As mentioned at the start of this blog, I spent a month in Valdivia, Chile in part to research my novel-in-progress. Those who have followed these posts regularly have been fed bits and pieces of the story along with my travel impressions. It seems only fair now to cobble the pieces together into a cohesive summary of the novel. Since I returned, I’ve revised where revisions were necessary and have completed several more chapters. Some six chapters remain to be written, of an approximate total of thirty-six. After that — well, then comes the really hard part, trying to get it published.
My next post will be the final day in Valdivia.
Summary of the Snow Globe:
Lago Ranco, similar to (though large than) Clara’s lake
One summer day in southern Chile’s lake region, sixty-five-year-old transplanted American Clara Valle drops into a whirlpool and emerges in an enchanted city at the bottom of a lake. The first of several supernatural journeys she takes, it could be the delusions of a melancholic mind—or travel to an altered reality.
Torres del Paine, courtesy Story Travel
Soon after Clara had learned of her husband Jorge’s infidelity, she became withdrawn and increasingly troubled. Could that have precipitated the journeys she vows are real? As her condition worsens and she drifts through ghostly events in Chile’s past in search of a Mapuche Indian boy, Jorge considers committing her to a psychiatric hospital. Alarmed, Clara’s younger brother, Bill Albright, flies to Valdivia from his West Virginia home. Though Bill remembers little of Clara’s youth, he never forgot the gift Jorge gave her during their courtship—a snow globe of the Torres del Paine mountains in southern Patagonia.
Brasher doubloon, similar to one found at the bottom of the lake …
At the same time, Pamela Palmer of Idaho arrives in Valdivia to reconnect with her long-estranged daughter and a son-in-law she met only once. Through him, Pamela gets to know the wealthy rancher, Jorge Valle, his troubled wife, and her brother, Bill. Sympathetic to Clara and intrigued by her journeys, Pamela joins Bill in his quest to keep Clara out of a hospital. After a particularly upsetting episode, Clara flees to an isolated monastery in southern Patagonia. Pamela and Bill follow, and, by tracking random clues, uncover a century-old crime and its strange connection to the snow globe and Clara’s journeys.