The Wild Beneath: Kelly Anderson’s need for freedom turns image of metamorphosing man into novel about the search for your true self.
Book: The Wild Beneath
Author: Kelly Anderson
Publisher: Park Row Books
Format: Surviving disaster, mysterious stranger, coming of age, discovering true self
Setting/Era: Devastated small Canadian coastal town, modern times
Debut novel: Yes
Author Interview by Diane Slocum
Annie and her grandmother survive a devastating tsunami that strikes their small British Columbia town. Her parents were on the sailboat where the family lived and their fate is unknown. Annie finds another apparent survivor on the beach, in a strange condition. She also senses a tune emanating from him. They call him Walker. She develops an attachment to Walker that strains her life-long relationship with Evan and makes her question her life choices.
AUTHORLINK: This is the second book I’ve read in recent months that includes people with an unusual connection to the sea and a seductive tune. What gave you the idea to explore this in a novel? Was this part of your original idea for the story or, if not, what did come first?
“I didn’t know what I wanted and never planned to write a novel.”
ANDERSON: When I began writing The Wild Beneath, I was in a rinse-repeat cycle of emergency department shifts, clinics and raising two young boys. My life as a doctor looked great from the outside, but inside I felt flat and compressed. I’d lost touch with myself and didn’t know what I wanted anymore. I never planned to write a novel. But on the way to work one morning, in my imagination, I saw a man undergoing a physical metamorphosis on a beach. He was also making a humming sound. This character wouldn’t leave my mind and wanted to be written down; similarly, this book wouldn’t let me go until it was finished.
AUTHORLINK: How did the pressures of your own life lead you to this?
“…longing for freedom found its way into this story.”
ANDERSON: Looking back, I can see how much of my own longing for freedom found its way into this story. The Wild Beneath is about a woman raised on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest until a tsunami strands her on land, and in the wreckage, she meets a man making a humming noise only she can hear. But what it’s really about is transformation, how we listen to ourselves, and the risk of not listening. I was writing toward something I needed, even before I understood what that was.
AUTHORLINK: How did you develop the story from there?
“I wrote early in mornings.”
ANDERSON: I started asking questions. I wrote early in the mornings, at 5am, before work. I would set a timer for 25 minutes and think about: Who would find this man on the beach? What would it mean to encounter someone who challenged everything you believed you knew about the world? And what if that encounter awakened something in you that you hadn’t known was missing?
Annie emerged as the main character who could hear something that nobody else could.
The novel went through four major rewrites over five years. What began as a mysterious encounter with an extraordinary man gradually became a story about the courage it takes to listen to yourself when what you hear and feel is unconventional.
AUTHORLINK: When you started writing, did you know how you were going to resolve the dilemma of Annie’s attraction to both Evan and Walker?
“I don’t plot out my stories in advance…”
ANDERSON: Absolutely not. I don’t plot out my stories in advance (I wish I could!) and I didn’t know the ending until the fourth revision. I was actually so conflicted about it that I put this manuscript in a drawer for eight months until I was ready.
Evan and Walker represent very different kinds of love, and neither of them are the wrong choice. Evan represents history, familiarity, and the life Annie has built. Walker awakens something entirely different in her, an ephemeral part of herself that she hasn’t explored.
We can love someone deeply and still feel a longing for something we can’t quite name. I didn’t want Annie’s story to be resolved by choosing one man over another. Her deepest sense of belonging couldn’t ultimately come from either of them. It had to come from within herself.
AUTHORLINK: You explore several themes in the story – dealing with tragic loss, being different, choosing between two worlds and more. Can you tell how you deal with some of those in the story?
“All of these themes are connected…”
ANDERSON: All of these themes are connected by the idea of transformation. Annie experiences an enormous loss that changes the way she understands herself and the world–she gets caught between the wild world she came from, and the new “normal” one she’s expected to inhabit. There’s a sense that some essential part of her has been left behind.
I’m fascinated by the ways we adapt to our circumstances, often without realizing what we’ve sacrificed in the process. We become who we think we’re supposed to be, and sometimes that means losing touch with our instincts, our desires, or the parts of ourselves that don’t fit neatly into the lives we’ve created.
Ultimately, the novel asks what it means to live and grow into ourselves despite what cultural stories tell us about what our lives should look like. How do we honour the people we love while also listening to the parts of ourselves that are asking to be heard? And how do we find the courage to change, even when change means leaving something familiar and “normal” behind?
AUTHORLINK: What did you do to research the story?
ANDERSON: I spent an inordinate among of time researching whales, marine communication, and the flora and fauna of British Columbia. I have dear friends who taught me enough about sailing and fishing to write them (somewhat) accurately. For details on forestry, I called around to university departments, non-profits, and even logging and tugboat companies. I even hired a local sailor to show me around his boat, so I could write it more realistically. It’s shocking how generous humans are with their time and expertise, as you’ll see in my long acknowledgement section.
AUTHORLINK: How did writing, selling and getting your first book published go for you?
ANDERSON: My first instinct is to say I got very lucky (which is true). But, my dad often says to me: ““The harder we work, the luckier we get.”
I think perseverance is key to publishing a novel. Many times, I wondered whether the book would ever find its way. Many times, I was told I was crazy for trying to publish fiction given that I had no writing background. But I was relentless. Something inside me needed to read the story it would become.
I was incredibly fortunate to get to work with my literary agent Madeleine Milburn, who carried this story safely in her backpack until it found a home with HarperCollins Canada and Park Row.
Publication itself has been wonderful and surreal. Seeing the book in bookstores, hearing from readers, and discovering that these characters who lived in my imagination for so long now belong to other people, too, moves me to tears.
AUTHORLINK: What are you working on next?
ANDERSON: I’m working on my second novel, chasing another love story where the natural world and mystery intersect. I like stories that begin in our recognizable world, but gradually open into something more vast, magical and non-linear. This next book looks at forest fires, and how nature may know more than we do about resilience.
About the author: Dr. Kelly Anderson is a family physician with fellowships in HIV and emergency medicine. She completed the BookEnds Novel Revision Program and trained in the Gateless Writing Academy. She is a Gateless writing teacher. She spent her childhood in British Columbia and now lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her family. The Wild Beneath is her debut novel.
