The Okinawan family, the Ono-Isu, does not exist either (nor could it; Japanese do not hyphenate their surnames), but rather is a combination of familial syllables. Likewise, the Kara clan is an invention and should not be confused in any way with the Shō, Okinawa’s true royal family. The Kentucky Kid is real enough, though; his story is based on the war crimes of Kanao Inouye, known as the “Kamloops Kid.” For crimes that went unprosecuted, see the namesakes of the two Aussie yobs Tamsin crosses paths with in the Outback: Frank Hann and Jack Watson, and the horror of Lawn Hill. Erewhon Farm, meanwhile, is a reference to a work of utopian fiction by the onetime New Zealand émigré Samuel Butler.
The character of Tamsin Greene was both inspired by, and is an homage to, such indomitable women war photographers and photojournalists as Alyssa Banta, Corinne Dufka, Susan Meiselas, Catherine Leroy, the tragic and iconic Lee Miller, Deborah Copaken Kogan (a.k.a. “Shutterbabe”) and especially Lynsey Addario, whose memoir It’s What I Do is an electrifying read, harrowing but full of heart. (Make It’s What I Do the next book you read.) But I hasten to add that Tamsin’s self-destructive tendencies, her drinking and loneliness and the many scars she carries, are not based on any one individual, living or dead, but are wholly fictional. I thank the photographer Don Denton of Victoria, BC, for first putting me on the trail of these remarkable women. Tamsin’s surname is, naturally, a reference to the great Graham Greene. Her first name, the feminine version of Thomas, means “twin,” which is what Tamsin and Tom Rafferty are in many ways. (Though I confess that she is really named for Tamsin Greig, an actress I have had a crush on since I first saw her in the British TV series Black Books.)
Thomas Rafferty, meanwhile, is named in honor of one of my all-time favorite novels, Wandering Rafferty, by the cowboy poet Ken Mitchell, a book that is now criminally out of print but well worth tracking down. Anyone looking for parallels between myself and Thomas Rafferty will be richly rewarded. I, too, have worked as a travel writer for far too many years, on assignment from Rwanda to Moose Jaw, have been privy to encounters eerily similar to those described in this novel; some of the conversations among the dissolute travel writers in this book were basically transcribed word for word. I, too, have proudly written about New Zealand as a “land of contrasts,” and did indeed pen a budget guidebook to Japan that sent readers into the ocean at one point. (Though I hasten to add that my reputation does not precede me in the way that Rafferty’s does. I am not any sort of royalty, tarnished or otherwise.) My very first assignment was for the Daily Yomiuri newspaper in Japan, back in 1995, a travel article about the Shinto island of Kinkazan, which has since been preserved for posterity (infamy?) in an anthology of my writing titled Canadian Pie. But that is where the comparisons end. Mostly.
I should also like to take this opportunity to thank, and apologize to, the many travel hosts and magazine editors who have had the misfortune of working with me over the years. (I should also add, by way of clarification, that I once had drinks with Bill Bryson and, as far as I know, he doesn’t have any gang tats or anger issues; nor does he carry a switchblade. As far as I know.) Given the strange depths of travel writing that this novel plumbs, and the many—all too real—conversations and characters it includes, I thought I might end on a positive note about the squalid existence of this genre by sharing some select works of travel literature at its best, works that have beguiled and inspired me over the years: Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita, Pico Iyer’s Video Night in Kathmandu, Alan Booth’s The Roads to Sata, Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea, Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent, Simon Winchester’s Outposts, Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, and the various collected travel essays of Jan Morris. (How many novels include a recommended reading list at the end? Talk about value added!)
Finally, in a story about objects hidden and waiting to be found, I thought it only fair to note that The Finder includes almost a dozen hidden references to the films of Alfred Hitchcock woven throughout. A treasure hunt, as it were. Strangers on a train is the most obvious, and the most apt. But vertigo is also mentioned in the very first chapter. The colonel references Psycho, there are thirty-nine steps to Rafferty’s hotel room in Christchurch, and so on. Even the wine that Andy the Englishman scoffs at, Santa Rosa, is a reference to the California location of Hitchcock’s own favorite film. There are six more of these for readers to find, including one that is actually the inversion of a famous Hitchcock title. There is even a possible red herring in the form of The Maltese Falcon, which is not a Hitchcock film, though is often confused for one. (If you are one of those weird people who checks the notes and acknowledgements at the end of a book before you start reading it, congratulations! You have a leg up. No need to search them out. You can simply watch for them as you read.) Oh, and you know how Hitchcock was always making a cameo in his movies? In The Finder, that would be Melvyn—with a y.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the irrepressible Nita Pronovost, VP, editorial director, at Simon & Schuster Canada, for guiding this project through to completion, and Kevin Hanson, president and publisher, who took a rather natty author photo of me as well, during a bibliographic expedition into the basement of MacLeod’s Books in Vancouver.
The always insightful Barbara Pulling read through my manuscript and provided invaluable feedback and keen editorial suggestions. Copyeditor Doug Johnson did his best trying to rein in the worst of my stylistic tics and idiosyncrasies. Karen Silva provided last-minute triage. And my brother Ian Ferguson gave me a key piece of advice on the story, namely, to have Gaddy Rhodes zero in on Rafferty by mistake.
The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts provided support for what turned out to be a much bigger project than I could ever have imagined, and I thank them for this.
To my son Genki Alex, my various friends and everyone at Book Warehouse in Vancouver who provided feedback on the cover and title: Thank you! Especially Dasha Yildirim, an illustrator based in Vancouver, whose advice was spot on.
During my travels in New Zealand and Australia, a great number of people conspired to help me. In Canada, Pam Cook put me in touch with her Kiwi friend Chris Cooper, who gave me a wealth of materials and tips, and in turn connected me with her sister, Lusia Johnson, in the Auckland area, and her friends Stephen Stehlin and James Turi. (Stephen also provided helpful feedback and advice on the Kiwi-isms in the manuscript, though any errors remain my own.)
Kim Izzo initially commissioned the “Maori Mornings” article for Zoomer magazine, and Vivian Vassos saw it through to completion. Michele Jarvie at Postmedia (Calgary Herald) commissioned a three-part travel series on New Zealand that took me from Christchurch to Napier. Thank you to all these long-suffering editors and freelance-writer wranglers! I sometimes suspect that I created the character of Rafferty just to show my editors how much worse it could have been.
Paul Holman at AHA Creative and Emma O’Reilly at Tourism New Zealand made the trip a reality, and the following warm souls helped me along the way. I thank you all, and if I missed anyone, apologies ka pai? Here they are, in order, from most interesting names down: Sara Bunny, Sally Shanks, Tiaana Anaru, Paora Tapsell, Lu Jiang, Schariona Parker-Potoi, Joy Sajamark, Lou Baddiley, Kim McVicker, Andrew Whiley, and Betty Mason-Parker. Thanks also to Anna Quin, the expat Aussie in Wellington who set up my Uluru trip with aplomb, and Tomoka-chan, the surfing chef of Gisborne, who swam with the dolphins and found me an extra bedroom to crash in when I showed up at the end of New Zealand without a clear plan in place. And a thank-you to Cliff for providing that bedroom.
My travels in Scotland—to Loch Lomond and the Isle of Arran, on assignment with Zoomer magazine—were aided and abetted by Evelina Andrews and Summer Martin, a.k.a. “Limey and the Canuck.” (Evelina is the daughter of a travel writer as well, so you’d think she would know better.) John Taylor, the beadle at Saint Kessog’s, let me in to the church on a rainy day in Luss and told me the story of the hidden
saint within and the Viking grave outside.
Rafferty’s rambling dispatch to Rebecca is a mash-up of a dozen famous love letters from couples as disparate as Johnny Cash and June Carter, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Emily Dickinson and Susan Gilbert, Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich, and Beethoven to his unnamed Beloved. The unit of measurement when a sheep becomes picturesque (one-eighth of a mile, a.k.a. “one Sheppey”) was developed via vigorous scientific testing by authors Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. And the line from the Tom Phillips song is taken from “The Ballad of Miss Rose” on Tom’s splendid Spanish Fly CD.
But my deepest and most heartfelt appreciation must go to Terumi and Yūki Alister, who had to put up with my long absences and repeated disappearances for the better part of two years. I could not have done any of this without their kindness and support.
I had always thought that the initial impetus for this novel came from an article in Mental Floss magazine, “Ten Missing Treasures You Should Really Be Looking For!” which I read in the bath, thinking, What if… What if someone tried to find, not one, but all of those objects? But as I worked on the manuscript, I realized that the roots of the story stretched back much further, to a children’s book I wrote and illustrated for my niece Barbie, when she was just six or seven, titled Barbara Joy and the Gorilla King, which featured a character dubbed the King of Forgotten Things. I put this homemade book together as a broke university student when I couldn’t afford to buy my niece a proper present, and now, after all these years, the story has come round, full circle. Thanks, Barbie! And thanks, as well, to my niece Brynne who, when she was little, taught me an important life lesson: “When you start to fall, just run through it.”
Read more from Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Will Ferguson
A funny and heartbreaking story of a psychological experiment gone wrong.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© KEVIN HANSON
WILL FERGUSON worked as a travel writer for more than twenty-five years. His memoirs include Road Trip Rwanda, a journey into the new heart of Africa; Beyond Belfast, which covers a 560-mile walk he took across Northern Ireland in the rain; and Hitching Rides with Buddha, about an end-to-end journey across Japan by thumb. A three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, he has been nominated for both the International IMPAC Dublin Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Will Ferguson’s novels include 419, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and, most recently, The Shoe on the Roof, a darkly comedic tale of a psychological experiment gone wrong.
www.willferguson.ca
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www.SimonandSchuster.ca/Authors/Will-Ferguson
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Simon & Schuster Canada
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Will Ferguson
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This Simon & Schuster Canada edition September 2020
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Author photo © Kevin Hanson
Cover design by Jessica Lacy Boudreau
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The finder / Will Ferguson.
Names: Ferguson, Will, author.
Description: Simon & Schuster Canada edition.
Identifiers: Canadiana 20200162365 | ISBN 9781982139698 (softcover)
Classification: LCC PS8561.E7593 F56 2020 | DDC C813/.54—dc23
ISBN 978-1-9821-3969-8
ISBN 978-1-9821-3970-4 (ebook)
The Finder Page 34
