Drinking the Knock Water: A New Age Pilgrimage
by Emily Kemme
Genre:
Chick Lit
Date of
Publication: January 27th 2017
Publisher:
Arrowhead Publishing
Cover
Artist: Mia Kemme
Tagline: “We all live with ghosts.
. . Some are those of people who’ve never been born.”
BLURB
“We all live with ghosts. . .
Some are those of people who’ve never been born.”
So begins Drinking the Knock
Water: A New Age Pilgrimage, the second novel by award-winning Greeley,
Colorado author Emily Kemme.
Loosely based on Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales, the novel takes on life itself as a pilgrimage. One of life’s
biggest struggles is fitting in with the rest of the human race, and an aspect
of that is having children. It’s not meant for everyone and yet, true to
Darwinian forces, it’s almost expected. Giving birth and then raising a child
to maturity is one of the bravest tasks we take on.
On what was supposed to be a day
to celebrate, another cruel outburst from Holly Thomas’ sister-in-law begins a
spiral of events that would leave Holly questioning every choice she’d ever
made and every belief she held as truth.
Had she done the right thing by
her unborn child? Had she given enough, or too much, freedom of choice to her
son? Did she truly, deeply know her husband and clinic partner, Roger? And what
right had she to counsel infertile couples after her own pregnancies?
With the Fertility Tour only
weeks away, a group of unlikely and disparate pilgrims look to her for
guidance. But Holly’s life has unraveled in ways she could not have imagined,
including a restraining order against her. Will she be able to find her footing
and make peace with her choices and herself? Will visiting the religious and
sacred feminine sites in England help her regain control or only tear her
further apart?
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Reviews
"Today
exists for you to let your mind wander, let it free, all week long. This is the
time for reflection and evaluation."
Deeply
traumatized after her daughter, Arella, is born dead, fertility counselor Holly
Thomas struggles to achieve inner peace. Roger—Holly's supportive husband and a
prominent fertility doctor—accepts her grief-induced eccentricities, but his
intolerant Christian family resents her and her Jewish roots. When Edward,
Roger's brother, openly belittles the Bar Mitzvah of Daniel, Holly's son,
tensions escalate, and her whole world threatens to fall apart. To overcome
heartbreak and reflect on self-discovery and relationships, Holly and Roger
take a group of patients from their clinic on a fertility tour. This tour
becomes a spiritual pilgrimage for unrealized truths.
Kemme
elegantly examines the complicated aspects of life and relationships. Using
Holly's experiences with a failed pregnancy, her in-laws, and Roger, Kemme
focuses on how pain can shape and enlighten us. That religious intolerance can
inflict significant emotional damage is depicted through Roger's family members
who weaponize words to hurt Holly. This, along with Holly's emotional
fragility, causes strain in her marriage. However, Roger's unwavering love
helps Holly stay somewhat balanced, letting her emotionally heal many patients
who cannot conceive. Some of these couples include Leah and Rachel, the
Rhanjhas, the Chandlers, Burbages, and Jane Brown and her mother. As Holly and
Roger take their chosen couples on a fertility tour to England, various
colliding elements within the patients' lives emerge, thereby projecting how
relationships bless or burden us. Pain becomes a recurrent theme in the novel,
neutralized by the healing touch of water as a metaphor. Arella's grave is near
water, and the visit to the sacred sites of England serves as ritual cleansing
for the characters. Artistically nuanced language and the sincere, soothing
tone bring out the true beauty of this literary novel. This is an
introspective, gentle novel that illuminates and rejuvenates in the same breath.
RECOMMENDED
by The US Review of Books
Fertility
doctors confront the lingering effects of personal and cultural emotional
trauma. Holly and Roger Thomas have a stable marriage, fulfilling careers, and
a son practicing for his bar mitzvah. Holly insists on throwing a birthday
party each year complete with gifts for their stillborn daughter, but Roger
doesn't complain. His Catholic brother and sister-in-law, however, find fault
with Holly, primarily because she's Jewish. Her religion haunts her, almost as
much as the death of her daughter. . .
.
. . the author often beautifully depicts Holly s self-doubt as she explores
different aspects of overcoming trauma. . . [in a] positive tale of moving
forward through unexpected circumstances.
--
Kirkus Reviews
Dr.
Roger and Holly Thomas run a successful fertility clinic in New York City.
Roger tends to the patients' physical needs while Holly ministers to their
emotional and psychological ones. The couple cherish the routines of their
partnership and their happy marriage as they struggle with the pain of a lost
child. Holly continues to throw their daughter birthday parties long after the
child's been buried. This painful ritual causes her in-laws to question her
sanity and is a source of annual familial strife.
Then
the Thomas's son, Daniel, decides to complete his Bar Mitzvah. While Holly was
born Jewish and Roger was born Catholic, neither parent practices his or her
childhood religion. They've exposed Daniel to both religions for the sake of
their families, but neither of them expected him to take it this far. Roger's
devoutly Catholic family cannot accept Daniel's sincerity, and harsh words are
said at his birthday party. Holly and Roger's resulting fight has surprising
and unintended consequences.
All
this turmoil takes its toll on the workings of the clinic. The Thomases have
hosted something they call the Fertility Tour for over a decade. It's an
opportunity for their clients to connect to one another outside of their
familiar surroundings. Holly conducts the tour; she chooses the participants,
orchestrates ice-breakers, and mediates conflicts. Normally she's a skillful
operator, but she's lost her confidence. This year's tour is populated by an
odd and ill-matched assortment of individuals. Needless to say, this tour does
not run smoothly. Roger and Holly must find a way to reconnect with one another
in order to salvage the retreat.
The
Thomases deal with people at their most vulnerable. Fertility is closely tied
to an individual's identity, and both men and women find it difficult to
process the inability to have a child. While Holly and Roger have never
encountered problems with conceiving, they have suffered a loss and are
sympathetic to thwarted expectations. This closeness to struggle and their
ongoing religious turmoil provide the pair with a lot of philosophical ground
to cover. Is religion necessary to cope with the vicissitudes of life? Is God
responsible?
Drinking
the Knock Water is at heart an exploration of the role religion plays in the
life of an individual. Faith in a god can both connect a soul to others and sow
discord. In the end, it's up to the reader to decide if faith is essential or
composed of empty rituals.
--
Manhattan Book Review
Excerpt:
CHAPTER 1: Circumnavigating Sanity
In
a town famous for its ghosts, it was easy to imagine there was one lurking
behind every tree. And while Holly knew most visitors to Sleepy Hollow expected
movie-inspired visions of the headless horseman, in truth the densely wooded
surroundings allowed a more peaceful somnolence. In spite of its thirty-mile
proximity to the most populated city in the country, what with New York’s
electric hubbub of restless, cosmopolitan energy, there was never a feeling of
urgency in the little hamlet, merely a sleepy torpor, a sensing that the world
stopped in this hollow of quiet dead.
Whether the town cultivated any sensational image was another question
altogether. Holly suspected it did not, at least not year round. Of course,
there were the Halloween weekends, prompting arrival of thrill seekers by the
thousands, but that was just theatrics. No real ghosts shared the stage.
If there was any spectral unrest, it existed only in the minds of the towns'
inhabitants.
Even by the light of early evening in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where saturated
gray skies released rain to drip from the trees, dotted here and there with
planted shrubs and summer flowers in fresh bloom, there was a lovely serenity,
enhanced further by the rain’s sudden cease. Here, there was nothing to fear.
Holly entered the cemetery through scrolled iron gates wedged between gray
quarried stone, which made up the wall bordering the grounds. She jogged up
Forest Avenue, turned left on Transit, making her way up Hill Side, and then
down onto Cascade, where she left the well-marked gravel path. From there she
strode through wet grass crowded with lichened grave stones, some weatherworn
and leaning askew, others newly polished with crisp lettering, until she
reached the pale little stone marking the grave. At the baby’s feet, a short
drop off past the main road, the Pocantico River burbled as it shot over rocky
masses. Holly’s one request of Roger and the cemetery’s caretaker was that the
site be near water, the giver of life, bringer of tranquility. Knowing how
nearly Holly brinked insanity in those days, Roger swiftly supported her wishes;
they were lucky to find a small plot in a relatively unpopulated section.
Holly sat next to the grave, nestled the spray into the humped grass covering
it, and leaned her cheek against the smooth stone. It was simple and austere,
with only a slight scallop of embellishment at the top, befitting a little one
who had never breathed air. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply to catch her
breath from the run, collecting her thoughts. Above her head, squirrels batted
sticks together, hidden away in the leafy trees, a reminder of the unseen life
they shared.
Marit always managed to rattle her, either poking fun at Holly’s whims, or
sometimes with outright malice, which Holly knew all too well stemmed from
their differences in religious outlook. The fact that Arella’s birthday fell on
St. John’s Eve didn’t help. For someone as devotedly Catholic as her
sister-in-law, celebrating a baby’s life who had never been born, was
sacrilege. The saint’s day was meant to celebrate a birth, Marit insisted, and
certainly had nothing to do with a baby born dead.
But it wasn’t a topic Holly was willing to think about today, not on Arella’s
birthday. Instead, she catalogued her daughter’s gifts: an enormous
stuffed pony for her bed, and a cellphone. She chuckled at that one, recalling
Roger’s perplexity.
“Why do you have to get the baby a phone?” he’d asked her the week before when
she walked into the house, arms loaded with shopping bags. Holly had exclaimed
that Arella wasn’t a baby anymore, she was turning eleven, and every preteen
needed a cellphone.
Roger chewed his upper lip for a while, before asking, “Is this along the lines
of ‘ET phone home?’” He had laughed, and so had she. Gifts for Arella
were an annual practice in their household, and long gone were the days where
Roger made much of a fuss over it. Keeping Holly happy was his primary goal in
life, even if that meant some particularly nutsy charges on their credit card
every June. His wife’s frenzied activities subsided within a week or so after
the birthday celebration, allowing her to settle back into reality, recharged
and reaffirmed with the notion that she was doing the right thing by Arella.
She felt warm pressure on her right shoulder, and opening her eyes saw that
Millie’s husband, Josiah, knelt at her side on one corduroyed knee, his gnarled
hand grasping her shoulder lightly, holding her steadfast. Holly looked up into
the old man’s deep blue eyes, shot through with red veins, but firm and gentle
in their gaze, and nodded. He stood up slowly and she extended a hand for him
to pull, which he did.
“Almost everybody’s there at the cottage,” he said. “Except Edward, but you
knew that.” They were both aware that there was no need to explain further; of
all the friends and relatives, Roger’s brother had never attended these
parties, whether he was in town or off somewhere in the world. For some reason,
Josiah enjoyed pointing out this fact to her, a reminder perhaps of which of
the two older men in her life she could count on more.
Holly stood immobile, gazing into the tangle of trees rambling up the hillside
away from the brook.
He looked at her closely. “We all live with ghosts.”
The motion of her head was barely noticeable. “Yes,” she agreed. “Some are
those of people who’ve never been born.”
She looked down at the grave. “I have to leave now, Arella. Your party is
starting.” She swept her index finger over the top of the stone, letting it
linger on the upward swooping scallop, and then turned to walk with Josiah back
up the hill.
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Author
Info
As the award-winning author for
her novels, Drinking the Knock Water: A New Age Pilgrimage and In Search of
Sushi Tora, and on her lifestyle blog, “Feeding the Famished”, Emily Kemme
tends to look at the world in all its rawness. She writes about human nature,
and on her blog shares recipes and food for thought along with insights about
daily life. She is a recipe creator but winces when labeled a foodie. She is
the Food and Lifestyle Contributor for the Greeley Tribune’s Dining column and
also writes features for the newspaper and its magazine, #Greality.
"I write about what I ate
for lunch only if it's meaningful," Emily says. "Mostly, I'm just
hungry.”
Emily also writes because her
degrees in American and English History, followed by a law degree from the
University of Colorado, left her searching for her voice. She also suffered
from chronic insomnia.
“Writing helps clarify my mind,
erasing clutter, and makes room for more impressions. My thoughts can seem
random and disconnected, but once they flow onto paper, a coherency and purpose
emerges, directing patterns into story. I sleep much better, too.”
As an author who lives in
Greeley, Colorado, she celebrates people’s differences, noting that the biggest
problem with being different is when it’s deemed a problem. Emily often
identifies with the underdog, focusing on humanizing the outsider, showing
there is not only one right way to be or to live. Through her writing she hopes
her audience will be open to new ideas, the acceptance of others, and will
recognize the universalities of human experience in a non-judgmental way as
they meet her characters and follow their stories.
Her first novel, In Search of
Sushi Tora, was awarded as Finalist for First Novel in the 2012 Next Generation
Indie Book Awards and her second novel, Drinking the Knock Water, was awarded
as a Finalist in Chick Lit in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and
received two CIPA EVVY awards. Emily is currently working on a children’s
book series, Moro and The Cone of Shame, a collaborative project with her
daughter-in-law, Mia. She is also writing her third novel, The Man With the
Wonky Spleen, a story about human idiosyncrasies.
Professional Memberships: PEN
America
The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with Emily Kemme . . .
How would you
describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
My writing style is
conversational with solid, almost pictorial descriptions. My goal is to write a
scene so that people are drawn into the book and in that sense drawn into my
mind. I want them to be able to see the world or stage I have created, so I
describe in all five senses what my characters are feeling, hearing, seeing,
smelling, touching and tasting.
My writing can be
humorous, poignant, upsetting (emotionally) and hopefully will encourage people
to step back and ponder the topics I write about. I hope they might identify
with the situations, at least in some part.
What mindset or
routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether
you are working on a project or just free writing)?
Before I can sit down
to write (and this includes novels, blog posts, recipes or newspaper features)
I lay down on my bed, close my eyes and meditate for about 30 minutes. It
clears my mind, takes away tiredness and allows me to be more perceptive and
aware of my thoughts.
Do you take your
character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the
way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do
you build upon your character during story creation?
I create a character
concept for each one before I start writing but the characters develop
naturally with the story along the way. Even though I have a timeline, there
are constant diversions, often those created by the characters themselves as
they move forward and begin to take on shapes I hadn’t anticipated. They talk
to me as I write — and no, I don’t have weird voices in my head!
Have you found
yourself bonding with any particular character? If so which one(s)?
I really like Rachel
and Leah in Drinking the Knock Water. As lesbians hoping to join the world of
parents, they bring both humor and pathos to their story.
Do you have a
character that you have been working on that you can't wait to put to paper?
Yes. The title
character of my next novel, “The Man With The Wonky Spleen.”
Have you ever felt
that there was something inside of you that you couldn't control? If so what?
If no what spurs you to reach for the unexperienced?
Every time I sit down
at my computer to write. When I reach that perfect state of relaxation where
the words begin to flow, I’m never sure what is coming out and what its source
is. And often, when I go back and read what I’ve written months later, I wonder
where it came from because I don’t remember thinking it.
Author
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