Nanaimo's fishing industry in the 1950s-60s served as a main source of inspiration for Kim Blank's crime novel prequel, The Fisherman's Secret.
Born in Nanaimo, Blank is currently a professor of English at the University of Victoria. In 2023, he released The Watchers' Club, an action and adventure novel based on the real murders of Diane Phipps and Leslie Dixon during the 1960s in Nanaimo. The book is set in the fictional town of Eastfield, inspired by Nanaimo.
Following that book's June 2023 release, Blank told the News Bulletin that he wrote the novel as a portrayal of how small rural communities deal with violent and mysterious acts. Details were changed from the real-life events that inspired it, including the perpetrator and resolution, as well as entire characters, creating a distance from the real-life tragedy.
“There is much of Nanaimo in the story … without ever saying so. It is barely disguised in the novel…" Blank told the Bulletin. "The atmosphere of a neighbourhood close to a growing town, the working-class backdrop – settings that, at the time, defined that area of Nanaimo."
Released earlier this year, the prequel, The Fisherman's Secret, follows family of a commercial salmon fisher. The household is starting to fall apart, with hidden secrets and unthinkable solutions.
Blank said it includes some of the same characters and neighbours.
"Growing up in Nanaimo, and living close to families who were supported by the fishing industry, I remember when the fathers of some friends were suddenly gone for periods of time, and what it was like when they came back," Blank said. "It seemed more than a job, but a kind of larger, fabled activity. I also began to pick up on how tough and haphazard it was. Nothing was certain: the weather, the catch, the profit, and the homes they would come back to."
In elementary school, Blank remembers being told the story of one of the local fisherman having a woman "friend" up north whom he would visit. As a young boy, he didn't understand the nuances of the subject.
"The novel springs from a memory that didn’t really mean anything until it came back to me as an adult. I’d never come across a story that explored this kind of circumstance. At the same time, I’d not fictionally encountered a character (the son of the commercial fisherman, aged 12) whose views about nature were at the same time both profound and naive – and potentially grim."
While the relationship presented in the book is an affair, Blank warned that the term carries baggage that may not be entirely appropriate for the situation.
"The relationship between the fisherman and the First Nations woman seemed, at first, simple enough, but, over time, it began to carry more complexity on all kinds of levels, especially as family secrets begin to peel away."
This latest novel, The Fisherman’s Secret, was actually the written before The Watchers’ Club, but Blank said he put it aside until he "figured out a way to tell the story so that it might capture some larger sense of connected meaning. "
"The Fisherman’s Secret has two separate stories, side-by-side. First, the main narrator as an adult attempts to piece together certain startling memories that look back to when he is six years old, which mainly involve being led around by an older kid across the road … The other story is told by the narrator’s older brother, who somehow knows about the fisherman’s relationship with the First Nations woman, and the startling results of that relationship. The two stories complete and complicate each other in, I hope, interesting, original ways."
Published by Sunstone Press, The Fisherman’s Secret is available online through www.amazon.ca, www.barnesandnoble.com, or locally through Windowseat Books.
