Editor’s Introduction

This issue of Embark features a pleasing range of genres, styles, and characters, in novel openings written by authors from around the globe. While you can spot coincidental connections here and there, it’s best to take each opening on its own, approaching it as the writer intended—which is where the Authors’ Statements come in. Each statement shows particular interests on the part of the writer, revealing motivations and goals that are often hidden in published books. Over the years, I’ve found that reading these explanations, coupled with the pieces themselves, is one of the most rewarding aspects of editing Embark.

Some writers start with a real-life figure. In writing THE SERPENT AND THE ROSE, Catherine Butterfield was pursuing her fascination with Marguerite de Valois, who married Henri IV of France in the sixteenth century. No historical person can be completely known to us, but Butterfield has created a striking, lively voice for Marguerite, skillfully blending modern sensibilities with the mores of Renaissance France, and exploring the constraints that bound even powerful women in that era.

Max Burger, in MY FATHER’S FATHER, chose a figure closer to himself as the basis for his novel—his own grandfather, a Jewish man who emigrated to America in 1905 to avoid being drafted into the Austro-Hungarian military, then returned to Europe and survived the Nazis, only to be killed in Israel, decades later. Starting from this painful family history, Burger creates his own absorbing vision of his grandfather’s experiences, fictionalizing the story in order to gain a deeper understanding of unspeakable events.

Linda Drattell also envisions the difficulties of fleeing a war-torn country for a new life in America, in THE PECCADILLOES OF FILAMENA PHIPPS, but she chooses a very different stylistic approach: using the lens of humor, she illuminates both hope and absurdity in Filamena’s world, demonstrating her resilience in the face of loss, alienation, and abuse. By not specifying Filamena’s homeland, Drattell universalizes the experience of the immigrant, while satirizing the complacency of contemporary American towns.

C. Okorafor vividly explores the effects of losing one’s parents and facing life alone in SUMMERTIME AT THE CATHOLIC ORPHANAGE. Two boys in Nigeria navigate their final year in the institution where they grew up: Caio’s feelings for his best friend, Elias, are more romantic than platonic, but Elias, who wants to join the church, doesn’t return those feelings. Grappling with the questions of their future and the losses of their past, these boys must confront loneliness in their last summer together.

The main character of THE DEAD MAN’S BALLOT, by Victor Bondar, also faces profound loneliness. In this immersive dystopian novel, on an earth ravaged by humans’ destructive powers, an elderly man grieves the loss of his daughter while helping the younger generation with his diving skills—for after a few survivors creep back to their long-abandoned planet, they realize that only one rare source of energy can keep their fragile society alive: megacell batteries created eons earlier, now sunk deep in the sea.

Barbara Buckley Ristine’s protagonist confronts the destruction of human beings on an individual level in the fascinating FACES OF WAR, in which a young woman applies to a London art school during the First World War. Forbidden by her father to pursue her ambitions, she applies anyway, only to be ridiculed by the admissions committee. As the Author’s Statement tells us, she will soon find a new way to use her art: in the medical arena, helping soldiers who need reconstructed faces after being injured in the trenches.

The central character of Nick Padron’s atmospheric novel, THE WHITE WINGLESS ANGEL OF DOVE KEY, also works in a medical setting, as a nurse. She opens the tale by examining an inexplicable patient: a young man who initially appears dead after being fished out of the mangroves off a Florida key. Convinced that there is something magical about her patient, Nurse Parker keeps tabs on him after he is taken to a larger hospital, joining a growing number of women who are strangely drawn to this handsome stray.

In VITA ETERNA, Jenelle Boucher places magic not in the margins but at center stage. Jack, a boy living with his parents in a frontier town in 19th-century Kansas, receives a visit from two strangers who wield alarming powers and want to know about Jack’s own abilities. From there, with mesmerizing speed, the story escalates into violence, magical duels, and a life-changing revelation: despite his parentage, Jack is not human, and must decide whether to join the other immortals or go his own way in a hostile world.

Joyce Winters-Henderson, in HOME HOUSE, also writes about characters going their own way, but the enemies they face, as Black women in Tennessee at the close of the 20th century, are all too real. Anita and Sophia hope to create a community center in their hometown, but the relationships in their network of friends complicate their mission. Before presenting these women, Winters-Henderson offers a riveting thumbnail history of the house that Anita buys, as three generations of one family make it their own.

Samuel Finn looks forward rather than back in his exciting and fast-paced science-fiction novel, A VOICE FROM THE MOON. In the near future, human-produced space junk causes many problems in its chaotic orbit around the earth. A delinquent college student, roped into military service, pilots a scavenger ship tasked with reducing the clutter, but he finds a mystery when his equipment is mysterious damaged. As revealed in the Author’s Statement, this pilot will soon team up with aliens and androids to save humanity.

Surprising, intriguing, and filled with memorable phrases and descriptions, these ten openings and their Authors’ Statements held my interest from start to finish. I hope you enjoy them too!

— Ursula DeYoung, Founding Editor

Table of Contents

THE DEAD MAN’S BALLOT – Victor Bondar
VITA ETERNA – Jenelle Boucher
MY FATHER’S FATHER – Max Burger
THE SERPENT AND THE ROSE – Catherine Butterfield
THE PECCADILLOES OF FILAMENA PHIPPS – Linda Drattell
A VOICE FROM THE MOON – Samuel Finn
SUMMERTIME AT THE CATHOLIC ORPHANAGE – C. Okorafor
THE WHITE WINGLESS ANGEL OF DOVE KEY – Nick Padron
FACES OF WAR – Barbara Buckley Ristine
HOME HOUSE – Joyce Winters-Henderson