Tuckamore

Tuckamore is a term used to describe a natural phenomena found in the harsh environment of the west coast of Newfoundland wherein white cedar saplings and lesser growth bend low to the ground to escape the fierce winds of the long winter, forming a mat of indeterminate integrity. It is nature's adaptation for survival and though each element is made stronger than it would be alone, the whole remains a cover of dubious structural reliability. The tuckamore often covers wind-driven deep dangerous depressions gouged out of the solt soils that make up the depleted landscape. An innocent white snowfall covering the tuckamore might hide the mat and the hole below it, becoming an ironic and cruel invitation to unimagined tragedy. In TUCKAMORE, Claire Brand, the main character, has come to that moment in life when a summation statement is all but inescapable. She has grown old; her life is complete. As the rational person she is, she feels she has a mission to tidy up loose ends and close her chapter in the unending story of life on this stage. Having clearly stated as much at the opening of the book, what follows is the story of the life of Claire Brand - architect, aesthete, sister, wife, mother, lover and life partner as told by Claire herself, her sisters, her lover, and the narrator - the all-seeing eye of the god of the natural world. The setting is the wild west coast of Newfoundland. Sparsely inhabited, it is the perfect tabla rasa for the embroidered tale of many threads, a background foil to the complicated lives familiar in a world less removed. Claire's life is seen through a prism that delineates the natural world as a dominant force in the lives of ordinary people. She and her lover see themselves as part of that world. Its beauty is their solace and sustenance; its cruelty a mirror to the cruelty in life that they have experienced. She has come to see its presence as the stable matrix for the complex relationships and tragic events that are the meat of her life. But even with the comfort of seeing her life in this way, she is still aware that much of what she and her sister have become, and what they have done with their lives, is a product of the nurturing they received, or failed to receive from their parents. The story unfolds, told on these two planes - nature and nurture. Spunky and determined in old age, Claire begins to unfold her tale, speaking for herself. She describes the end of her marriage in terms familiar to many. It is in the details that the story takes on its particular twist. By chance altogether plausible, what follows is the beginning of a lifetime's tangle of events, one following the other, each subsequently leading to the next, ever deepening the complexity of the snarled threads. Like the tangle of tuckamore itself, it is impossible to know which events are cause and which are effect. A story of indeterminate resolution of forces is woven. While the narrator tells the over-arching story, each character recounts his own involvement. The reader comes to know differing points of view of the same story. Further, each character reveals first hand his own perspective on the events. He or she illuminates his own personality, value system, and dreams for happiness. Through this device, we fashion our own intimate portrait of each character, bringing him or her to life in our own unique way. Following the story's surprise climatic event, the reader finds a chapter of prose revealing Claire's interior world; an entr'acte providing the reader a moment to process what has happened. When the tale is finally told, and the lives of the character are resolved for better of worse, Claire keeps the promise she made to the reader in the very first sentence of the book. She knowingly brings her life to a close. It is not a suicide; that would be the taking of life. Instead, it is a sublime and peaceful ending to her life story. Three poems relevent to the themes of the novel follow as coda.