Waitressing
in an Erie Diner Results in a Novel
Waitressing
in an Erie diner was a necessity for Kathleen Valentine while she attended
college at Behrend-Penn State. Now, nearly forty years later, that experience
is the background for her first novel The Old Mermaid's Tale,
released in July by Parlez-Moi Press.
Set in
the fictional town of Port Presque Isle, PA in the early 1960s, The
Old Mermaid's Tale is the story of Clair Wagner, an Ohio farmgirl
attending Chesterton College there. Valentine admits that Chesterton
is a thinly disguised version of Behrend and that the streets and businesses
of Port Presque Isle will be familiar to those who know Erie. The author
said she originally wrote the book using Erie as the setting but revised
it to a fictional town so she could expand the story line.
"What
I really wanted to do," Valentine says, "is tell the story
of Lake Erie and its importance in the lives of the people who live
around it. I live in Gloucester, Massachusetts now and there are lots
of books about the maritime world here like Sebastian Junger's The
Perfect Storm. But I wanted to write about the maritime world
of the Great Lakes, especially Lake Erie."
Valentine spent
several years researching the maritime history of the Great Lakes. In
her book, Clair Wagner, like the author, takes a job in a waterfront
diner to pay for college. As she becomes acquainted with the seamen
who frequent the diner her knowledge of Lake Erie's history of great
storms, shipwrecks, maritime legends, and folklore grows. Though the
novel vividly portrays the lives of the mariners it is, above all, a
love story.
Clair's
first romance is with Pio, a handsome young Italian fisherman who works
on lake barges to earn money in order to buy his own, ultimately doomed,
fishing tug. Clair has a brief romance with Gary, the charming son of
a wealthy shipping tycoon, during which she is introduced to the working
face of the commercial waterfront. Ultimately, she meets Baptiste, a
mysterious Breton mariner injured in a shipwreck who now earns a living
as a musician in waterfront taverns. Author Ingeborg Lauterstein, in
a blurb on the books cover, calls The Old Mermaid's Tale
"grand storytelling in the style of Fielding."
Valentine's research
began when she was a girl in the 1950s and spent summer vacations on
Presque Isle with her godparents who lived in Erie. "The history
of shipwrecks and lost vessels is as exciting and perilous as those
on any ocean," she says. "My godfather loved the Lake and
he started my love of its history."
In fact, she dedicated
the book to him, Erie resident Norman A. Reider who died in 19__. Her
godmother, Rosemary Reider DeSantis still lives in the Erie area. "She
was the first person I gave a book to when it came out," Valentine
said. "She read it and said she loved it. She said she wished everyone
in Erie could read about the Lake's history. Well, she's a little prejudiced."
The
Old Mermaid's Tale is 296 pages long and is available to be
ordered through local bookstores or online at Amazon.com. Readers may
also visit the books web site at www.OldMermaidInn.com or the author's
web site at www.KathleenValentine.com.
Complimentary copies
of the book are available upon request to any publication wishing to
review it. Send requests to inquiry@parlezmoipress.com .
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NOVEL
RECALLS AUTHOR'S COLLEGE YEARS IN ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA IN THE 1960s
As a child,
Kathleen Valentine often spent summers in Erie, Pennsylvania with her
aunt and uncle. Her uncle loved the ships that came and went from the
commercial waterfront and he took her to the docks with him in the evenings
to watch them. As in many Great Lakes seaport towns in the 1960s, the
part of town closest to the commercial waterfront had many taverns frequented
by the men who worked on the ships. One of them, Valentine remembered,
was called the Mermaid Tavern.
"That
place fascinated me," she recalls. "There was a sign with
a painting of a blond mermaid on it and I just loved her. I asked my
uncle if we could go there sometimes and he told me it was not the sort
of place a girl could go to. I was, of course, even more intrigued."
Later Valentine
attended college at the Behrend campus of Penn State in Erie and her
interest in the taverns and businesses along the waterfront remained.
To help finance her college education she took a job as a waitress working
the night shift in an Erie diner where she had her first introduction
to the maritime world while serving meals to mariners and dockworkers.
But she never visited the Mermaid Tavern.
"It
was many years later," Valentine says. "I was living in Houston,
Texas and I went back to Erie to see my grandmother who was in the hospital
there. I wanted to visit her and then go down to the lower part of State
Street where the taverns were and have a drink in the Mermaid Tavern."
But, much
to her surprise, the tavern was gone. In fact the entire area surrounding
the docks had been renovated and upscale shops replaced the bars and
diners that had been there during her college years.
"It
was a terrible shock," she said. "I couldn't believe my eyes.
I was horrified. All the crazy fantasies I'd had about that tavern seemed
gone forever."
But the
Mermaid Tavern haunted her and a decade later she began to write about
it. Out of her adolescent fascination grew a novel, The Old Mermaid's
Tale, A Romance of the Great Lakes, which was released July 1st by Parlez-Moi
Press.
It is the
story of Clair Wagner, a young woman with a romantic imagination, who
leaves her farm-country home in rural Ohio to attend college in Port
Presque Isle, a fictional seaport on Lake Erie based on Valentine's
recollections of Erie. Clair is a dreamer who longs to meet a handsome
sailor with, as she says, "the constellations of the Northern Seas
in his eyes."
Her first
few attempts at romance are disappointing. Pio, her first love, is a
handsome Italian fisherman who longs to buy his own boat. Her next love,
Gary, is the son of a wealthy shipping magnate and it is he who introduces
her to the night life along the commercial waterfront in Port Presque
Isle where she finds a summer job as a waitress in a diner, not unlike
Valentine's own experience.
Clair becomes
intrigued by a tavern, the Old Mermaid Inn, which is, as Gary tells
her, the only place on the waterfront that "deserves its reputation".
The Old Mermaid Inn is run by Tessie who describes herself as "the
original old mermaid". She has rescued Baptiste, a fascinating
Breton sailor who was badly injured in a shipwreck, who now performs
as a musician at The Old Mermaid Inn. Baptiste soon becomes Clair's
great love.
The novel,
set in the early to mid 1960s, is filled with legends, stories of great
shipwrecks on Lake Erie, folklore, and colorful characters based on
Valentine's own experiences as a waitress in an Erie diner. She says
it was an exciting book to write.
"I
live in Gloucester, Massachusetts now and there is no shortage of books
about the hazardous lives of fishermen and mariners who work in the
North Atlantic but not a lot has been written about the perils of working
on the Great Lakes," the author says. "Last year I edited
Mark S. Williams' memoir of his life as a Gloucester fisherman, ‘F/V
Black Sheep'. While I was working on it I began to think about my novel
and decided to get back to work on it."
She credits
Gloucester historian and author Joseph Garland with encouraging her
to write the book.
"Joe
told me not enough people have written about the Great Lakes and that
I should do it," she says. "So I did."
She chose
to title the book "The Old Mermaid's Tale: A Romance of the Great
Lakes" because she wanted to emphasize the fact that it is about
that part of the country and also that it is a romance in the classic
tradition.
"I
love the grand tradition of romance novels written by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville, and James Fenimore Cooper," Valentine adds. "This
isn't a little love story but rather a story of adventure and a part
of American history, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway to international
commerce, that not a lot of people think about. I wanted to make it
unforgettable."
The novel
is currently available online through Amazon.com
and will soon be listed with other online booksellers. It is listed
with major distributors so it can be sold in bookstores across the country.
To read more about the novel visit Valentine's blog at www.KathleenValentine.com
or the books' web site at www.OldMermaidInn.com.
