Many of Niagara-on-the-Lake cherished locales appear in a new book called Once Persuaded, Twice Shy, a modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
By page three, readers have been introduced to wineries, bike shops, the Clock Tower, bakeries “with pictures of Queen Victoria in the window,” a hat shop, art galleries and “the brightly lit awning of the Elysium's Royal Theatre, where a production of Blithe Spirit was still ongoing.”
Author Melodie Edwards recently told an audience at Palatine Hills Estate Winery that she has visited NOTL since her childhood, and it is “the most magical place.”
Edwards set her first book, Jane and Edward: A Modern Reimagining of Jane Eyre, on Bay Street in Toronto, a familiar landscape due to Edward’s other job as a corporate communications writer. Her American publisher and agent wanted more Canadian content, and for Edwards, setting her second book, a “romance/women’s fiction,” in NOTL seemed to make sense.
However, she chose to rename Shaw Festival because “I made the board of directors not nice people for the sake of the plot, and I didn't want that to get back to Shaw and for them to start losing my tickets,” she joked.
Edwards felt that she was lucky to have an agent and publisher who thought the Bay Street site was fascinating, because, she noted, many Canadian authors are asked to set their book in a small New England town. “When it came time for the second book, they said we would really love another interesting part of Canada.”
She acknowledged that “a lot of Americans do not believe (NOTL) is real, even though I put it in the acknowledgements. I have gotten messages saying Canada sounds amazing, and I wish that place was real.”
Edwards, who lives in Oakville, had already decided to do a reimagining of Persuasion, and knew that NOTL was the best setting for her book. However, the timing for continuing her locale research landed her right in the middle of the pandemic.
“There were still lingering effects of the pandemic, so it was actually kind of nice to come when the town was a bit abandoned. I went to all my old haunts. The book store, the Pillar and Post, the Churchill Lounge, but (the pandemic) also sent me looking for new locations. I came here with a couple of friends and things were still shut down, so we decided to go on a hike.”
They found the Niagara Gorge and the Devil's Whirlpool, and Edwards decided at that moment to write a hiking scene into the book.
Persuasion is a “second-chance romance,” said Edwards. It’s a story about Anne Elliot, who was deterred by family from pursuing the man she loved, and “they spend most of the book unable to make eye contact or talk to each other in any meaningful way.”
In the late 1800s, without cell phones and social media, it was easier for characters to avoid each other. So Edwards had the challenge of devising ways that the characters wouldn’t meet in small town modern NOTL. This “unique Canadian location was so filled with wonder and sceneries and activities and characters that nobody would notice that my hero and my heroine can't talk to each other for about three-quarters of the book.”
Another reason why NOTL was an easy sell is because both Jane Austen and NOTL existed in the Regency Era. “There's a fort that's built into the mounds of grass. There's the hiking trails, there's the bakery, there's small town life. I see tractors on the fields, but I also describe it as a luxury place with gorgeous, stunning wineries like this, spas and high-end hotels.”
“How am I going to cram this all into one book that people believe that it's real and that it captures a little bit of the magic?”
Audience member and Shaw Festival greeter Claire Waugh noted that Edwards’ descriptions of Niagara-on-the-Lake are “really, really good. I live here and how you're describing it is really how it is, down to particular shops and ghost stories and the Angel Inn,” she said.
Edwards admits she still hits her “plotting flaws” and occasionally has to airlift locations to where she needs them to be, such as a walk through a specific area of town she discovered wouldn’t take long enough for the prolonged conversation she had written. “There were fewer steps there than I recalled, and that conversation needed to keep going.”
Edwards was “raised in a world of books,” said her mother and retired English teacher, Linda Edwards, who attended the book talk to support her daughter.
During high school, Edwards submitted her plays to the Sears Drama Festival. She earned a Masters in Corporate Communication but then studied comedy writing at the Second City Training Centre.
Her sense of humour is evident in both her book talk, where she had audience members laughing with her, and in her novel, by introducing readers to a recurring character, Double-Oh-Goose, “a very disruptive goose,” she said.
She is currently working on an original novel, and also has in mind a reimagining of Mansfield Park, also by Austen. She also hopes to one day write a thriller.
Niagara-on-the-Lake, she said, “is romantic. It is gentle. It is a different time period in every season. It's stunning. I didn't get everything in here that I would like to have gotten in. I didn't get the Old Niagara Bookshop, which is a privilege just to enter, and I didn't get half of the wineries, or the restaurants. But I captured as much as I could and I hope people who read it enjoy it and feel like we did the town justice.”
Edwards’ books can be purchased at Thistle Bookshop and Cafe in Port Dalhousie, “a small independent bookstore,” said owner Tracy Fattore, who was at the book talk with stacks of Edwards’ two books.
