Afterword for Season of Ice
November 30th, 2007 Posted in Words from Diane | 5 Comments »Season of Ice originated with a place that tapped into something nostalgic from my childhood. My father’s family is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where many of the men worked as commercial fishermen. Some of my fondest memories are of the vacations I spent in the UP. I loved the lake, the woods, the time with my family, and the whole physical way of life captured in that setting. Then, several years ago I traveled to northern Maine, where I camped and kayaked along Moosehead Lake. I felt an affinity for the terrain and the people and knew I wanted to write a novel that took place in that part of the country. I had the privilege of returning to Moosehead Lake the following winter to write an article on a teenage ice car racer, Nikki Hamilton. I was again drawn intimately to the area. When I returned to Colorado, where I was then living, I began creating a character for a new novel. I wanted her to be much like Nikki, but I wasn’t yet sure what her story would be.
Over the course of the year, several events came together that shaped the story and the life of my character, Genesis Sommer. One afternoon I received the sad call from my grandmother that my cousin Andy had disappeared after having gone out on his boat for a fishing trip. His boat had been found, but not his body. Andy had grown up on the water. He understood boats; he was a strong swimmer. The search for my cousin continued, and eventually his body was found. Not long after my cousin’s death, a man in Colorado went missing. He had been cross-country skiing with his family when the group became disoriented during a snowstorm. His wife, daughter, and dog had stayed together, while the man ventured off to find help. After two days, everyone except for the man was found. The search for the skier continued, but it was eventually called off because of heavy snowfall. Search-and-recovery efforts were to resume the following spring.
The grief my family felt for my cousin, along with the story of the missing skier, weighed heavily on me. One night while hiking in the snow, I thought about what would happen if a person went missing on a lake, and in the midst of the search for the person, the lake froze over. As with the skier’s situation, efforts would be delayed until ice out, when the lake thawed. I thought about what the family would go through, the rumors that might be spread in a small town, how the family would survive without any life insurance. I returned home that evening, built a fire, and began writing this novel. As the story took form on the pages, I felt the ice cover of my own life, an incubation of sorts. My life was also changing in a dramatic way. I was about to leave an area I had called home for almost fourteen years and start a new life where I did not know anyone.
A friend once told me, “Life never gives you Plan A. It’s how well you deal with Plan B that matters.” A novel is a work of fiction, and yet it is inspired by human truth. I think of so many families whose life courses have taken dramatic and unexpected turns. With Season of Ice I have tried to capture such a family, especially giving voice to a young woman who, despite the changes in her life, has discovered how to live.