Emancipation Day (31 page)

“Don’t you ever,
ever
call anyone by that word!” he yelled. I was staring up at him, and then he turned to look down the street to where the black kid was riding away.

“Do you
hear
me?” He shook me a little until I nodded.

“Do you
hear
me?” he yelled again, louder. I nodded again. “That is a very bad word! You
know
that. You know better than to call a person by that word!”

But I didn’t. No one had ever told me not to use that word.

My father looked up again and saw that the kid on the bike was at the end of the street, that he hadn’t stopped and was no longer looking back. Then my father took my face in his hands and lowered his voice, so only I could hear.

“Son,” he said, “don’t you know those people carry knives?”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This novel has gone through many changes in the twenty years it has taken me to write it. Early versions were impossibly long and unwieldy, and it was Patsy Aldana who persuaded me that a family saga covering nearly two hundred years and five generations might be too much for a first novelist. My agent at the time, Bella Pomer, was a model of patience while I reassembled, rejected, reimagined and rewrote the book into something she could go back to potential publishers with.

I was still at sea when Nita Pronovost, senior editor at Doubleday Canada, took me aside at a party and in five minutes told me exactly what I should do with it. By then I was smart enough, or desperate enough, to do it. Several bouts
of reassembling, rejecting, reimagining and rewriting later, I held the book in my hands that had been living in my head and heart for two decades. If anyone tries to tell you that writing a novel is easy, send them to Queen’s University Archives and let them read the twenty-two drafts that trace
Emancipation Day
’s metamorphoses.

Many people have lent a sympathetic and restorative ear to my lamentations. Among them I would like to thank Matt Cohen, Andrea Levy, Virginia Lavin-Moss, Lawrence Hill, and Jamie Swift. Jane Warren gave me some very practical advice, and Zoë Maslow provided much appreciated encouragement on a number of important levels.

I also thank my new agent, Anne McDermid, who has been very helpful with suggestions and tactical support; the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their invaluable financial contributions; and, of course, my wife, Merilyn Simonds, for her seemingly boundless patience and inspiration.