The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The characters and events are fictitious, but the setting for Joyce Harrison's debut novel is very much real _ and familiar. Set in Harrison's hometown of Flin Flon, Slag tells the story of protagonist Anna as she copes with dysfunction in her family and racism aimed at her M_tis friend. 'I happen to like books that are set in unusual places, and what place could be more unusual than Flin Flon,' says Harrison, who now lives in Chicago. 'This is my first novel, so I started with the familiar. Although, since it is fiction and since I moved away a long time ago, I still had to do a lot of research.' Due for release on Amazon.com next month, Slag is a short, self-published novel unlikely to hit any bestseller lists. But for Harrison, a long-time broadcasting and advertising writer, this story set in 1955 was just waiting to come out. The exceedingly creative author describes Flin Flon's role in Slag as 'pivotal.' 'The entire story takes place there,' says Harrison, adding that hockey, HBM&S, the company union and cold weather all help form the backdrop. There is also, of course, a titular connection to Flin Flon. Slag is the rock-like mine waste, which doubles as fill, that can be found across the community. In common Harrison has something in common with Anna in that both left Flin Flon in the 1950s, the author in 1957 and the character in 1955. The difference is that when Anna faces a life-changing decision, she decides to revisit her final, turbulent year at Hapnot Collegiate. Harrison has rarely been back to Flin Flon, but she thinks the town may have helped shape her as a writer. 'Maybe Flin Flon made me plain spoken,' she says. 'I am not a flowery, poetic writer.' When Harrison left Flin Flon 56 years ago, it was to attend university, though she admits she loves the big-city lifestyle, too. Between the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., she earned a bachelor of arts degree. Harrison continued to live in Sudbury, which like Flin Flon is a mining town, in the 1960s, working in radio and television. She then relocated to the Chicago area, where she was operations manager of a suburban radio station. After a couple of years of that, Harrison craved another career change and began writing for ad agencies. At one agency her colleagues jokingly called her 'Nanook of the North' after a famous silent film set in the Canadian Arctic. Besides broadcasting and advertising, Harrison found success as a songwriter. She is even a voting member of the Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammy Awards. She moved from Chicago to Nashville in 1993, where she was a freelance writer, news announcer, voiceover artist and occasional actor. Harrison later joined a prominent Nashville marketing firm but found she preferred the life of a freelancer. Last year, she returned to Chicago. The mother of three now focuses on a home business that offers freelance writing and voiceover services. Harrison's life sounds like a book waiting to happen. How flattering for Flin Flon, then, that she decided to have her first novel take place here.
