Cassie McCullough

You can kind of understand what's going on.

You can demystify some of the magic and try and learn from a master and hopefully try and apply some of those techniques to your own writing.

So Margaret Lightning is the, you know, at the time we meet her, she's young but she becomes the matriarch of the family and later on she's fairly instrumental in some, you know, the kind of main, the big events that happen in later chapters in another form.

You mentioned that there was a, you know, that's quite idyllic and nostalgic in the campgrounds and I definitely agree with that.

I thought that as the book went on it,

got a lot more sad and harrowing and, you know, I think in that respect it's a bit of a tragedy, you know, kind of story.

I really love that it's a saga because with a saga you can show these transgenerational voyages of trauma and strength and healing and all those things that come down the line and are passed through parenting or not parenting, you know, as it may be sometimes.

And I thought that this book did that really well.

It showed the certain things that happened with one generation, unless they're healed or looked at, that they're going to be passed down and often with pretty tragic consequences.

Yeah.

And I think you'll find that with any kind of any communities that have been oppressed and made to kind of live on the outskirts of mainstream society, that there are always people who are just so instrumental in

bringing the community together and they always go above and beyond and Margaret Lightning is definitely one of those and, you know, without her kindness and without her care, those poor people who were segregated in the back wing of the hospital, you know, who knows how much sicker they might have gotten or how much earlier they might have died, you know.

I think, so Tom isn't, he's not in the book for a long time, and Celie is, and even when Celie isn't in the book, her absence is actually a really huge weight, I think, on her daughter and kind of

creates just so much heartache, which really changes the way that her daughter is and parents towards her own children.

So, again, that kind of intergenerational trauma that comes through.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, she's called by her boss.

He says that she's very business-minded.

I think that was the phrase he used.

And, you know, she sets up the laundry in town.