On today’s episode we chat with Nancy Taber, an author whose stories are inspired by women’s forgotten histories, her military service, and her love of the fantastical. Nancy grew up in a military family, joined the military herself, graduated from military college, and served as a Sea King helicopter Tactical Coordinator. When she completed her service, she earned her Master’s and PhD degrees, and became a university professor researching the intersection of gender, militarism, and learning. Nancy is a facilitator for Writers Collective of Canada, was named a Top Woman in Defence 2022 by Esprit de Corps magazine, and is a member of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.

The idea for her debut novel, A Sea of Spectres, began when her mother sent her an article about their ancestors' experiences in the 1758 Acadian expulsion from Prince Edward Island. The focus of the article was on a man, with only brief mention of his wife, Madeleine. And she thought, I can't have that - Madeleine deserves to be the heroine of her own story. So she intertwined Madeleine’s narrative with Acadian folklore and two point-of-view descendants, inspired by Acadian history, an 1864 almanac, and her research about women's service in contemporary (para)military contexts.

Nancy believes in the importance of highlighting women’s stories, demonstrating how past connects to present, families lose and find each other, and the fantastical dwells beneath the surface of everyday life. In A Sea of Spectres, she deftly braids three timelines together, each as engaging and fully drawn as the other. With whip-smart contemporary dialogue and moving, evocative historical writing, she brings to life three different generations of Acadian women in a riveting, crackling, chilling mystery.

Please visit https://www.nancytaber.ca to connect with Nancy and for links to order her novel.

Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of A Sea of Spectres  at Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/a/90599/9781773661575 

A little about today's host-

Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”

Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/. 

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Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kathleen Basi. I'm an award winning musical composer, a feature writer, essayist, and, of course, storyteller. Let me tell you a little bit about today's guest. Nancy Taber is a university professor and fiction author who loves stories about strong, complex women. The lives of her protagonists often intersect with military and police forces, and museums tend to pop up in her work.

She has an affinity for putting her characters in perilous situations on ships at sea surrounded by fantastical creatures and ghosts. Nancy is a former military officer who served as Sea King helicopter tactical coordinator. Part of her job once included leaping out of a helicopter into the ocean. Now most of her job includes sitting at a computer, drinking massive amounts of coffee, and dropping her characters into the wild and sometimes weird circumstances. Jamie Chang, best selling author of The Library of Legends and The Phoenix Crown, praised A Sea of Specters as a gripping story that's ultimately a tale of family, trust, and identity. Welcome, Nancy, to Author Express.

Hello. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.

Okay. I've gotta start by asking, jumping out of helicopters? Yes. That's just crazy. Talk to me about that.

So as a sea king helicopter navigator and tactical coordinator, one of the things that you help do is help with search and rescue operations or anything that's done in in the back door of the helicopter. So that as you're, like so I had a station in near the front of the cockpit, where the pilots were and also a sonar operator. And so you'd get up and you'd move to the back and you'd hook yourself in and open the door. And then you would the pilots would lower and you would jump into the water. And then the other person, the sonar operator, would extend down on the hoist to pick you up, and you would take turns. And it was a good way to train for actual search and rescue operations.

So what's the most interesting thing about where you're from now or when you were as a kid? Either one.

So my father was in the navy, which meant that we moved often. But the one constant place in our lives was Prince Edward Island, PEI, where my mother was born and where she grew up and where my extended family lives and where she and my father now live. So PEI has always been a touchstone in my life no matter where we were for vacations, holidays, and celebrations. And the most interesting thing for me about the island is the multitude of legends and lore, the stories told over the years and passed down through the generations. Ghosts, fantastical sea creatures, pirate gold, and phantom ships. The island is a fascinating place with an intriguing history, and one certainly informed my writing of a sea of specters.

Okay. So you can't mention Prince Edward Island without mentioning Anne Shirley. So how much does that figure into your experience at PEI?

Well, I do remember reading the stories and my mom reading the stories to me as a child, and I remember going to watch Anne of Green Gables the musical at the Confederation Center. And as a child, just sort of being enthralled with the whole thing and even at one point where, for those of you who are listening who know the story, Matthew was coming in a carriage to go see Anne Shirley, and he comes in behind the sound comes from in behind you in the Confederation Center. And I remember sort of standing up and looking around and, like, where's Matthew? Where's Matthew? And, of course, there wasn't a horse and carriage behind me in the theater, but he did come on stage. And it was sort of one of those things that we would do pretty much every summer and then do with my cousins as well is take them to go see the musical.

Oh, so they play it all the time. I guess that makes sense that they would play it all the time. It's probably like being in any of the places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived, that they probably have people dressed up in costume and stuff all the time.

Yes. And they use it's a very big tourist draw on there. There's a museum there. And so yes.

Yeah. At some point, I I am determined to get up there because Anne Shirley was huge in my in my own literary formation. So

Oh, you definitely need to go. Yes. I'll tell you all the places.

Oh, yes. Okay. I will take you up on that. So did you have siblings growing up?

Yes. I have a younger sister. She's 2 years younger than I am.

Okay. So tell me how she would describe you as a child.

Wow. What a question I did not prepare for.

Headstrong. This is how we get to know you.

Yes. Exactly. She would probably have described me as as headstrong and frustrating. We also spent a lot of time just, like, one of those times where you would play everywhere outside. And when the street lights came on, that was the time for you to come home. So I remember spending lots of times outdoors with her climbing trees. And she does have a story where she climbed a tree and I left her up there, but I'm not sure I remember it quite that way.

It's all about the perspective. You know?

Exactly. Yes.

Okay. So let's sort of switch gears here, and tell us something about Sea of Spectres. Can you describe your book in one sentence?

Sure. So on the choppy coastline of Prince Edward Island, an ocean phobic detective evades the deadly lure of a phantom ship by delving into her family's history and harnessing her matrilineal powers of premonition, where she starts pulling the threads of a missing person's case, and she discovers how uncanny abilities have impacted her ancestral line. Madeline's abilities tried to keep her family safe during the expulsion of the Acadians in 1758. Celeste tempted her to take back what was rightfully hers in 1864, and now it's Reyna's turn.

Okay. So there is sort of a historical. There's, like, family. You've got superpowers, it kinda sounds like.

Yes. Supernatural, for sure.

This is a very interesting thing. Can you tell me where the idea for this book came from?

Well, it first started when my mother sent me an article about my ancestors in the Acadian expulsion, and the article was really based on, Alexis the the man, and there was a very little mention of Madeleine. It just said when she was 15 years old, she married Alexis and had 15 more children by him. And I was just enthralled with her story, and I wanted to know so much more about her. And so as I was researching her, there's a fair bit of information about the facts of her life, but just census information. So when she was born, when her children were born, when her children died, when her children married, when they left on the Acadian expulsion, when they were taken to France, and very little, though, is known about how they got back. They know they got back somehow, but not specifically what precipitated that or how they came back. There is an exhibit about Madeleine in the Acadian Museum in Muskogee. So there is a fair bit of information about the bare facts of her life, the census lives, but not about how she actually lived, what she might have thought, how she got through the difficulties in her life.

And I was just enthralled with the idea that she was basically thrown onto a ship with with young children and what she would do to survive that and how what the sort of the abilities from Acadian folklore might have affected that. And so that sort of underbewed starting with Madeleine. And then I my father sent me an almanac from 1864 Charlottetown. And there was a really interesting snippet in there about 2 bank cleaners who were accused of stealing and counterfeiting banknotes in 1864. And so I put those together, and I wanted to bring in a contemporary character. And so as a professor, my research is looks at the intersection of gender militarism and learning in a variety of contexts, particularly in military and paramilitary organizations. So Raina became a police officer. And so I tied that all together with the Phantom ship, which is a famous, Prince Edward Island legend of a ship in the Northumberland Strait and thought, okay.

If so, if these powers of premonition and these three women in their very different times, what would tie them together, and how could they learn from each other, and what would they each do in order to survive and protect those that they loved?

This all sounds so interesting. I've heard of Acadians before, but I don't really know the history. So can you, like, sum that up in, like, one sentence?

Sure. So the the Acadians were people who lived in the Maritimes in Canada and on the Atlantic seaboard of what is now United States, and they were involved in the 7 Years' War and that the French king and the British king kept trading the lands in the area of Acadia. And so there was a more well known expulsion in in the early 1750s from what's now known as Nova Scotia. But what's much less little known is in 1758 was the expulsion that took place in Prince Edward Island. And so any of the French residents were then forced from the land and taken most of them were taken to, France. Some ended up in Britain, and some decided to Louisiana.

It makes me circle back to Anne because I remember there's sort of an undercurrent in those books about how the little French boy like, they're clearly other. They're clearly othered.

Exactly. Yes.

And I had never thought about that before.

Yeah. And that's one of the things I was really interested in Celeste in the 1864 time period because she was would have been a French Catholic Acadian in Charlottetown in a time when it was mostly English Protestant. So it would have made it even more difficult for her to survive.

Oh, that's also interesting. This makes me really wanna read this book. Let's talk a little bit about the writing process, your writing journey. What surprised you the most about your career as a writer?

I would say how serendipitous is it is, and and it's, not a straight line. And starting the book and learning the craft of writing as I was writing and and taking courses and reading craft books, getting feedback from other people was just so important because the story that I have now is basically nothing like the story I started with except for Madeleine and Celeste existed with those bare facts of what, sort of inspired the novel, as I told you. And even moving through, like, feedback from my agent and from editors and then from Acorn Press, my editor there, It just amazes me how the more eyes on a story, the better it becomes. And I'm just so pleased and privileged to be able to work with these amazing women who've helped me shape the book into what it is today.

Yeah. I totally sympathize with that. I have always said I thought my book was as good as it could be before it ever went to an agent and it got better. And then I thought it was definitely as good as it could possibly be before it went to the publisher, and the editing process at the publisher just made it sparkle in a whole new way. It's just really incredible if you can be open to being corrected and guided and keep your mind open. It's it is. I affirm you. I I agree.

Okay. Well, let's start wrapping it up here. Let's ask, what's the best place for people to find you if they wanna go online and find out about you or your book?

So my website, nancytaber.ca, has information about A Sea of Spectres. It has preorder, and it will have order links, social media links, contact info, including for my newsletter, and any updates. So you can find it all there. nancytaber.ca.

Perfect. Thank you. Alright. So let's close-up today by asking what book or story inspires you the most?

This is such a difficult question because I love novels, and I hate leaving some out even though it's a question that I'm not sort of tied to for the rest of my life. But I'd have to sort of look at, I think, when I was a child. And the books that drew me the most, I think, were were 2, Wrinkle in Time and also the Oz books. And what I loved about them was how an ordinary girl in an ordinary world finds a portal to a magical world and finds extraordinary adventures and also how magic can underlie the everyday ways just around the corner. I love that idea, and I think it's really informed my writing as well.

It sure sounds like it. That's I was gonna say that's about the best connection between what inspires you and your work that I think I've ever heard, so that's very cool. Well, thanks so much for being with us on Author Express today. The book is Sea of Spectres. Everybody, go check it out. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you'll take a second to give us some stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform.

We'll be back next Wednesday. And in the meantime, follow us on Instagram at author express podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.