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Writing a Novel from Genealogy

The family tree is a great source for stories. Every limb invites a myriad of questions that can turn into the “what-ifs” of fiction.

My first five novels were based on the lives of ancestors from my mother’s side of the family. The Compleat Gardener series is composed of four books that tell the stories of John and Susan Dean in England, Scotland, Ireland, and finally Nova Scotia. Then, The Loyalist relates the life of Michael Eisan, another ancestor who came to Nova Scotia, this time from Germany by way of the American Revolution in South Carolina.

My two most recent novels, House of Crows and Tea at the Empress, were a break from family history. They tell stories of the early history of Victoria through the lives of women settlers. I was going to write a third novel in the series, but then another leaf on my family tree, this time on my father’s side called to me.

In genealogy we often have only bare records of baptism, marriage, death, and little else. So it is with my ancestors, James Houghton and Jane Inglis. They were both born in Lower Canada, what is now the province of Quebec, and lived in Quebec City in 1852. Then in 1853, there is a record of their marriage in Melbourne, Australia. Their first child was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Quebec City in 1854.

This was a mystery to me. Destination weddings were not a thing in the 1800s. It took five to six months to travel from New York to Australia by sailing ship. Why did they go there? Did they know each other before they left, or did they meet each other on the way? Why did they go back to Quebec City?

My research into those questions and my suppositions form the basis of my next novel, Maid of Gold, which will be published in October of 2024.  



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