On Thursday, July 30, at 6pm, Elf Ahearn reads from her award-nominated story, “Written in the Water.” The story was a runner-up in the Romance category at the 2024 New York Book Festival.
Traditionally a Regency Romance author, Elf turned to the historical intersection between European colonists and the Wampanoag for "Written on the Water."
"The story takes place in October 1843 when the whaling industry was failing due to the near extinction of whales," she told me. "Quakers often drove Wampanoag men into debt, then forced them to pay it off with labor aboard whaling ships. By this time, ships could be at sea for years and find little game, so a tactic was to kill whale calves because their mothers wouldn’t abandon the carcass. My hero, Sequinauk, refuses to harpoon a calf. Upon returning to the island, he is jailed as punishment. By 1843, the native population had either died of disease or migrated to the mainland to avoid exploitation by the colonists. Sequinauk escapes jail and becomes a fugitive."
The story's heroine, Clara, models the self-determination and spunk of Elf's Regency heroines.
"She's expelled from Nantucket--a historic incident that occurred at least once--but is shipwrecked on the island’s deadly shoals where 700 to 750 vessels were lost. The shoals were dubbed the 'graveyard of the Atlantic.' Sequinauk finds her washed ashore, and though he despises all white people, he helps her and eventually they fall in love.
"Though the plot is a fictional love story, written with a touch of magical realism, it clings to the facts of life on Nantucket during that era."
Elf comes from a family tradition of fascination with the past.
"I grew up in a household of adventurers," she says. "My father was an archeologist and my mother drove a jeep solo from Pakistan to Afghanistan via the Gomal pass, a dirt road with 45-degree inclines, to join my father at a dig. Interestingly, during the same trip, she broke her ankle exploring the catacombs behind the giant buddhas at Bamiyan. (The Taliban notoriously blew them up during its invasion of Afghanistan.) Never one to complain—literally—she crawled to the jeep, tightened her boot laces, and continued with the adventure. On another note, my oldest sister lives in Malaysia with 350 cats."
Elf will also read from "Call the Unnatural Heroes," based on the true story of Assassamough, a Nantucket Wampanoag who became a translator between tribes and the English.
"He adopted the Christian name John Gibbs," Elf says. "He is accused of speaking the name of Massasoit, the Wampanoag Nation sachem who helped the pilgrims survive at Plymouth Rock. The punishment for this offense was death. Massasoit’s son Metacomet, who is best known as King Philip, the first native to wage war against the colonists, traveled to Nantucket to kill John Gibbs. The island colonists offered to pay a ransom in exchange for Gibbs’s life. King Philip agreed, but all the English could collect was 11 pounds. The sum being far below King Philip’s demand, he threatened the colonists with blood and mayhem. The English and (possibly) the Tomokommoth tribe on the island called Philip’s bluff by counter-threatening to kill him and all the warriors with him. Philip and his men quickly boarded their canoes and left Nantucket." She finishes, "This story also contains magical realism."
Magical realism and Nantucket Island influence the author's long-term work as well.
"We have a 1938 tumbledown cottage on Nantucket that’s inspired me to write about the island’s history," she says. Instead of "whalers this whalers that, Moby Dick, blah, blah, blah," Elf is "sticking to the island’s native Wampanoag population. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff that happened prior to the skewering of sea-going beasts."
She adds, "Currently, I’m procrastinating on the third in a series of magical realism tales. If I can tie myself to a chair long enough to finish this story, the series will be out by Christmas."
We're pleased to welcome Elf in the first of this summer's events funded by Poets & Writers through a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.