After a hard night out in Dawson City, the RCMP coming knocking on Jo Silver’s door, asking about her whereabouts the previous evening. She barely remembers, but the reporter starts her own investigation on the reason for the visit from the police: the body of a local politician was found in the Yukon River. With each bit of information she learns, Silver finds someone guilty for something, and also unravels her own personal mystery…
This is the basis for Strange Things Done, by Bowen Islander and first-time author Elle Wild.
Wild says she originally conceived the idea as a film script, but happened to be pregnant while she researched the book.
“I spent two months in Dawson City during October and November and realized that it would be very challenging to film in that climate with a baby,” says Wild.
Wild formerly worked in film, and was accepted into UCLA to study film noir. After tallying up the cost of such a venture, she decided to just stay in Canada and make films. A Canada Council Grant and assistance from the Klondike Institute for Art and Culture sent her to Dawson City to start the project.
“Classic noir is set in a big, dark, rainy city,” she says. “But I am a big Cohen brothers fan and thinking of the film Fargo, I liked the idea of setting the story in a frigid, rural place.”
Wild adds that her father used to read Robert Service poems to her, and the opening lines to The Cremation of Sam McGee stuck in her head.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold.
“I had never been to the Yukon, and thought it might be an interesting location,” says Wild. “It turned out to be a very nice place for a mystery. You wake up in the morning to cold sounds, to ravens chortling and the sound of wood smoke. Every one knows each others business, and in the winter it can be hard to get out. When the gold rush ended it happened very suddenly, and people were afraid of getting trapped so they dropped everything – which is why Dawson City still looks like a ghost town. This story takes place just as the winter is coming and people want to rush out in the same way. All of the neighbours start suspecting one another…”
Wild’s book has won a number of pre-publication prizes, including the Arthur Ellis award in 2015 and a silver in the SouthWest Writer’s Annual Novel Competition. She’ll be launching Strange Things Done on Bowen at Doc Morgan’s on September 30, starting at 5:30 pm.
