ELORA – Music is a pivotal part of 12-year-old Flora Parsons’ identity, and it serves as a safety net as she, and those around her, grapple with life’s challenges.
Parsons is the main character in Jean Mill’s newest novel, After the Wallpaper Music.
Mills has lived in Marden for the last 27 years and is the award-winning author of Skating Over Thin Ice, Larkin on the Shore, The Legend, Wingman, and Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting (published by Red Deer Press and Orca Books).
While most of her other work is young adult fiction, Mills opted to write her newest book for a middle grade audience, mostly because 12 felt like the perfect age for where Parsons is at in her life – before the onset of teenage woes.
After the Wallpaper Music is published by Pajama Press.
Mills published two novels with Nelson Canada in the ‘90s that were aimed at middle-grade readers and used as classroom novel studies.
“I love that voice,” she said of writing for this age group, noting she uses the same language and word choices as for her other novels because “middle-grade readers are perfectly capable of reading and understanding,” but the story is “so much more focussed without distractions of teen life.
“Big things happen in this story, sure – friendship struggles, illness, loss, new relationships – but younger readers will have no problem processing these issues.
“It’s a story about kids sticking together, and, in the end, the healing power of music,” she said.
Though the novel is aimed at middle grade readers, Mill encourages readers of all ages to check it out, noting some of the best feedback she has received has been from adult readers.
“We were all kids once,” she laughed during an interview with the Advertiser at Magic Pebble Books in Elora.
Mill tapped into her own childhood in crafting this novel, and said there are many parallels between herself and Parsons.
“She’s me, basically,” she said, smiling.
Music is closely interwoven in all aspects of Mill’s life, and it has served as a life raft for her just as it does for Parsons and other characters in After the Wallpaper Music.
“I was a musical child,” Mills said, and music has continued to be an intrinsic part of who she is throughout her adulthood.
“I turn to music when I need to escape the world and I turn to music when I want to be part of community.
“It gives you something positive to hang on to,” Mills said.
Mills describes Parsons as “a young violinist who is pulled in different personal and musical directions thanks to a Battle of the Bands competition.”
Parsons plays first violin in a string quartet, joins a rock band for Battle of the Bands, and also taps into her east coast heritage when she plays her violin as a fiddle.
Music connects her with her elderly aunt, as in the evenings she plays traditional Newfoundland tunes for her Auntie Flora.
One of these tunes is an original piece that Mills, who has professional experience with song writing, created for the novel.
“I wanted to use a traditional Newfoundland song called Sweet Forget-Me-Not as a pivotal moment in the story,” Mills said. “But the editor was hesitant to use a real song and suggested I wrote one of my own.
“Time is a Fickle Friend was the result – simple and short, but I hope it captures the spirit of traditional song that I was trying to convey.”
When her Auntie Flora becomes ill during the story, Parsons has “a horrible feeling that she might lose her,” Mills said, which “seems to threaten everything – not just her family, but her music as well.”
Music also serves as a guiding light for a new boy at school who Parsons plays music with, as he navigates the aftermath of a family tragedy, Mill said.
Through music, everyone is offered a chance to move forward, she said.
After the Wallpaper Music is available at Magic Pebble Books and through the Wellington County Library system.
