Through A Historical Filter: Interview with Emilie-Noelle Provost

Emilie-Noelle Provost atop Mount Adams in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

It is such a joy today to share this interview with  Emilie-Noelle Provost . A new guest columnist on the blog, she’s also an established editor and writer. Her latest book, The River Is Everywhere, is the coming-of-age story of a Franco-American teenager and will be released on March 14, 2023. In her spare time she hikes and can often be found in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When she’s not outside, you can find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Liz Michalski: I’m so excited for you and this novel. You are coming at it from a long stretch as a nonfiction writer and editor. How does that experience inform the way you approach writing fiction? What is your process like?

Emilie-Noelle Provost: I think my approach to writing both nonfiction and fiction comes from my fascination with history. I was history major in college. I have always been interested in the ways in which things that happened in the past continue to influence people’s lives decades, even centuries later. This is reflected in the subject matter of many of the nonfiction articles I’ve written. When I write fiction, it’s always somehow filtered through a historical lens. The characters in both my novels contend with circumstances that can be traced back to events that occurred long before they were born.

I’m not one of those people who can write from, or even create, an outline for a novel or story. I’ve tried and it always feels forced, which means the end product will, too. When I get an idea, I just start writing. It’s through the process of writing that a story evolves and takes shape.

LM: The River Is Everywhere is set in both the United States and Canada. Why was that important to you, and what kind of research did you do?

ENP: Ernest, the main character in The River Is Everywhere, is Franco-American. He, like me, is a descendent of the nearly one million immigrants who came to New England from Quebec during the 19th and early 20th centuries to work in factories. Because few people are aware of this history, I wanted to set the book partly in Canada to help make that connection in people’s minds. I also wanted the Canadian setting to serve as catalyst for Ernest to discover things about himself.

I did some basic research about the town in Canada where the book is partially set. It’s a real town, and many of the places mentioned in the book are based on actual places, but a lot of it is made up. 

LM: Ernest Benoit, your main character, is a teenage boy. What drew you to that POV, and how did you work to make it sound authentic?

ENP: I wanted the main character to be a boy because in many ways it’s still taboo for boys (and men) to show a full range of emotions in life or in fiction. I thought creating a male main character who was fully human would add a memorable element to the story, more so than if the character were female.

Ernest’s basic personality, speech patterns, and mannerisms were loosely based on my daughter’s high school boyfriend, who was also Franco-American and was at our house all the time when I started the book. Eventually, Ernest evolved to have a lot of personality traits of his own, which I think happened organically after I got more comfortable with his character.

LM: Some dark, terrible things happen to Ernest, and—without giving too much away—he has to make some very hard decisions. How did you handle writing about these subjects? Was it difficult?

ENP: Some of it was difficult to write, but the things that happen to Ernest happen to people all the time. I wanted his life and experiences to feel real, so whenever I found myself struggling, I tried to concentrate on describing the situation in as realistic a way as I could without making moral or ethical judgements about it. This often took several attempts, but I think I got it right in the end.

LM: At the same time, although this book is realistic fiction, there are elements of a fairy tale to it. Ernest essentially goes on a kind of quest. There’s a “fairy godfather” in the form of a widower he meets, and an almost unbelievable animal character (my favorite part of the book). Was that intentional, or did it evolve with the story?

ENP: I don’t think the elements of magical realism in the book were intentional, especially not in the beginning. They just felt natural to me. All sorts of things happen in life that we can’t explain, and often those things carry a lot of meaning for people. 

What’s most fascinating about this to me is that, along with the dark elements mentioned above, similar examples of magical realism can be found in realistic fiction written by many other Franco-American writers, as well as in work by Franco-Canadian writers. (Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News and Robert Cormier’s Fade are two examples.) I didn’t make this connection until the manuscript was in the editing process, when someone else pointed it out. 

Thanks, Emilie-Noelle! I’m looking forward to seeing you on the blog, and maybe on the hiking trail!

Liz Michalski

Liz Michalski’s (she/her) second novel, Darling Girl, was published in 2022 by Dutton. Her first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she’s downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.

www.lizmichalski.com/