Thursday, March 22, 2012

Jenny Pattrick's historical novels inspire new Denniston walking trail

By Rachel O'Neill in the New Zealand Book Council Newsletter :
On the last day of NZ Book Month Jenny Pattrick will launch a self-guided walking trail on the South Island’s West Coast that links in with key events and locations from her novels The Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal.
Readers and trail walkers will learn about the local landscape and its history through the lens of the Denniston novels, opening up what you might expect from an experience that roves on and off the page. And for those of you who wish to keep things as interactive as possible, there is also an iApp for the tour, potentially a New Zealand first for this kind of literary venture.
Pattrick became very familiar with the historical coal mining area of Denniston when she was researching and writing the novels, which are set in the 1880s. ‘I visited the area many times,’ she says. ‘An old retired coal-miner, Geoff Kitchin, walked with me explaining how the coal was mined and where different families – including his own – lived. He brought the ghost towns to life. The Coal Town Museum in Westport was a great source of information too.’
Coal is an integral part of the fabric of historical Denniston, and Pattrick says connecting the novels to geographical sites was aided by her earlier research. ‘It was an easy process for me,’ she says, ‘because there are so many good old photographs of Denniston and old maps. I had placed my characters in real areas and had always imagined them living in precise places.’
Pattrick (right) deftly brings the bustling and boisterous settlement of Denniston to life, evident when the heroine of the novels, Rose, describes her surroundings:
‘I like living on the Hill because some people here are kind to me and I have my friends Michael and Brennan and I can go to school. Denniston is cold and dirty and around the Bins everything is rattling and crashing; the men have black faces and they joke even when they work so hard. Coal is everywhere inside and outside the houses. The white washing on the line turns black. When the wagons are racing down the Incline you have to watch out not to get run over and killed. Brennan’s big brothers all work in the mines even the twins who are eleven and his Dad and uncles too. Except the one who got killed by coal falling on him.’
Read the full article and view the launch details here on Open Book, the Book Council blog.

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