Camden author’s novel reflects heritage Book set in rural Nova Scotia in 1942

When Rosemarie Nervelle sat down in 1998 to start writing her first novel for young adults, she set out to tell a tale based on the people she had known in her childhood in Nova Scotia.

Some of her characters are composites of people she knew as a child, although her story and her characters are fictitious and are not intended to portray any actual person or place. Nervelle, who was born and raised in Nova Scotia, said her ancestors’ heritages include French, Irish, African, and native Micmac Indians.

That diverse past is reflected in her book “The Witch of Beaver Creek Mine.”

“In the early 1800s, Micmac, French, Scottish and Irish immigrants and former African slaves commonly intermarried,” she said. “They settled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Quebec Province and Maine. My grandfather was a product of such an intermarriage, and he was very proud of his Micmac heritage. His mother was half French and half “Black Micmac.” His father was also black and Micmac.

“They were all born in Nova Scotia,” she wrote in the preface of her book. “His wife – my grandmother – was also the product of intermarriage, Irish with a dash of black on her father’s side – probably from African loyalists who gained their freedom by joining the British Navy and sailing from New York to Nova Scotia during the American Revolution in 1776.”

The events in the story take place in 1942-43, when a great many Micmacs joined the mainstream of New England and Canadian life. “They reared families and made their living mostly by farming and fishing,” Nervelle said. “They were hardworking and respected members of their communities. ‘The Witch of Beaver Creek Mine’ is a coming-of-age story for a young boy in an era when people worked hard and respected each other. There was no generation gap between children and adults. Children were respected members of the family and the community. They were encouraged to make their own decisions and their own mistakes. The only judgment on their actions was whether they did the right thing.”

Nervelle said the Micmac tradition she admires most is tribal members’ splendid mastery of storytelling. “My grandfather was no exception. At different times in his life, he was a lumberjack, a trapper, and a hunting guide. He brought home stories from the woods, the animals, and the people he met. He was a tall, raw-boned man whose body shape never changed. He worked very hard.

“My grandfather was a big influence on my imagination. He was a storyteller who would take episodes from one story and blend them into another for heightened effect,” she said. “He wove magical tales, the likes of which I’d never heard, and might never hear again … unless I tell them myself.”

True to its purpose, “The Witch of Beaver Creek Mine” tells the story of a maligned and misunderstood old Micmac Indian medicine woman who lives in an abandoned gold mine near Beaver Creek, a village in Nova Scotia.

Her horribly scarred face and mysterious ways set her apart from many in Beaver Creek. Only rarely do hunters from the village see her in the woods. People in Beaver Creek fearfully whisper her name and weave superstitious tales about the witch’s magic.

Nervelle remembers the years she spent in the village on which she based her story and returns there to visit from time to time. The people are still gentle and still live simply, she said.

Nervelle lived in New York City as a young child and attended a Catholic school. She and her mother eventually moved back to Nova Scotia, and she graduated from the Yarmouth County Academy. After a year at the University of Sudbury, Ontario, Nervelle moved to New Jersey, where she attended Katherine Gibbs business school in Newark and worked for many years, married, and raised two children.

In the early 1970s, she moved to Nantucket Island and lived there for five years, during which time she decided to return to school. She moved to Amherst, Mass., to study architectural design at the University of Massachusetts where she earned a BFA degree and met her husband.

“We came to Maine because it was close to Nova Scotia, and it reminded me of my home in Yarmouth. Bar Harbor isn’t far,” she said of the location of Bayferries’ Cat. “I can be in Yarmouth, my hometown, in less than four hours.