My dad grew up just a few clicks further up the river from Riel’s fictional Haventon, in a small town called Perth-Andover and I spent a fair amount of time there as a kid, so I am intimately familiar with towns like that.

I think Riel actually did a very nice job of capturing rural New Brunswick during the 1960s. Riel might have even admitted that nothing much happens, but I would disagree. But, now if we fast forward to just a few years ago when I was possessed with the idea that I-Must-Write-A-Novel, I immediately knew that the flooding would be the background event.” As a kid, I thought it was all pretty neat information. “In the late 1960s, before my friends and I were born, the area had been flooded when the Mactaquac Dam was built about 15 miles downstream.

The narrative of the story is actually based on a true event, as Riel explained at our meeting and on her blog: Narrated by 14-year-old Ruby, The Town That Drowned tells the story of what happens to a town when the government decides to build a dam. For the women who gathered for a discussion of the book, it was a real treat to get the inside scoop on the book’s development. The Town That Drowned is Riel’s first novel, but she has honed her skills writing a regular column on antiques and collectibles for the Telegraph Journal, is the author of a collection of short stories, some of which have been published, and blogs about quilting here. Riel and one of the members of my book club have known each other since university, so it made sense for Chrissy to choose this book and to invite Riel to join us while we discussed it. This month, as we met to discuss The Town That Drowned, we were fortunate to have the novel’s author, Riel Nason, with us. In all our years together, my book club has never been joined by the author of our chosen book.

The Town That Drowned by Riel Nason