Footsteps

Every now and then a reader writes to tell me that they’ve gone on vacation to one of the settings I’ve used in my books, and have sat where my characters sat or have walked on the same path, and I’m always amazed and incredibly flattered that someone would go to the trouble of doing that.

Not that I don’t understand.

In the spring of 2007, I took a research trip to Greece, for the half-finished sequel to Every Secret Thing (which was coming along fine until the idea for The Winter Sea took over, and since then it’s been puddling along in fits and starts between the other novels…)

My mother came with me, because Greece was somewhere she’d wanted to go nearly all her life, and since we share a love of Mary Stewart's novels—some of the best of which are set in Greece—the trip, for us both, had the air of a pilgrimage.

So on our way from Athens to the island where my story would be set, we detoured north and went to Delphi.

As our bus squeezed through Arachova we looked for—and felt sure we’d spotted—the steps Simon came down in My Brother Michael when he first arrived to help Camilla with the car. We reached the ruins of Apollo’s temple in late afternoon, just as the other tourists all seemed to be leaving, and we had it almost to ourselves.

I stood dead centre on the ancient theatre’s stage so we could try the voice-trick thing (it does work, by the way, and it was every bit as magical as I had hoped it would be).

We stayed the night in town, spent the next morning tracking down the location of the old Apollon Hotel—where Mary Stewart’s heroine Camilla stays when she arrives in Delphi—and having found it we decided, naturally, we ought to have lunch in the same place where Camilla sat with Simon.

And while I sat imagining the characters around me, seeing Simon and Camilla having dinner while the painter with his donkey trundled past, it suddenly occurred to me that I was sitting, not just where the characters had sat, but where Mary Stewart herself must have sat, “facing over the valley towards the distant gleam of the Corinthian gulf” beneath the “two big plane trees” that “made a deep island of shade for some wooden tables and chairs”.

The view and the plane trees and tables and chairs were still there, the way they’re described in the book, as were the lights hanging high in the boughs of the trees.

While I doubt that my chair was the same one she sat in, I felt a new sense of connection to my favourite author, and I couldn’t help wondering how she'd have felt, knowing two of her readers had come all that way just to walk the same path as her characters.

What about you? Are there fictional footsteps that you’d like to walk in? Have you ever taken a holiday somewhere because of a book?

Comments

[Anne Gracie]

Lovely post, Susanna. I, too have thought of Mary Stewart and her books, mostly in Greece. I did much the same as you in Delphi, though I also let out an Australian "cooeeee" down the valley -- we were there late in the afternoon and just after a rainstorm, so the place was almost deserted. My cooee echoed down the mountain and immediately there was a rumble of thunder and the clouds seemed to boil. The gods were clearly in residence. I also thought of some of her other books on Corfu, and on Crete. I have a friend who'd living on the south of France, and every time I see the map, I think of Madam Will You Talk — I'd do that trip in a heartbeat.

[Quantum]

My wife recently 'persuaded' me to take her to stay at the old vicarage in Rye Harbour on the Sussex coast in England. It seems that a number of children's books by Monica Edwards are located there. She had a wonderful time and I enjoyed the spin-off benefits *G*. Its a fascinating area. I would particularly pick out Great Dixter garden, a museum for Morgan three wheeler cars and the precursor to modern radar in the form of an acoustic mirror .... it picked up the sound of enemy aircraft crossing the English channel. Also the nature reserve by the harbour has some fascinating wild flowers and we enjoyed watching sea gulls dropping shell fish onto rocks to get at the tasty contents... very intelligent birds!

If I was choosing an area to visit based on a book, I think I might pick Corfu because of Gerald Durrell's account of his childhood on the island .... or of course one of Susanna's ...... wasn't The Shadowy Horses located in Northumberland .... another area that I love to visit.

[Anne Gracie]

Quantum your post made me recall another location strongly associated with a favourite author — Rye is where EF Benson set his "Lucia" books. I met an American woman in Rye many years ago, who was shocked I'd never heard of EF Benson (we'd had a long book conversation and had many authors and books in common) and she took me to the Rye bookshop and made me buy the first two books in the series. Months later I was on Corfu and amazingly the bookshop there had the rest of the series. I still have them, and have reread them many times.

I was certainly thinking of Gerald Durrell while I was on Corfu, too. My Family and Other Animals has been a favourite since my early teens. I would have loved to have done a Gerald Durrell walk there, too.

[Mary T]

I have always regretted that I did not visit England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in my youth. If I was somehow granted the ability to visit any place in the world, that would be where I would go. Most important to me would be the historical sites of course. But since I have become such an historical romance junkie in the last few years, seeing so many of the places mentioned in books I love would be the icing on the cake.

My first thought was the Pump Room in Bath. I think I would imagine Lady Freyja Bedwyn storming across the room to confront the Marquess of Hallmere over a supposed offense - from Mary Balogh's SLIGHTLY SCANDALOUS.

[Janga]

What a wonderful post! I would love to visit Greece. I'm sure I would think of Mary Stewart's books, especially my favorite, This Rough Magic with its Corfu setting. And I would also think of Ancient Greece and the books of Mary Renault and Gertrude Atherton. I grew up reading and rereading Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg series, and every visit there, I have felt the spirits of the Days and Spragues walk with me down cobblestone streets.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Anne, the gods probably took your "cooeee" for a war-cry, and answered in kind :-) Very neat to think you and I were standing on the same spot, though. You know how much I love all these connections. And I'll happily join you on that Madam Will You Talk trip (though I might spend all my time waiting for Richard at the Chateau d'If pier...)

[Susanna Kearsley]

Your holiday at Rye Harbour sounds wonderful, for both of you (I'll have to look up that acoustic mirror next time I'm in the vicinity--I'm fascinated by things like that).

And Corfu, you might be interested to know, is also on the Mary Stewart-lovers' tour map. Her book This Rough Magic is set there, and the landscape and its legends are woven beautifully into the story. My mother was reading that book while pregnant with me, and it's long been a favourite of mine, so much as I loved My Family and Other Animals, if I went to Corfu I'd be seeing it through Mary Stewart's eyes :-)

Thanks for your kind words, too. The Shadowy Horses is set just north of Northumberland, across the border in Eyemouth, Scotland. Beautiful part of the country to visit, with lots of good rambling paths.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Mary, that would be a lovely trip to take. I do hope you get a chance to go.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Janga, I haven't read Elswyth Thane yet, though I've meant to for a long time (ever since finding out she was one of the favourite authors of one of MY favourite authors, Jan Cox Speas).

I have her Tryst in my TBR pile, and it looks to be right up my alley. I just have to wait till I'm finished this current book...

[Vicki L.]

Tryst by Elswyth Thane isn't part of the Williamsburg series...it is more of a spooky story with a sad/happy ending. Kind of in the vein of Barbara Michael's Aimmie Come Home.

Cornwall is a place I'd love to go to. So many of my favorite books have been set there or have parts of them happen there. Shellseekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, several Stephanie Laurens books, I forget where else.

Corfu definitely as well because again, Shellseekers and Mary Stewart.

Scotland and Wales because usually when they are the setting the setting becomes a character.

As well as all those Regency spots - Bath, Pump Room, Hatchard's, etc. Many are gone but to walk down those streets go to some of the houses that are representative of that era.

I have been lucky enough to go to Northern California and Oregon which is the setting of so many of the books by Jayne Anne Krentz. Riding the ferries from Vancouver to British Columbia, through the San Juan Islands, walking all through Seattle, etc really helped me get a better feel for her books after I re-read them.

[Janga]

I love Tryst too, Susanna. I reread it every year in late October. Since it is a ghost story, I count it as my Halloween book. But it was the Williamsburg books that helped to make a romance reader of me.

[Susan/DC]

My husband and I have done several self-guided walking tours of England: Derbyshire, Shropshire, and the Lake District. I've loved them all for the beautiful scenery, and each has books associated with it. For example, we walked near the site where Mr. Rochester's Thornfield Hall must have been and also near the setting of Geraldine Brooks' "Year of Wonders". I've also seen the 7 Dials in London, an area that is much changed from the dangerous slum mentioned in a number of Regency romances. It's fun, especially for someone like me who has little visual imagination, to actually see the settings where fictional heroes and heroines walked and lived.

[Susan/DC]

P.S. Meant to add that I love Mary Stewart's books. She creates such vivid characters and places them in such vividly-depicted settings. I think Richard's first line when he meets Charity for the first time in "Madam Will You Talk" is nothing short of brilliant: "All right you beautiful bitch, where's David?" You know he's angry and worried about his son and you know that Charity is beautiful without needing a word of description as to what she looks like. Economical and powerful.

[Rose_lingering]

Oh! This is wonderful and makes me want to reread "My Brother, Michael" and Mary Stewart in general.

[Anne Gracie]

I was thinking of This Rough magic on Corfu, Susanna, and of The Moonspinners on Crete. Wouldn't it be fun to do a whole Mary Stewart tour?

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

I can't remember visiting a certain place 'because' of a book, but there was a bit of a coincidence once, when someone recommended Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind to me as I had just returned from Barcelona and I had an uncanny feeling while reading it because most of the action happened in places I had just visited.

[Faith Freewoman]

You're working on a sequel to Every Secret Thing?!?!

I'm so excited. I paid attention when you said it's being fit in between other projects, and I'll try not to be a pest (it's hard for me), but just want you to know I'd LOVE to read it. Every Secret Thing is one of my two most favorite of your books!!!

And this was a lovely, idlyllic fantasy trip to Mary Stewartland. Thank you!

[Barbara Monajem (@BarbaraMonajem)]

When I went to Scotland, I made a point of visiting the part of Skye where Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight takes place. I would also like to see the area of France featured in Madam, Will You Talk?, and if I ever get to Greece, I will follow in your footsteps following hers. :) I would also like to visit Corfu because of Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. Lovely post, thanks!

[StephanieL]

I had the exact same response. LOL

[Sue McCormick]

My husband, my older daughter, and I took a 12-day tour of England and Scotland; of course the tour wasn't dedicated to authors, but we worked that in wherever we could.

The only specific connection was to "Christoper Robin" — as my daughter and I shocked a fellow American (not part of our tour) by reciting "Changing the Guard" as we watched just that.

But we thought of authors everywhere we went. I know St. Andrew's isn't the setting of Shadowy Horses, but I wondered if there was any resemblance — and so on.

Stories set in the U. S. don't give me quite the same desire to go there. Perhaps it's because I have tasted the Rockies in Phoenix and Colorado, the south in Atlanta, Charleston, and Florida, and I live in the mid-west and have lived in the NYC area.

But I did collect battle fields as we rode by them and usually connected the battle to a book.

Nora Roberts does inspire me to visit Antietam. And I have been to Washington and seen Fort McHenry from the Highway — so I was revisiting them as I read Mary Jo's Always a Rebel.

And St. Louis — the city where I grew up, is the setting for several books — from Winston Churchill's* The Crisis, to future events written by Heinlein and Asimov.

* This is the little remembered American author, Winston Churchill. He isn't much known now, but his novels were so popular when the future prime minister was reporting that he add the S. to his reporter by-line. Doesn't really do any good, they both have Spenser as a middle name.

[Peg from DC]

I love the suspense novels of Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters. Her first Vicky Bliss novel (Borrower of the Night) is set in Rothenberg, Germany. On a trip to Europe with my husband and 2 boys, ages 8 and 10, I insisted we stop in Rothenberg to see the well-preserved medieval city and the carved altarpiece at the center of the story. The city now has a plethora of Christmas themed shops and features the Rothenberger Sneeball, a treat made of scrumpled up cookie dough dusted with powdered sugar. A big hit with all of us

[Faith Freewoman]

Solidarity, sistah! High five...

[Binnie Syril Braunstein]

Susanna -

I share your love of Mary Stewart's work. I read Nine Coaches Waiting first. But my all-time favorite is Madam, Will You Talk? As in so many of her other books, the place (Provence, Nimes, Chateau D'If) is a setting in its own right. Not to mention, of course, romance and suspense. Regarding Elswyth Thane, you should definitely read her Williamsburg series. I've read and re-read it many times. As for Tryst, it's a lovely ghost story - or a ghostly love story. But what you should add to your Thane TBR pile is Queen's Folly, which traces a portrait of Queen Elizabeth 1 down through the centuries. Truly a tour de force. Happy reading!

[lor]

When we traveled to England in 2004, one of my must sees was Bath because Georgette Heyer set so many of her books there. I had a wonderful time walking around the town and seeing so many of the locations mentioned in the books. Not quite in the same category was the trip to Lyme Park, which was Pemberley in the BBC/A&E TV version of Pride and Prejudice.

Several years ago we did a cross-Canada trip and when we were on Prince Edward Island we visited L.M. Montgomery's birthplace as well Green Gables. We also visited Bala, Ontario, twice because L.M. Montgomery had vacationed there in the 1920's and set my favourite novel by her, The Blue Castle, there.