Some years ago, I was entranced to see a TV programme dedicated to children whose fathers were killed or crippled during WW1 and how the absence of a father affected their lives. The interviews with the "children" must have been done in the 80s or 90s when the sons and daughters were themselves senior citizens. One old lady remembered her uniformed father walking out of the house and up the lane. He stopped on the brow of the hill, turned and waved and disappeared from view - never to return. She had been 8 at the time.
What moved me most was the love with which these people talked about their deceased fathers. But there were intense feelings of loss and regret, too, and it seemed to me that these feelings had intensified rather than dimmed over time. In other words, the more distant the memory, the greater were the attached feelings - hence the title of my novel: "Feeling the Distance."
I decided to place the story in Germany, perhaps because my father had visited that country in 1937 and 1939 and I have no idea what he was doing there. Imagination and photos of my father's trip - like the one below - did the rest.
The novel begins with the funeral of the author Charles Saddler (1920-2010). His wish that his ashes be scattered on a mountain in the Bavarian Alps inspires two of his children to begin a journey of discovery and to find out more about their father’s past. The only way into this life is through their father’s best-selling novel, "The White Mountain," and through odds and ends that turn up after the funeral. The book poses questions of its own. How much of the book is based on fact and how much is the product of the writer’s imagination? Their attempts to find out take the siblings from Devon to London and, finally, to the Bavarian Alps where they discover that their father has influenced them in ways that both were unaware of.
In "Feeling the Distance" much of the story takes place in the Bavarian town of Oberwald and the mountains that dominate the town – Kreuzberg and the Widderstein. It is in the refuge on the Widderstein that the protagonists come face to face with their father’s past. Are these places simply a product of my imagination? The answer is no they are not. Certainly, these places do exist but they are not in Bavaria! Their origins lie in my memories of Italy and the wonderful times I spent in the mountains north of Verona.
Kreuzberg is simply the Germanised form of the Italian Monte Croce. If ever you arrive in Verona by train and the air is clear, you might notice a hill just behind and to the north of the city centre. There is a white cross on the top. This is the hill I had in mind when I described Kreuzberg in the book.
As for the Widderstein, you will find it at the bottom end of Kleinwalsertal in the Vorarlberg region of Austria. At around 2600m, it is a fine mountain to climb! The real Widderstein has no refuge on its summit and so, for the purposes of the book, I had to import one from another place. I chose Rifugio Fraccaroli (photo left) on the summit of Cima Carega because I have climbed this mountain many times and it was easy to keep it in mind while writing the book.
The town of Oberwald was very loosely based on the village (photo below) that lies at the foot of the Carega group. This village is called Giazza and is not only a wonderful place but also has a linguistic peculiarity. Some of the old inhabitants still speak a Germanic language – the legacy of the medieval period that saw returning Teutonic knights settle in this part of Italy.
Inspiration for the novel was finally turned into writing by some verses in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the following letter I found in a display case in a hotel in the Bavarian mountains. The letter was written by an English lady and addressed to the owner of the hotel. There was an edelweiss attached on one corner of the paper. The letter reads:
Dear Max
This is the edelweiss I have told you about. It was given to me by an Oberstdorfer friend with whom I climbed the Hofetz in 1939. Josef died in the war and I feel the edelweiss should be back in the mountains where it belongs.
What writer could ignore the potential that such a letter presents!
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