightened girl who gives birth to a stillborn child—and then stows away on a ship that goes under. From the ocean’s depths she washes up, transformed, on the island of Millstone Nether. Always on the fringes of the community, Moll is an overriding presence on the island; like nature itself, she is a healer and a destroyer without conscience but driven by survival and primal urges that inspire in others both fear and respect.

The grandmother of the Nolan clan is Norea, who, like Moll, arrives on Millstone Nether from the ocean: She comes from an impoverished Irish village, the eldest of eight children and the only girl. After her mother died her duty was to care for her family, and the village women stole her boots so she couldn’t run away. But her dying mother urged her to find a better life, and, spirit unbroken, she stole the boots from her dead mother’s body, made her way to Dublin, and then set sail for the New World, landing in the end on Millstone Nether. Norea finds love and purpose on the island but soon encounters heartache when her young husband, Rory, is killed in a flu epidemic.

Norea and Rory’s daughter, Dagmar, is the next in the Nolan lineage. She is born with an uncanny ability to control the weather and all things that grow. Plants grow out of the ground from her very touch; flowers bloom in her presence; crops become abundant overnight; and storms form when she is discontented. When Dagmar comes of age she is torn between the affections of Donal Dob and Colin Cane, both superb musicians and best friends rivalling for her hand in marriage. Donal, though, is incapable of expressing his love for Dagmar and loses her to Colin. With an aching heart, Donal leaves the island and travels the world, finding solace only in music. Colin and Dagmar marry, but after their honeymoon, they never reside together again. Dagmar is too strong-minded to bend to the demands of traditional domestic life and so returns to raise her daughter, Nyssa, with her mother. But the lovers continue their romance over their lifetime.

The title character, Dagmar’s daughter, is Nyssa, a girl who possesses her father’s charm and formidable musical abilities and her mother’s deep connection to nature, which draws her to Moll. When Donal returns to the island he is fascinated by Nyssa, so like her mother but his equal in music. Nyssa hears Donal play double bass and understands that only he can take her deeper into the heart of her own musical creativity. She runs away from the island with him in the dark of night. Dagmar in her fury causes the clouds to cover the skies and a winter ice storm unlike any Millstone Nether has seen before. Nyssa in the end must decide where her heart lies and struggle to find her way back home.

Echlin’s second novel is as spellbinding as her first,
Elephant Winter
, for which she received a Books in Canada First Novel nomination. Complicated, and layered with allusions to mythology, this fantastical adventure reads like an epic poem, seamlessly leading the reader from one generation to the next.

AN INTERVIEW WITH KIM ECHLIN

When I was writing this novel I was interested in stories with strong female characters. In Greek mythology the story of Demeter and Persephone tells how Persephone is stolen from her mother, Demeter, by Hades, the god of the underworld. When Demeter discovers her beloved daughter is gone she destroys the seasons so that nothing can grow. In the end, it’s only when the gods agree that Persephone can return to her for six months of the year that she relents and the seasons are re-established. Demeter is a powerful mother, willing to sacrifice all life to rescue her child.

I also love an ancient Sumerian goddess called Inanna whose stories predate the Greek myths. Inanna was queen of heaven and earth and her stories tell of the evolution of a woman’s spirit, from childhood and the discovery of her own powers to her discovery of Eros and her marriage. Next, she is compelled to search for her immortality and travels to the underworld to encounter Ereshkigal, goddess of death.

These stories give us images of women who seize their own powers. They are especially interesting because they show us women who do not find their identities primarily as spouses and mothers. Demeter, Persephone, and Inanna are characters who are willing to set relationships aside in order to explore their own strengths, and yet they are deeply related to the people around them, especially Inanna who is the subject of intensely erotic love poetry. At the end of her love affair and marriage is the line “The marriage bed was not wide enough for Inanna,” and at this point she sets out to conquer death and find her own immortality. Contemporary women continually explore their different relationships and struggle to make room for themselves to develop their passions, whether they’re directed toward their mothering, their work, their art, or their erotic relationships.

I love music. Fortunately, writing about music doesn’t require being a musician! For me, one of the greatest pleasures of writing is research, and I learned about the double bass and the piano and fiddle by reading and talking to musicians. I was particularly helped by the double bass player Joel Quarrington, who introduced me to his large repertoire and showed me how, through a different tuning technique, he could get a truer sound at the deepest, sometimes almost inaudible registers of his instrument. I also did some research into musical composition and was especially helped by the composer Ann Southam. Working with these artists gave me insights and new ideas about how to work with language.

Yes. Although Millstone Nether is a fictional place, it is set in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to find the diction for this book I read an amazing dictionary,
The Dictionary of Newfoundland English
. This book was created by collecting the oral language of fishermen, old politicians, and the women who salted the fish and tied the nets. Entries are accompanied by excerpts from old newspapers and quotations from storytellers, so each word is explained with little stories of the place. I loved the feeling of a living language developed by immigrants from Ireland and Scotland, and later by people born in the place. I was fascinated by how language shifts shape to express the experiences of the people on the land, their hard work, their survival of the sea, their pleasures.

I think it comes from their spirits, and their hard loving. They each have an irrepressible commitment to their own creativity: Norea to her daughter, Dagmar to her gardens, and Nyssa to her fiddle. When a man, or a member of the community, threatens that creativity, each woman searches for a way to keep loving and to honour her own needs. And each woman is connected to Moll, who embodies the forces in our lives that are beyond our control. The Buddhist phrase “With the body comes suffering” is another way of thinking about this. We are all subject to the pressures of our particular history and circumstances. How we live through suffering, how we retain our joy, is an expression of our spirit, and shapes who we are continually becoming.

Not organized religion. The characters in this book are driven by the need to survive, by the demands and joys of their community, and by their shared love of kitchen parties and music. I wanted to create a community not formed by religion but made alive by spirit. The people express it in their music and in the creativity they bring to their daily lives. Meggie Dob is a woman who is made fertile by Dagmar’s empathetic tears, and her children are Donal, the double bassist, and a strange misshapen daughter named Madeleine. This little daughter is compelled to paint on any surface she can find. We see that her inborn creativity comes from faith in life itself. Throughout the story we see women overcoming hopelessness: a woman who can’t have children has twins, a child without paint becomes an artist. I have seen this in my own family and in people in many places in the world, the astonishing human capacity to express oneself in defiance of obstacles, sometimes with a kind of humble joy, sometimes with fierceness. I think we all have this potential if we are loved by just one person.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Discuss Moll’s symbolic role on the island. How do you see her?
   
2. Norea and Colin do not live together in a traditional marriage, yet they remain in love and raise their children together. What do you think of this relationship?
   
3. Do you think Donal’s affections for Nyssa are based on his love for Dagmar? How did their relationship make you feel as a reader?
   
4. Music is a central part of the story, almost an additional character. How did the music add to your reading experience?
   
5. Discuss the following quotation as it relates to the book and to your own life: “Never are we closer to our own godliness than in loss.”
   
6. Discuss the book’s symbols and their significance.
   
7. Did you believe Dagmar’s powers to be real or symbolic? Why do you think she has these powers while the other women in her family do not?
   
8. Norea shows kindness to Moll, even after Moll causes her to go blind. Would you do the same thing in her shoes? Why does Norea do this?
   
9. The community of Millstone Nether is rich in music and art, which is reflected in the author’s poetic language and vivid metaphors. Did the way the story is written affect your experience of the narrative?
   

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