And Know the Place
And Know The Place is about coming home. Molly, Claire, Desirée and Philippe have been apart for twenty years. Unwittingly living out a pattern set down for them across generations, they are drawn home to the Waneva River to discover what has been abandoned, cut off and denied them by the betrayals of the past. Each must make reparation for the cycle of redemption to be complete.
A tale within a tale, the novel echoes with unresolved conflicts. Molly has spent nine years engraving the story of her grandmother Agnes and her shadow, Moira Willan. Desirée has spent thirty-five years trying to forget the child she left behind. Claire has known a lifetime of ambivalence that culminates in Eleanor's final return. For Philippe, resistance is still the pivot around which he flails.
The loss and suffering will continue until this death-in-life paralysis is recognized and redeemed. Molly knows this. The process of transforming pain into art has set her free. She holds the centre as each of those she has loved and feared returns. A new cycle can now begin.
Waneva Books
First Edition 2000
ISBN 978-0-9698211-3-1
“And Know The Place is a book about healing, that it can and does happen, in life as in art. It can happen when you give yourself over to an unselfish passion; it can happen when you locate those sacred, restorative spaces (a house, a kindred spirit, a hiding-place in nature, perhaps even pages in a literary text) that Gaston Bachelard says we have all encountered, but too often lose sight of. In this third and final novel of her Waneva trilogy, Catherine Joyce has brought a troubled family full circle, inscribed their most intimate spaces, and dared to wear her heart on her sleeve.”
Gary Geddes, Sailing Home