The Nature of Forgiveness
A novel of resilience and moving ever onward
The Nature of Forgiveness
It’s the year 2000 when Ren Fisher Harvey reconnects with her past and remembers what led her to love a burdened man. A historically immersive portrait of a life woven against the backdrop of what it means to be a mother and a daughter. At times familiar, at times unconventional, often bitter, always poignant.
Reflections on Aging and Time Passages
Themes in The Nature of Forgiveness include aging and revisionist history. We remember what we want and frame the past to fit our present. Does time heal all wounds? Can you forgive? The answer is as individual as the reader. I hope this story prompts you to consider these questions in your own lives.
A Little Bit of History
As a child in 1931, Ren’s experiences aboard ship, crossing from Canada to the UK with her mother, establishes her blueprint for life. As the last of six children, born in the interwar years, she witnesses her parents’ marriage as a shared crisis spanning fifty years. As a young woman, breaking free from an embittered family, she begins to find her way and build her life in the sphere of Jack Holtz. When faced with an irrevocable decision, she is reminded that trust is fleeting and survival, a tenacious motivator.
Ren turns to more destructive behaviors as remedies for loneliness and fulfillment, where exhilaration and uncertainty are the outcomes. Distant and elusive as a wife and mother, she convinces herself there are secrets a husband and daughter do not need to know.
When the past confronts the present, she learns that growth and comfort make for strange bedfellows and comes to understand what it means to forgive, why her history should not be forgotten, and the power of reconciliation.
The Question it started with
When I first started working on this project, I was stuck on a story I’d heard many years ago about a mother and daughter aboard ship traveling from Canada to England. I sat on the idea of the story for about twenty years, but it never left me. I wanted to come up with a rational explanation for the circumstance, but the person who shared it with me––the child aboard that ship was long gone.
The Nature of Forgiveness is a work of fiction, although the inciting incident on the ship is based on fact. The story started with the question––why would somebody harm a child? The only way I could make sense of what I was told was to come up with a plausible set of circumstances that were grounded in time and place.
The essence of the characters are based on circumstances of Canadian wives, mothers, and families in the Great War and interwar years and the impact of those beginnings on future generations.
I hope the reader shares the sense of strength and resilience in Ren Fisher Harvey’s story.
The Canadian Landscape
The narrative taps into what happened at the end of World War I when maimed and injured soldiers returned to Canada. It’s not so much about the men that returned, but the circumstances of the wives left behind. The history books abound with the stories of politics, the battles, and the men, but I was curious about the wives of the married men left behind to raise children and keep the home fires burning. What was their struggle?––then what happened to the wives at the end of the war when the men returned and, “he was no longer the man she married…once a bride to an able-bodied husband, and now a helpmate to an amputee.”
What I’ve been curious about is the context of the women raising children in the interwar years, and the downstream impact flawed mothers had on future generations.
My Story
After thirty-plus years in the corporate world, I now focus on one of the things I love most, and that is words on the page.
I strive to keep fitness an integral part of my life, although I’m no longer involved in long-distance pursuits that involve swimming, cycling, or running. Now, I’m more likely to be found walking the trails around my home north of Toronto or in a Pilates studio.
Grounded in the notion of lifelong learning, I believe in moving ever onward.