Meet Betty Jane Hegerat and The Boy

Today I would like to welcome

Alberta author and good friend, Betty Jane Hegerat to my blog. Betty Jane is the author of three works of fiction, Running Toward Home (2006), Delivery (2009), and The Boy (2011) as well as a collection of short stories, A Crack in the Wall (2008). She is also the author of several short stories and creative non-fiction pieces published in both Canada and the United States.

The subject today is The Boy, a novel described as metafiction by publisher Oolichan Books, which weaves fiction and non-fiction together beautifully to create a compelling read centred around a tragic time in Alberta history. Documented events recalled by the author are intertwined with fiction through the prodding of a concerned fictional narrator and the story of her modern day family. The real boy is Robert Raymond Cook, the last person to be hanged in Alberta, for murdering his father, step-mother and siblings in Stettler in 1959. The fictional boy, whose story plays out in what seems to be a sinisterly parallel fashion, is the step-son of the fictional narrator, Louise.

Both reality and fiction are set in small town Alberta, places that seem idyllic to many for their friendliness, slower pace, and, more significantly, their safety. Having moved to what was then a small town many years ago for those very reasons, I asked Betty Jane to comment on this setting.

Hi, Ellen.  Thanks for inviting me, and for turning the attention to the setting in this book.  While I was doing the research for The Boy, visiting towns in central Alberta, recalling my own childhood in New Sarepta, and Camrose, imagining the fictional town of Valmer to which I moved Louise and her family, I spent a lot of time thinking about both the positives and the negatives of small town life.  So on to your questions:

What draws people to small town life? Are small towns really safer than the big city or is it an illusion?

 I think there is a belief that small towns are safer, friendlier, less stressful places to live.  That people look out for one another and that raising children in that environment gives them a sense of belonging and community.  Interestingly, when I interviewed Dave MacNaughton, he told me that he moved his family to Stettler after he graduated from law school, because he felt it would be a better, safer, place to raise a family.  His first case in the law firm he joined in Stettler was his defence of Robert Cook in what was to become one of Alberta’s most infamous murder cases.  So much for the quiet, mundane legal career he’d anticipated.  In fact, so much for the illusion that violence is the property of large urban centres.  The Stettler area was the site of two other mass murders with in a decade of the Cook case.  Perhaps there is security in living in a community where strangers stand out, and it’s difficult for someone with criminal intent to move about anonymously. And perhaps there is less to fear when we live in the midst of people who have a long history together.  On the other hand, in a startling number of violent crimes, the perpetrator is someone known to the victim.  In the case of the three murders the community of Stettler remembers well, the crime was committed by a stepson in one, a husband and father in another, and a neighbour in the third.  But these are exceptional, and Dave MacNaughton did tell me that the move to Stettler was the right one, because the small law firm and the wonderful community did give him time for his family and they feel deeply-rooted.

Is the sense of community in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business a positive or negative thing for a family who has a “bad” child?

I know that the lack of privacy in smaller centres, whether it’s around children, or marriages, or health issues, or finances, is something I would find difficult if I moved to a small town.  But people who grow up in those communities accept that transparency, and I think there is an ingrained sense of what can be gossiped and to whom, that comes with an equally ingrained sense of who “belongs” and who does not.  Robert Cook grew up in Hanna, and the town knew him as a young boy prone to mischief, but a boy who had lost his mother and had a close bond with his dad.  The town of Stettler, on the other hand, met him as an adolescent who was already in trouble with the law.  He was seldom with the family, and my sense from talking with people in Stettler is that he was seen as trouble, and an embarrassment to his family.  His visits home, and the brief period he actually lived with Ray and Daisy in Stettler didn’t afford him the status of “community member” even though his parents had gained that quickly.  In my fiction, Louise’s story, the town to which Jake and Louise move is Jake’s hometown, and even though Danny is already a problem the community is tolerant.  People speak to Jake about Danny’s behaviour before they take it to the police, and even then they offer reassurance that this is something he will “grow out of”, just a phase. It’s Louise who is the outsider, and perhaps this is my own projection of how I would feel moving to a close-knit town with which I’d had no previous connection.  

Are small towns like Louise’s small town different from small towns in the late 1950s?

While today’s small communities still have a core of long-time families, many of them have become commuter towns, and have had an influx of people seeking that ideal that illusive quieter, slower lifestyle.   As well, there is a greater tendency for children who grow up in these communities to move on, and often farther away than their parents would have ventured. Immigration in the past few decades has brought people from all over the world to smaller centres as well to our big cities.  So different demographic, greater mobility, more in common with the cities, I think.  One of the questions a reader asked me just a few days ago, was,  “Will the Peters family stay in Valmer?”  Interesting. J  I have the sense that Louise isn’t done with me yet, and perhaps I’ll find out some day. 

To listen to a clip of Betty Jane reading from The Boy:
http://bettyjanehegerat.com/2011/05/31/talking-about-small-towns-and-bad-boys-with-ellen-kelly/