The Canoe

By Michelle Baker

Set over the course of ten days in 1912, this poetic portrait of love and loss follows two simultaneous stories: the coming of age of Bernie Kingston, teenage son of a coffin maker who lives along the Chesapeake Bay and the voyage of Katherine Chambers, a middle-aged Englishwoman leaving home for the first time as she seeks to recover from the loss of her husband and son. Written in a diary format, their parallel journeys are told against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and the communities touched by its tragedy.

Side by side the woman and boy who never meet weave a discourse between youth and middle-age, between love and death, and between dual rites of passage: coming of age and coming to terms with loss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Baker
• Release date: Sep 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990503712

Michelle Baker

Michelle Baker is an artist, writer, and playwright. She is editor-in-chief of the Millionaire Girls’ Movement and a contributor to Huffington Post. Her one-woman show, Sole Survivors, toured in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York City, and Albuquerque for two years to much acclaim. Her visual art is represented by Gallery Minerva and is held in private collections.

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PRAISE FOR THE CANOE

"In The Canoe, Michelle Baker’s words compel us to feel the fragility and impermanence of life. She exposes our vulnerability and juxtaposes it with a vivid appreciation for the sweetness and sensuality of our human experience. Thus, creative tension flows."

– Michael J. Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci and Creativity On Demand: How to Ignite and Sustain the Fire of Genius

"This is a dazzling, deft collision of the human experience, history with an audible pulse, and truly literary expression. Baker navigates The Canoe’s ambitious themes boldly and leaves the reader richer for it."

– Candace Walsh, author of Licking the Spoon: a Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity

"Pure poetry in motion. A swift-moving, heartfelt tale of love and loss, two stories intersecting—and connecting—by magic. Michelle Baker is a born poet, and a born writer. The Canoe is just the start of what I hope to be a long idyllic journey through the love and soul of the human heart."

–Trent Zelazny, author of People Person, and To Sleep Gently

Michelle Baker has penned a lyrical and poignant tale in the year 1912 from two different points of view....The journey takes us back and forth from boy to woman, from land to sea, weaving a story of love and loss, of power and weakness...offering us, in Michelle’s words, ‘a pen transcribing our history in a distinct and invisible line.’

– Cheryl King, Creator and Producing Director of Stage Left Studio, in NYC

"In The Canoe, Michelle Baker mesmerizes the reader gently into powerful contemplation. The Canoe uniquely transfixes me into a contemplative state naturally from a thoughtful writer and her soulful characters."

– Doug Vincent, Founder, Boulder Storyhealers, and Playwright, A Day For Grace

The Canoe

Copyright © 2015 by Michelle Baker

Smashwords Edition

First edition, January 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below:

Pine Needle Roadhouse Press

Asheville, North Carolina

[e-mail]

www.thecanoebymichellebaker.com

Ordering information: Please contact the publisher for special discounts available on quantity purchases.

Book design and interior by Ginger Graziano - Ginger Graziano Design

Cover design by Gary Cascio - Late Nite Grafix

Ebook formatting by Maureen Cutajar

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baker, Michelle (Michelle Lynn), 1967-

The canoe / Michelle Baker. -- First edition. -- Asheville, NC : Pine Needle Roadhouse Press, [2014]

pages ; cm.

Includes index.

Summary: Set in 1912, this poetic portrait of love and loss follows the story of the teenage son of a coffin maker along the Chesapeake Bay, and a middle-aged English woman leaving home for the first time as she seeks to recover from the loss of her husband and son. Their parallel journeys are told against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and the communities touched by its tragedy.--Publisher.

1. Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.)--History--Fiction. 2. Titanic (Steamship)--Fiction. 3. Shipwreck victims--Fiction. 4. Grief--Fiction. 5. Middle-aged women--Fiction. 6. Teenagers-- Fiction. 7. Bildungsromans. 8. Historical fiction. 9. Love stories. I. Title.

Print ISBN: 978-0-9905037-0-5

E-Book: ISBN: 978-0-9905037-1-2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Wilson

CONTENTS

Tuesday, April 9

Wednesday, April 10

Thursday, April 11

Friday, April 12

Saturday, April 13

Sunday, April 14

Monday, April 15

Tuesday, April 16

Wednesday, April 17

Thursday, April 18

They had a name and they had names.

The river had a name too

as did the water in it

and the boat upon it

and the ocean that caught them....

1912

38.8432 degrees N, 76.5436 degrees W

On the shores of an eastern bay, a village slept a dreamless sleep. They rose with the sun as they always had, ate their breakfast, shined their shoes, baked their bread and read their books. Laundered clothes, cleaned boats, painted barns and cut hair. Smoked pipes, baited hooks, wrote letters, shared jokes, warmed bottles, changed diapers, tilled fields, dug gardens, washed hands, ate dinner, made love, fell asleep and rose the next morning to do it all again.

41.46 degrees N, 50.14 degrees W

In the icy vacuum of a night at sea, a ship sank and with it one thousand, five hundred and seventeen voices. The heave and moan of brittle steel and Faberge rumbled to the depths of Poseidon’s lair. A lone pillow drifted in a white linen mantle trailing along as a feathery wing. And those who lived to tell the tale about the cresting waves and rising cries consoled themselves in the still and unforgettable silence of a city lost at sea.

Tuesday, April 9

BERNIE

There it was, the river rising.

Eyes bigger than our stomachs, we ventured forward, nets in hand, determined to rob the banks of every