Mermaids, Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Folklore Fill Novel

The Old Mermaid's Tale by Kathleen Valentine is a romance in the classical tradition filled with folklore: maritime, Native American, and Breton. Great Lakes maritime history, the sea lore of Brittany, and the mystique of mermaids appeal to both male and female readers.

Gloucester, MA (PRWEB) November 24, 2007 -- Waitressing in an Erie diner was a necessity for Kathleen Valentine while she attended college at Behrend-Penn State. Now, nearly forty years later, that experience is the background for her first novel The Old Mermaid's Tale (http://www.oldmermaidinn.com), released by Parlez-Moi Press.

Set in the fictional town of Port Presque Isle, Pennsylvania in the early 1960s, The Old Mermaid's Tale is the story of Clair Wagner, an Ohio farm girl attending Chesterton College. Valentine admits that Chesterton is a thinly disguised version of Behrend-Penn State and that the streets and businesses of Port Presque Isle will be familiar to those who know Erie. The author said she originally wrote the book using Erie as the setting but revised it to a fictional town so she could expand the story line.

"What I really wanted to do," Valentine says, "is tell the story of Lake Erie and its importance in the lives of the people who live near it. I live in Gloucester, Massachusetts now and there are many books about the maritime world here like Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm. But I wanted to write about the maritime world of the Great Lakes, especially Lake Erie."

Valentine, who grew up in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, spent several years researching the maritime history of the Great Lakes. The book begins in 1960, shortly after the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway to international commerce. Clair Wagner, like the author, works in a waterfront diner to pay for college. As she becomes acquainted with the seamen who frequent the diner her intrigue with Lake Erie and its history of great storms, shipwrecks, maritime legends, and folklore grows. Though the novel vividly portrays the lives of the mariners it is, above all, a love story.

Clair's first romance is with Pio, a handsome young Italian fisherman who works on lake barges to earn money in order to buy his own, ultimately doomed, fishing tug. Clair has a brief romance with Gary, the charming son of a wealthy shipping tycoon, during which she is introduced to the working face of the commercial waterfront. Then she meets Baptiste, a mysterious Breton mariner injured in a shipwreck who now earns a living as a musician in waterfront taverns. Author Ingeborg Lauterstein, in a blurb on the books cover, calls The Old Mermaid's Tale "grand storytelling in the style of Fielding."

Valentine's research began when she was a girl in the 1950s and spent summer vacations on Presque Isle with her godparents who lived in Erie. "The history of shipwrecks and lost vessels is as exciting and perilous as those on any ocean. In the period that I lived there I found Erie romantic and mysterious," she says. "My godfather loved the Lake and he started my love of its history."

In fact, she dedicated the book to him, Erie resident the late Norman A. Reider.

Along with the theme of Great Lakes shipwrecks, Valentine has woven in a sub-theme of folklore --- Great Lakes folklore, Native American Folklore, and Breton folklore from the Cote du Nord. And mermaids.

"Many people are fascinated by mermaids and the archetype of the mermaid is very special to me. Mermaids inhabit water, of course," Valentine says, "which archetypally represents sexuality. In literature mermaids are both destructive, luring ships into dangerous waters with their songs, and heroic in saving the lives of drowning sailors. In my story Clair is a young woman just coming into her awareness of her own sexuality and to what that means to the mariners she becomes involved with. While Tessie, the aging proprietor of the Old Mermaid Inn, served as a mermaid in both aspects to the men in her life. Tessie's story of what it means to be a mermaid gives the novel its title."

She adds, "I've been pleasantly surprised by the reactions of the men who have read my book. They say they fall in love with Clair. They all want to meet a mermaid like Clair."

Valentine is the author of My Last Romance and other passions (http://www.mylastromance.com), a collection of short stories released in 2006 and numerous short stories in various publications. She is currently working on a new novel, Each Angel Burns, (http://www.eachangelburns.com)a mystery about faith, enduring friendships, and miracles.

The Old Mermaid's Tale ( ISBN-13: 978-0978594060 ) is 296 pages long and is available to be ordered through local bookstores or online at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Old-Mermaids-Tale-Kathleen-Valentine/dp/0978594061/). Readers may also visit the book's web site at http://www.OldMermaidInn.com or the author's web site at http://www.KathleenValentine.com, both of which have links to the first chapter.

Complimentary copies of The Old Mermaid's Tale are available upon request to any publication wishing to review it.

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