ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is fiction, but was sparked by a story my childhood piano teacher told of her mother Grace Ladd’s purchase of a small boy near Pulo Anna for four pounds of tobacco. I read Grace’s letters and her husband Frederick’s logs in manuscript, but also relied on Louise Nichol’s excellent compilation of the letters in Quite a Curiosity, the Sea Letters of Grace F. Ladd, and I recommend it as a fascinating read on its own behalf. Kathryn Ladd, Grace’s daughter, was a brilliant piano teacher and a substantial, complicated person. Although I named Kay after her, they are not much alike; and in fact Miss Ladd was born after that original boy had died. As well as the taking of Aren, I’ve drawn freely on other events and images from Grace Ladd’s letters; I took the liberty of combining two of Captain Frederick Ladd’s ships, the Morning Light and the Belmont, into one barque. Another indispensable source for this book was Words of the Lagoon by R.E. Johannes, an examination of fishing culture and language in the Palau island group. I used incidents and people, real and imagined, from many other first-hand accounts of travel in the south seas. Some passengers and events on the Constellation reflect E.C. Spykman’s account of her pilgrimage by steamer to Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave on Samoa, a lovely portrait of a journeying girl in 1922. Most of the surnames are invented, but Arthur is named in honour of my Elm Street neighbours, the Wetmore sisters. (The eldest Miss Wetmore gave me sound but depressing advice, writing in my childhood autograph book, “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be pretty.”) Among many other sea-faring diaries, Alice Wetmore’s account of their voyages as children in 1903, stopping at Port Elizabeth and Rio de Janeiro, illuminated those places for me. Anyone who has delved into the deeper cut of Gerard Manley Hopkins will recognize lesser-known lines of his attributed to Mr Brimner’s friend Prior, who embodies facts of Hopkins’s life and early death, and of Hopkins’s mother, who after her son’s death used black-bordered paper for her correspondence for the rest of her life.

The Commonwealth Foundation gave me my first opportunity to visit the New Zealand and the South Pacific, and the SSHRC research fund gave me a second, more comprehensive research trip to Tonga, Fiji, Singapore and Hong Kong. I’m indebted to Dr. Roxanne Harde and Dr. Kim Misfeldt at the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta for their support through the SSHRC process. Tia Lalani was a fine research assistant and reader. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the Canada Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. A more comprehensive list of books and research material is posted on my website, marinaendicott.com

I heard Miss Ladd’s story of the boy bought for four pounds of tobacco with an instantaneous feeling of revulsion. But what people have done to other people in Canada is no less obviously wrong. The residential school at Blade Lake is fictional, but would have held students from Stoney/Nakoda, Tsuut’ina, Cree, and possibly Blood and Blackfoot peoples. To begin to understand the terrible legacy of residential schools, the best and hardest reading is survivor accounts, and there are so many. I’ve put a list of links at marinaendicott.com

If not for Dr. Heather Young-Leslie’s introduction to her Tongan family, and to the Pacific world, I’d have been sunk. Heta’s generous practical and scholarly advice have been invaluable—all errors are of course my own. Grateful thanks to Mahina Tu‘akoi and her son Sione for their hospitality and affectionate friendship. I also thank Ebonie Fifita for introducing me to Nukua’lofa and the rest of Tongatapu, twice, and Mary Rokonadravu for our visit in Suva. I hope to visit you all again someday.

Some of the people I’d like to thank can’t hear me any more: first among them, my revered Greek teacher, Mrs. Marion Seretis, sadly missed by all who knew her; also Mrs. Killam, Miss Lydia Davison, and Mr. Paul Best, all of Yarmouth.

But many can. Thanks to intrepid Thyra Endicott for coming with me on the little ship; to the learnèd Timothy Endicott for patient re-reading and help with Greek; to Helen Oyeyemi for reading pages many times, and to Caroline Adderson for an early reading—it is good to talk with wise friends and great writers. Thanks to my well-beloved editor, Lynn Henry, most deserving of praise, and my dear and inspiring agent, Tracy Bohan. Rachel and Will listened to endless yarns about the south seas and are absolved from ever reading this book. Peter did read this one. Like me, it lives because of him.