Mrs. McPhealy’s American
by Claire R.McDougall
(published by Sibylline Press Oct. 24)
Winner of the Eric Hoffer award for fiction
“Every village has its idiot. Locharbert in Scotland had three.” This is the opening line of my novel “Mrs. McPhealy’s American,” and I think in those couple of lines the tenor of the book is set. I grew up in Scotland in a wee town like Locharbert, and then, like Steinbeck did in Cannery Row, I sought to portray this place and its people with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek. I suppose it was a way of exorcising the hold Scotland has on me. It didn’t work.
The other side of my biography is that I have lived in America for several decades, and so I have these two quite disparate world views and places vying constantly in my mind. In this book, I brought them together. I invented the most extreme American, in the shape of Steve McNaught, an alcoholic, burned-out Hollywood director, who buys a one-way ticket to Scotland to see if he can recover himself in this land of his ancestors. His plan is to stay with Mrs. McPhealy, a not-too-distant cousin, whose life he sends into a “bourach,” for she is a widow and has kept herself buttoned in for all these years. Mrs. McPhealy, it will turn out before the end of the story, has a few secrets of her own she’d rather not let see the light of day.
Steve and Mrs. McPhealy are on a collision course from day one, especially when her cleaning girl takes a shine to him. It just doesn’t seem like the newcomer fits into Locharbert at all. He is regarded, if not with suspicion, then with bemusement, like a passing balloon. He might have his roots in the area, but for the local inhabitants, he may as well come from a different planet.
The comely midwife and former hippie, Georgie, is counting down the hours until rural living becomes too much for the intruder and he leaves. But she is not beyond being charmed by an American, and eventually sparks begin to fly.
All of this, of course, is noticed and recorded through an almost metaphysical network of information that seems to hover over the town like a fine mist. The three “idiots,” who are not really idiots at all but, like a Greek a chorus, are the last word on what is so about Locharbert: past, present and possibly future.
When I was growing up in this atmosphere, I had the misfortune to be one of those tall tulips that appear every season in a field of otherwise uniform flowers. I didn’t fit in. For whatever reason, that skein of Scottish mist hanging over my life was something I felt driven to get away from. I had grand ideas about university and of becoming a writer. The locals would say to this day that I had highfalutin notions. And, probably for very good reasons, they couldn’t take that on board.
They shouldn’t be judged for this. A lot of this attitude has to do with Scotland’s history, having been constantly invaded by their neighbour to the south, England. This activity finally coalesced in the year 1707 and a spectacular power grab by England called “The Treaty of Union.” The Scots, I should mention, are not ones to lie down and die. Resistance began to build from the day the treaty was enacted to the present day, but the wily invaders, well versed in the art of colonization (cf. The British Empire) used all kinds of well-worn techniques to take the ground from under the feet of these impudent subjects. They banned the speaking of their native Gaelic and the playing of the bagpipes. They banned the wearing of the kilt, and up until my day in school they made sure Scottish history was not taught in Scottish schools.
To this day, a nice little conspiracy makes sure that (as one Scottish publisher told me), it is very hard to get Scottish books into Scottish bookstores. When the TV series made from the highly successful book series “Outlander,” by Diana Gabaldon, was about to come out in Scotland, the prime minister of England asked Sony to hold it back until after the independence referendum of 2014, so that the Scots would not latch onto any notion that they were in any way special. I have a Scottish time travel series of my own (to be published Sept. of this year) and other books about Scotland in the offing, but it is hard to impact the Scottish market.
The history, the land and the people of Scotland run in my veins. I would sorely like to move back. But for now, I am in place in the Rocky Mountains, co-existing with ghosts who will not lie down. This is the bedrock of my writing. Maybe a sense of longing like this lies beneath anyone’s literary venture. But, for me, I have ghosts to offer: Steve McNaught, Mrs. McPhealy, Georgie McBrayne, the randy postmistress, the English window cleaner, and, of course, the three wee fellas that haunt the shore.
Maybe I can draw you into that world for a little while. I think you will like it.
