TORONTO – Giller-nominated writer Marina Endicott was plodding through a research job she’d been paid to do when she stumbled upon the topic for her latest novel, “The Little Shadows.”
“I would slip off to the archives …. and I kept finding these beautiful photographs of young girls in vaudeville,” the author said during a recent telephone interview from Edmonton.
“I would look up a performance, or I would find a photo of a theatre … so I’d be pulled off on a tangent.”
As her interest in vaudeville grew, Endicott finished her second novel, “Good to a Fault,” about a guilt-ridden Saskatchewan woman who takes in an entire family after she accidentally crashes into their car.
The book – which followed her debut novel, 2001’s “Open Arms” – was shortlisted for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Canada and the Caribbean.
“The Little Shadows” (Doubleday), which hit stores Tuesday, sees Endicott traversing wildly different territory. The author laughingly agrees that the subject matter is a departure: “It’s a bit of a shock, eh?”
Endicott’s new novel tells the story of three sisters trying to make their way in the hard-luck world of vaudeville. It opens in 1912 on a frigid January day in Fort MacLeod, Alta., as the girls – Aurora, Clover and Bella – make their way to an audition under the watchful eye of their mother Flora.
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Endicott, 52, said she was shocked to discover that vaudeville’s unique brand of song, dance and skits existed north of the border at all.
“I had no idea. I didn’t know that there was vaudeville in Canada. I thought of it as a completely American thing,” she said.
The sisters, who soon become known as the Belle Auroras, encounter a colourful group of performers as they move from show to show, begging for work, all the while haunted by the death of their father and younger brother Henry.
Decidedly unpolished at the novel’s outset, their act is gradually honed by a series of mentors. That initial innocence was a notion that intrigued Endicott as she conducted her research.
“Something about those photographs from that early time. … they’re not yet protected when they’re having their picture taken,” she said.
“Their faces are open to us to look at and the gaze is very honest and frank. And even though they’re trying to be pretty, there’s a truthfulness about their look that I was really captivated by.”
Of course, the girls are constantly trying to appear old beyond their years.
Flora introduces Aurora as 16, noting “we say eighteen, of course,” while Clover is a year younger and 13-year-old Bella is “16, wink-wink.”
While the faraway setting is indeed a break from “Good to a Fault,” it’s perhaps not so surprising, given Endicott’s background.
Born in Golden, B.C., the author grew up in Halifax and Toronto and studied drama in London, England. She later moved to Saskatoon, where she worked in the theatre. The ’90s saw her migrate to Alberta with her husband, an RCMP officer.
She says “The Little Shadows” – which is chock-full of vaudeville bits – was a great chance to remember some of the people she had worked with over the years.
“I love people who are funny,” said Endicott.
“They so often shiver on the edge of despair themselves, but boy they make life better for the rest of it.”
Her far-flung childhood also provided inspiration for the novel: “That’s another thing about vaudeville that rang familiar for me is their nomadic lives,” noted Endicott. “Their community is movable.”
Her vaudeville obsession even prompted a road-trip a couple of years back to look at old theatres, with stops in California, Montana, North Dakota and Oregon. Her two teenaged children came along for the ride.
“They’re sick of vaudeville,” she said with a laugh.
“I wanted to go and just travel through the landscape. Because as much as the theatres are important I think for those girls (in the novel) … they’re travelling through the world as well as the theatre.”
It’s a world Endicott is hoping to conjure for readers of “The Little Shadows.”
Said the author: “It’s a pleasure to me if that lost, ephemeral world (of vaudeville) lives again.”
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