Missing Sarah, Finding Hope with Maggie de Vries

 By Anita Daher

Maggie de Vries is a gifted, award-winning Canadian author, but I knew her first as editor.

When I submitted what eventually became my first published juvenile novel, Flight From Big Tangle, to Orca Book Publishers in Victoria, BC, Maggie sent me back a lovely rejection note saying it wasn’t good enough for publication—not in its current state—but that she saw something in it she liked. She said that if I worked on it a little longer, dug a little deeper, she would like to see it again. I suppose that is Maggie in a nutshell. She is able to see beyond the “unlovely” to the story struggling to shine through. This is true of books, and also of people.

Maggie writes with grace and compassion about young people in difficult circumstances. Thus far she has published two teen novels, two children’s novels, five picture books, and a memoir for adults, the award winning, 2003 GG finalist Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss. It is dedicated to Maggie’s sister, who disappeared in 1998 from Vancouver’s Downtown East side, and was later confirmed one of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton.

In addition to wrangling words in print, and helping others do the same, she is an advocate for those unable to speak for themselves. In 2014, inspired by her sister Sarah’s struggle, she spoke eloquently and passionately about how our laws and attitudes affect sex workers, including their basic human rights, in a TED talk titled “The Red Umbrella: Sex Work, Stigma and the Law.”

In Maggie’s most recent novel for teens, Rabbit Ears (Harper Trophy), thirteen-year-old Kaya, adopted as a toddler into what has recently become a single parent family, finds herself drawn to Vancouver’s downtown Lower East Side, drug use and prostitution. The story is told through alternating perspectives: of Kaya, and of the sister left behind, Beth. Though the work is fiction, those who know Maggie’s story, and that of her sister, Sarah, will suspect a great deal of personal pain was drawn upon to write this heart-wrenching, and ultimately hopeful, un-put-downable novel.

I caught up with Maggie recently by email. She graciously agreed to answer a few questions about the writing life, and her novel, Rabbit Ears.

To begin… what is your favourite and/or most confounding writerly procrastination method?

I have so many ways of procrastinating. What I like is when I’m feeding my creative spirit in between writing so I can return to the page refreshed, the well filled. The best way for me to replenish is to step outside. What I don’t like is when ten minutes on Facebook turns into two hours, though I do find Facebook to be a rich source of connection and of mini videos that make me laugh and cry. (I’m a sucker for cute kittens and puppies and …)

Do you think on new stories for a time, let them simmer, or do you open up a document and just start, let the story take you where it may?

They tend to simmer. I have a number of ideas that I’ve been playing around with, but I haven’t actually started a new book yet. When I do, I’ll likely write all sorts of bits; months will go by before I draw a deep breath, place all the bits in order and start writing what feels like a book.

Your novel, Rabbit Ears, was inspired by the struggles of your sister, Sarah, whom you’ve written of previously in your memoir, Missing Sarah. How long did it take from the inklings of thinking you might want to write this story, to actually getting to it, and was this a difficult process for you?

It was a difficult process. I had the first ideas for the story before I even knew about its heart. I had spoken at a conference in a small town in Saskatchewan in January 2009, and a magician performed and told the story I use in the book about a teacher who bribed him with magic. As I was driving back to Saskatoon to fly home, the story started to take shape. I remember that drive so vividly: the expanses of white snow, the grain elevators, a lone coyote, the brilliant colours of old houses against all that white. I stopped at a MacDonald’s and wrote down all my ideas, even a first scene that had spooled out in my head. (That scene didn’t make it into the finished book.) Then, two months later, a woman came to see me to tell me that my sister was sexually abused as a child. After that, I wanted to write about abuse. I had to. And the stories fused.

You are clear that Kaya’s story is fiction, as is her family, and yet there are many parallels: the single mother who is a nurse, the older sister left behind to feel a multitude of emotions, Kaya’s affinity for swimming—you mention in your public speaking that your sister Sarah swam like a seal—Kaya’s journal-writing…so many other small details. Was this a choice you made prior to beginning writing, or something that happened as the story progressed? 

Rabbit Ears is fiction, but it started, as you say, with truth, which I fictionalized to build a story and to save my family from seeing themselves depicted. I moved it to present day, had the father die of cancer, while my father is still living, eliminated brothers, etc. Then, when it occurred to me to include Sarah herself in the book, I moved it from the present back into the late ’90’s about fifteen years after the real events.

How did you draw a line, or did you, between your own real life and family experiences, and what was completely imagined?

Most of the particulars are completely imagined, while the broad strokes are drawn from truth. Sarah did run away, she did sell sex, she did use drugs. But I was never with her when she did those things, so I had to imagine them, to build scenes around them. I learned a few facts about her abuser, but I never met him. Based on the little I knew, I made up the events of the story. I never knew about him until 2009, so I did not attend his funeral, meet his granddaughter, any of that. And I’m eight years older than Sarah and never tried to do an intervention in the way Beth and the other girls do. All of that is what I wished might have happened and what I hope might happen for other girls. I didn’t draw a line exactly. I just went where the story needed me to go, and was a little bit protective of my family.

Many of your stories are about young people in dark situations, and yet, they find hope. In a 2011 author talk with Joy Kogawa at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in Vancouver you spoke about hope. You said it exists in the grey areas—in small triumphs. Can you talk a little more about those grey areas? What makes you uncomfortable about them, if anything, and what might you celebrate in them?

I still kind of like things to be black and white, but I am slowly learning that they almost never are, and that it’s by staying in the greyness, acknowledging complexity and dimension in life and in people that we can understand and accept one another and have some hope for change. I’m involved in the sex workers’ rights movement now, drawn back in because of the new laws here in Canada, which are so problematic, and it’s clear to me that we need to be guided by sex workers, who almost with one voice are calling for full decriminalization.

Do you like magic tricks? Why and how did you come to incorporate magic as Beth’s discovered passion in Rabbit Ears?

I have very little experience with magic, but the magician I mentioned above had a place in Rabbit Ears from the start. I wasn’t sure if the magic would stick, but it did. And I always associated the title with the magic. It was so interesting to realize that the title fit the book in other ways: it’s about silence and listening, after all; and as I explain in the afterword, I had forgotten that Sarah had a playboy bunny tattoo on her chest. When I saw those rabbit ears in a video of her that I showed a class, I felt as if she was giving me her blessing.

What, if anything (other than books and writing), do you find yourself most passionate about of late?

Hmmm. I’m getting out in the garden a little bit. I’m not much of a gardener, but I’m taking great pleasure in nurturing a clematis up a trellis. And spring. It’s spring here and that fills me with joy. On a more serious note, my work with sex workers. I am learning from them every day. And I’m now a certified life coach. I’m particularly enjoying a blend of coaching and mentoring for people who want to write memoir.

Why did you write Kaya’s perspective in second person, and Beth’s in first? 

It was an experiment at first. I had written the whole thing in third person, which comes most naturally to me, and I took a short story workshop from Zsuzsi Gartner. She encouraged us to shake up our writing, try something different, so I went home and did. I didn’t think it through in advance, but it actually makes so much sense that a kid who has been sexually abused would feel more comfortable writing and talking about herself in second person. It distances her from herself. As soon as I tried it, it felt right. I had to be careful not to make the Kaya sections too long, though, as second person is harder to read than first.

Your real sister Sarah makes an appearance in the story. How did this come about? Was it because you felt Kaya needed a friend, a guide, or did you know from the start that she would be there? Something else? 

I didn’t know from the start. Kaya had run away. She was on her way downtown. I was going to have to write about what happened to her there, and I had no idea how to do that, because I couldn’t just report what people told me, like in Missing Sarah; I had to write scenes. Then it came to me: Kaya would meet Sarah and Sarah would do her best to help her like she did so many young girls. It was a joy to me, writing Sarah into the book. She was alive for me while I wrote about her. And, it meant I had to set the book back a bit in time.

What was the most difficult aspect of writing Rabbit Ears, and what was the most satisfying?

Writing about all the awful stuff, the scene in the car near the beginning, the abuse, the scenes with Jim, the drugs… all that was really, really hard. I just sketched those parts in at first and then added to them on revision.

Writing about Sarah was one of the best parts. Feeling second person fit was great. And having parts of the story unfold almost without my input was really fun. So many things I didn’t see coming!

Will you write about Sarah again in some way, some form? Is there more of her story—your shared story—to tell? 

I’m working on a project right now with others that involves using parts of Sarah’s journal I haven’t shared before.  And I have an idea for a non-fiction book that mostly won’t be about Sarah, but I’ll be in it and it will relate to sex work, so Sarah will have a presence there. And… who knows what the future holds?

What is next for you?

A couple of projects that I’m not ready to talk about yet. They’re for adults, and they’re not fiction, so something of a new direction. I have some ideas for a historical series for young readers set here in BC. I actually did a lot of research for it when I was up in Prince George as writer in residence at UNBC in 2012, but that’s firmly on the back burner for now.