The third book is a bit different.
It is, in my opinion, the best in the trilogy. For one thing, it had a longer writing process and more editing attention than the other two combined. Furthermore, I had a few more years of living and hours and hours of writing in my experience when I set out to write The Keeping. Beyond these obvious advantages, the plot of The Keeping departs more from my own life than either The Finding or The Leaving. The story went through several versions – my “Gatekeeper notes” journal is a chronologist’s nightmare – simply because I could not, unlike the other two, look at my life and tell you how the tale was supposed to end.
My writer’s soul knew that, according to the story, Anna needed to return to England. While I had tried persistently to live that plotline, my life insisted on taking some unexpected, non-Englandish turns. Following grad school, I moved to Fayetteville, NC – for a year, I said, just to rest and regroup after the grueling onslaught of higher education. Three years later, when Gatekeeper II was published, I was still living in Fayetteville. I had a full-time job, a schedule full of social and theatrical commitments, and an American (read: not-British) boyfriend. England seemed to be slipping further and further away from me – and yet, somehow, I had to write Anna’s story.
Just to make matters even more confusing, there was Ireland.
In the summer of 2010, I traveled to Ireland with my parents for a week. My dad, a pastor, was running a leadership retreat for Irish pastors, and I got to tag along as worship leader. We stayed with the head pastor, an Italian man who met his Irish wife in Bermuda (like you do) and had moved with her to Ireland years before. Their home, nestled in the hills of Ballyjamesduff and brimming with two different yet equally powerful flavors of hospitality (Irish and Italian), was a haven unlike anything I had ever experienced. I walked in the countryside and toured castles and ate hearty Irish stew with homemade bread, washed down with good Italian wine and homemade cappuccino. And, at night, I crawled into the window of my upstairs room and sat on the sill, my feet resting on the first floor-roof, and thought:
This feels like Home.
Then, immediately afterwards and with a stab of guilt:
England is supposed to be the only place that makes me feel like this.
At that time, I was still building my hopes, dreams, and sense of identity around getting back to England. Falling in love with Ireland felt like a betrayal. Besides, my subconscious argued, if England is not your true Home, where are you supposed to be? I felt my sense of purpose and direction slipping away into a whirlwind of conflicting and indiscernible desires as I gazed out over the cheerfully melancholy landscape.
I did make three trips to England over the next few years. Fortunately for me (and for Anna), my friend Mez Blume (whose authorial debut, Katie Watson and the Painter’s Plot, is charming and winsome and available here!) had moved to England, providing me not only a place to stay in London, but also a wealth of shared adventures that would ensure the same kind of authenticity for The Keeping that readers valued in The Finding. (Example: Uncle Abelard the Well-Mannered Basement Dragon is a thing. So, alas, is the difficulty of procuring linens in Piccadilly.)
Somehow, as I lived and worked in Fayetteville and then traveled to England on holiday, it all started to come together. I sipped bitter under the willow trees at The Perch and cried over books in Shaftesbury Avenue and discovered all-but-heavenly crepes at a roadside cart in Hampstead (see above for photographic evidence). I went back to Ireland and walked through the countryside and toured the castles (and the Guinness factory) and sat in the windowsill. I wrote pages of poetry and filled several journals and talked to my dear friends and traveling companions about the various longings stirring (or, at times, boiling) in my soul. And then, at the end of it all, I realized Anna’s story – not the events, perhaps, but certainly the heart – was right there, in the crucible of my confusion, where it had always been.
The Gatekeeper trilogy is, at its core, about adventure. In the first book, adventure finds us unexpectedly. In the second, we learn the dangers of trying to manufacture adventure for ourselves. The third chronicles my real-life revelation that the truest and biggest adventures always turn out to be rather different than what we’ve planned.
Adventure always involves transition – the “in between” times, when we are caught up in the turmoil of what was and what is and what is not yet, but about to be. Every gate has its own story of upheaval. In The Keeping, I stood on the threshold with Anna and flung my arms open wide to the uncomfortable hope and unexpected joy of all that lay ahead. Like her, I had made the painful yet liberating discovery:
Home isn’t on the other side of the gate.
Home IS the gate.
The original inspiration for the title and theme of Gatekeeper comes from Psalm 84:10, one of my “life verses”:
“A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else!
I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God
than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.” (NLT)
My favorite authors have always been my “gatekeepers”, opening the door of wonder and ushering me through to new vistas. The best stories, for me, are the tales that bring me JOY: the books, poems, songs, and films that make me ache and leave me feeling hollow inside – the words that open the gate, even if only for a moment, and give me a glimpse of the wild and beautiful country that calls across the oceans of every human’s consciousness.
It is my deepest dream as a writer to open that gate for others.
So I will dwell on the borderland between “now” and “not yet”, and I will take the echoes of Song I hear and spin them into tales; and, to any who may visit, I will offer a hearty welcome and a helping hand on the latch.
The Gatekeeper trilogy, you see, is only the beginning.
P.S. If the Gatekeeper trilogy has been meaningful to you, I earnestly implore you to write a review on Amazon. ’Tis the work of a moment, but its impact on the future success of these books – and on the possibility of others coming to find pleasure in them – is incalculable. Many thanks in advance!
Wow! I can feel the intrigue build up in me, as I anticipate the unraveling of Anna’s story, than , I hold myself back, as I still am to read Gatekeeper II. Presently retreading Book I. I’ve got time… since I’m wheelchair bound and reading is my escape and main entertainment.
Thank you for sharing such a good introduction to the story .
Margie
Goodness! I am sorry you are wheelchair-bound,but glad that the books can provide some pleasure. You’ll have to let me know what you think once you finish the whole trilogy!