Authors from Everywhere! : August 2012

Please welcome character

Emily Evans

to our blog today!
She is the star of the book Run River Currents

Created by Ginger Marcinkowski

I'm welcoming Emily to the studio to day. From what I hear she is a very intense woman who can appear rather hyper at times. So let's welcome her and find out what her story is about.

Welcome Emily! Please tell us about Run River Currents.

I guess you know this is my story. I’m Emily Douay Evans, 27-year-old daughter of a father who sexually abused me as a child and a mother who really didn’t want the children she had. I’ve got an older sister named Stephanie and a younger brother named Darren.

Ouch.... Don't even know how to respond after that quick introduction other than to say, I'm sorry. Tell us more Emily.

I got the phone call from my Aunt Carol, my mother’s sister, that Dad was dead. Not that it mattered. I hated him, hated what he’d done to me, how he ruined my life.

He certainly did, if I were you, I would have felt the same as you. What about your mom?

Ma had died a couple years before I got this call. I’d stayed connected with her, if you could call it that even helped with her cancer care, off and on, right up until she went into the nursing home.

But when I got that call, the one about my father, I can’t explain what erupted inside of me. I was so angry at the both of them.

Understandable...

I’d thrown my husband, Aaron, out of the house again a few nights before the call. I’d practically cut off communication with Steph and Darren. I just wanted to be alone, wanted everyone out of my life once and for all. I didn’t deserve anyone’s love.

Hard to accept love when you are hurting deep inside....

So when the call came I had to go, to the funeral I mean. Had to sober up before I could drive though. Waited until almost everyone was gone then marched right in the side door of that church, walked up to his casket and punched that horrible man right in the face!

You did not! lol.... Sorry - not funny - but good for you!

It felt so good at that moment, like a wave of joy had washed right over me, but by the time I got back in the car to go and join my siblings, some of the words my grandfather had told me about God when I was a child came into my head again. I tried to block them out, but I’d been hearing them more and more lately, feeling a tug on my heart when I’d all but forgotten I even had a heart.

God's words sneak into to us sometimes... that is good.

On the drive from the church to my father’s house I saw the sign for Plaster Rock, my grandfather’s hometown, and the only place I ever remembered feeling safe. It only took a second to understand I had to go there. I just had to see if peace still lived there.

Okay - so you went... What happened?

The 60 mile drive took a lifetime as I wound through the birch-lined curves along the Tobique River. Scenes from my youth, both good and bad washed over me. The first time my father used me, summer camp, blueberry picking in the field behind Gramps house, the drowning of my best friend in the Tobique. I couldn’t tell you how many memories emerged on that ride, but I can tell you by the time I arrived, I knew everything, my hatred, my rage, everything, would end there, one way or another.

One way or another? What do you mean?

I figured it was time to face the fact that I couldn’t live the way I was living anymore. So full of hate, anger and rage. I needed to let go and get on with my life or I needed my life to be over.

I was afraid you were going to say that last part.

So I went back to my grandfather’s town, Plaster Rock, and I faced my past head on. I wandered through town and visited the graveyard where I saw the graves of so many of those people I loved from my past. Then it dawned on me. The Tobique River. The giver and taker of life. I’d seen a lot of people baptized there and I’d seen a few that the river had taken their lives. I jumped in my car and headed to the Anglican Church where the well trod path still made its way down to the red-soiled riverbed. I knew the answer would be there. With the words from the Bible my grandfather had repeated in my ears for so long, I waded in, not knowing if the Tobique would show me God’s grace or take my life.

Okay... that just brought chills to my spine!!! Now I need to know what happens. Move, I need to get to my computer and order the book! Give me one second.... okay there. Now that I have it downloaded to my Kindle, let me ask you a few more questions.

We all want to be different, so what is the one thing you wish your creator had done differently with you?

I wish there had been more hope for me earlier in my life. I wish she could have shown a more playful side of me, the side so many others knew I had, even through the issues with my father. I used humor to fight the pain, but the author was too close to me, to close to the pain to share that with the reader. In my story she didn’t want to mask what she had masked for so long.

Good for her!

If you could have added something to the story, and your creator would have let you, what would that have been?

I would have added more of the truth, but she knew the reader would not have been able to understand how much she’d really gone through. Her limits were much stronger than my limits.

What do you love best about yourself? What do you like least?

I love that through Christ I was able to forgive, and that has not always been an easy task for me. I hate that I carried rage for so long and that I hurt so many people along the way. And I hate that I never felt loved by anyone.

Inspiring and heartfelt words...

What part of the book of the book was the hardest for you and your creator to work through?

I think it was the time I spent with my mother Maureen, at her apartment just before she died. I wanted to forgive her and I knew she was making every effort to show me she was remorseful for what had happened in our lives. Yet, through all of the little deeds I did for her, the things a “good” daughter should do, I resented her, resented that she hadn’t help me or protected me and I was angry right up until the moment I left her sitting alone. When I turned to say goodbye, I saw in her face she was begging for forgiveness, but all I saw was her regret in having children at all.

A hard memory to remember. I am sure that was difficult for you two to work through.

Is there a sequel? If so, what do you want to accomplish in the next book. If not, do you wish to continue your story?

There will be no sequel to this story. The story ended in my being able to let go and forgive my father, my mother and myself. It ends at the foot of the Cross and there’s no better place to leave my pain. If the author chooses to use my story again, it will be a story of joy!

Emily. Thank you so much for coming today and speaking with us. Your story is a very intense one that more people deal with then are thought too. You and your creator are strong to write such a book. I am glad that you found your forgiveness...