The
Story Behind the Story of Prevailing Winds
by Hadley Hoover
By the time I wrote
Prevailing Winds, I had "built" and populated a small North Dakota town for
three earlier novels and created a fictional Dutch town for two additional
historical novels. I faced a dismal truth: I was flat out of ideas for
character names.
Kendall and I were
vacationing in Mendocino at the time it was really crucial that I come up with
names—and fast. This was actually our topic of discussion as he drove in search
of something else of immediate importance: a pizza place for lunch. As
navigator, I spread Fort Bragg's map out on my lap and fussed, "I don't know how
people find their way around town! How is a visitor supposed to know where the
700s are if there are no numbered streets? All the streets are just words!"
Kendall was watching street
signs, and readily agreed. "Right. Well, we're on Laurel—do you see that on the
map?"
I did . . . along with dozens
of other names, too. Names! If anyone familiar with the streets of Fort Bragg
senses something very familiar about Prevailing Winds, that's because I
lifted almost all the names I used for my characters right off the city map.
What a gold mine it was. I decided to spell Cory without the "e" the street
uses, but otherwise, all I had to do was pick and choose, mix and match—first
names and last names, all right there.
One of the delights in
writing this story was incorporating the series of whale totems into the plot
line. At first, I had thought to use only the sculpture on the grounds of the
Little River Inn, but as I investigated and received permission from Warren
Arnold, the sculptor, I got goose-bumps, realizing what could happen if I
expanded my plot to include the whole lot of 'em.
The actual day-to-day
personal circumstances of writing of this book were grim, to say the least. For
the 84 days in which I wrote the bulk of Prevailing Winds, Kendall and I
were apart—not by choice, but by necessity. We were making a move from
Minnesota to California, and so Kendall, the furniture and I made the trip west
together, then I flew back to finish out my job in Minnesota while he "batched"
it in California and waited for me (trying not to gloat over California's
considerably better weather!)
We burned up our cell-phone
minutes, and I came home from work each night to my card table, air mattress,
and laptop and wrote my little heart out until 9:00 o'clock when I could call my
coastal guy. It was nothing I ever want to do again, but being apart from
Kendall sure made it easier for me to understand how lonely Laurel could feel!
PS: Yes, I wrote all of
Laurel's poems.
View from Little River Inn
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