Moving to Nova Scotia inspired bestselling author’s love of history

USA Today and #1 bestselling author Genevieve Graham has just released the highly-anticipated novel, ‘Bluebird’ — her seventh historical fiction in seven years

CITYnews halifax \ Steve Gow

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For would-be writers fearing they’ve may have missed their opportunity for success, Genevieve Graham is simply an inspiration.

“I didn’t start writing until I was 42,” laughs the bestselling author. “And now I can’t stop!”

Not only has Graham kept busy typing away ever since she was gifted a laptop for Mother’s Day in 2007, but she has just published her seventh acclaimed novel, Bluebird, to stellar reviews.

In fact, the new book has been so well-received that even Natalie Jenner (bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society) has claimed that “this pure and ennobling tale is exactly what our own hearts need now.”

Not bad for someone whose dream growing up was originally set to music.

“My plan was to be principal oboe of the Montreal Symphony but that didn’t pan out,” laughs Graham, who graduated from university with a degree in music and performance. “I have no idea how I ended up an author.”

The truth is, Graham found herself in the world of historical fiction rather organically.

After growing up in Ontario and living in Alberta for years, Graham found herself moving to Nova Scotia in 2008, where she suddenly found her inspiration.

“Nova Scotia is the reason I started writing about Canadian history,” admits Graham, who quickly discovered an abundance of local folklore. “I slept through history class growing up. I wasn’t interested at all about history and then when I got there, all of a sudden I was surrounded by 100-year-old houses and graveyards that had been around for generation after generation.”

Before she knew it, Graham was putting pen to paper and discovering her life’s calling on what would eventually be her first published historical fiction, Tides of Honour. In that 2015 novel, Graham sets a love story against the devastating backdrop of the Halifax Explosion.

“The way that I always start out with my stories is that I always (imagine) the subject I want to write about as a black and white photograph,” explains Graham about her approach to historical fiction. “So if I want to write about Prohibition, I need to understand what it was all about, and the more I research, the more details I can inject into that. It starts to feel to me like I am colourizing a photo and bringing it alive.”

For Graham, the process of crafting a rich, accurate portrayal involves injecting herself into the work as much as possible. Not only is her research exhaustive but, in some ways, she becomes part of the characters.

“If one of my characters is walking down the street and I am with her, I need to know everything that she sees — if there’s a store window, what is she seeing inside that window and what does everything cost and what does she use it for,” says Graham. “(So) I am incorporated into the story in a way because the research is so deep.”

That level of dedication has certainly paid off for Graham. Not only have her books been exceptionally well-received but she is now a number one bestselling author of such hit novels as Letters Across the Sea, Promises to Keep and several others.

Now with Bluebird, Graham is set to return once again to the top of the bestseller list.

Written over the course of the past year from her office in Timberlea, Bluebird is a compelling novel that follows a young Canadian nurse during the Great War and Prohibition.

After meeting an injured trooper in Europe, the young nurse and the soldier reunite years later back home in Ontario where the scars of war intersect with a city that is gripped by bootlegging and rum-running.

“The original idea was to write about Prohibition,” admits Graham. “When I first moved to Nova Scotia, I heard it a lot from people — ‘my great uncle used to participate in bootlegging, my grandfather was a rum runner’ — I sort of heard it everywhere so it was on my mind to write for awhile.”

Combining a tale about rum runners ferrying illegal booze across the border with personalities who battled through the horrors of war seemed like a good match, so when Graham began studying the Nursing Sisters of Canada, she found the protagonist that would form the heart of Bluebird.

An affectionate term for a group of women who worked to support soldiers during World War One, the Nursing Sisters were nicknamed bluebirds due to the blue and white uniforms they wore.

“I wanted to know more about Canadian women’s roles in World War One and the bluebirds were an obvious one for me,” explained Graham, adding that although she set the story in Ontario, Nova Scotia has its share of history with the narrative. “I did hear a lot from (Nova Scotians) saying their families, at some point, had been involved in Prohibition.”

Although she is already hard at work on her next book, Graham is excited to see how readers react to Bluebird. As challenging as it was to write, she says the reward of labouring over fastidiously-detailed Canadian historical fiction is certainly always worth the effort.

“What people like is that they begin to feel like they could almost be there,” says Graham about her detailed narratives. “They could lose track of where they are and they can become a part of the history.”

For more information on Bluebird, visit Genevieve Graham’s website.