The Strange Gift of Being in the Right Place
I had the strangest experience at the History Through Fiction Conference last week. It was one of those weekends where the universe kept sending people my way that further confirmed I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
First, I’ll start with some important trivia that will bring some perspective to my kismet weekend in Beverly, Massachusetts:
I almost didn’t attend the HTF Conference. I was a late registrant. A last minute addition. I was only able to attend because someone else canceled.
Second, Americans who claim Norwegian ancestry represent only about 1.3% of the total U.S. population. And the majority of them are found in the upper Midwest, mostly North Dakota or Minnesota.
Now that I no longer live up north, I almostnever meet anyone with Norwegian ancestry, and it's rare that I meet anyone who has real ties to North Dakota (where I'm from) aside from those who traveled there to check the box so they can say they visited all 50 states. It's even rarer that I meet people who are connected to the obscure places near the Canadian border where my grandparents raised cabins and I spent my summers as a kid.
At the HTF Conference, I met three women—not one, not two, but three—who I shared so much in common with that it felt serendipitous.
We'll start with N.J. Mastro.
N.J. Mastro (left) and I at the HTF Conference, where we also both happened to wear sage green to the closing dinner.
N.J. sent me a private message during a WFWA historical fiction zoom meeting two weeks earlier. She has Norwegian ancestry and ties to Montana, so she wanted to reach out and tell me how excited she was to read about my work-in-progress. We started emailing and before we knew it, we found even more that we had in common. Nancy’s Norwegian ancestors settled in Northern Minnesota, and we even attended the same university in North Dakota.
So imagine our surprise, when we ended up sitting at the same table during a session at the HTF Conference last week. In our emails back and forth, neither of us mentioned attending the conference, so it was a total surprise to meet in person, just two weeks after forming such a unique connection via a random Zoom meeting.
Next, I met Sara Revsin.
Sara Revsin (left), me (middle), and Finola Austin (right)
Sara also has Norwegian ancestry, and her work in progress is inspired by her grandfather’s first cousin (once removed), who left her Midwest family’s farm at the young age of 18 and ended up working in The White House. Sara’s WIP is set in the 1930s during The Great Depression, which is when the second timeline of my novel is also set.
Of course, the stories we’re writing are wildly different, but we are in the exact same place in our author journeys (first-time fiction authors nearly ready to query), both writing about second- and third-generation Norwegians finding their own way in America in the 1930s.
Finally, this brings me to Frieda Sander.
Frieda Sander (left), me (middle), and Rachel Everley (right)
This is the connection I made that made me take a step back and go, “OK, Universe, you have my attention.”
Frieda was journaling on the beach when three of us showed up to get some fresh air between sessions. She put down her notebook and introduced herself. Frieda and I decided to take a longer walk back to the hotel, and while talking, we realized there is a chance our grandparents might have crossed paths at some point.
Frieda’s grandmother homesteaded in the Turtle Mountains. Where the hell are the Turtle Mountains, you ask? It’s actually a forested plateau in north-central North Dakota. It’s nearly in Canada. Don’t worry, nobody expects you to know where or what it is… but that’s where Frieda’s grandmother staked her claim. And that’s also where my great grandfather and his family chose to build a cabin on the beautiful shores of Lake Metigoshe.
After further discussion, I learned that Frieda builds websites for a living. And I confessed that I was the kid spending weekends in the public library in 1997 building X-Files and Titanic fan websites for fun. So, we happened to have that in common too.
What are the chances that—at a small historical fiction conference in Beverly, Massachusetts, with only 63 attendees—I would meet three other women with roots in North Dakota and Minnesota, all of us drawn to write the stories inspired by our ancestors?
It makes the world feel both bigger and smaller at once. Bigger, because of all the stories still waiting to be told—and smaller, because somehow, we found each other.
I feel as though there’s something extraordinary about this. That there are others–like me–who feel such a deep pull toward where they come from—their midwestern roots—enough to spend years trying to understand it, honor it, and bring it to life on the page.