Has anyone ever published a novel without a title? I think not, but my novel #4 has refused to accept a proper name. The #’s 1 and 2 grew into their working titles with grace and obedience. The #3 rejected its first name but welcomed the final tag with open arms.
This #4 is a laggard. I don’t really blame it for being obstinate. For the fifty years it has
taken me to complete the story, its name was Trading with Indians. Nicknamed TWI.
That’s because the fiction’s early form was a collection of stories, tales, poems and myths about the Wampanoag people who occupied the area of Massachusetts where I grew up: Plymouth County. These were the first Americans of the Northeast Woodlands to face the onslaught of European culture.
In 2020 when we all isolated at home during the Covid 19 Pandemic, an early copy of
#4 showed up in a box of relics under my bed. As I began to turn the scattered type-
written pages into a modern novel, it was clear that the theme was not the tragedies of
King Philip’s War 350 years ago, as originally planned, but the lasting effect of those
early troubles in US history. The main character became a young woman in the late 20 th
century who refused to believe that she was related to those mistreated people.
So, I changed the name to Reluctant Native, a title sternly rejected by both my
publisher and my early readers. Then I tried Matty Wheet’s Troubling Roots, a good
title for a novel about a hairdresser. Now #4 is tagged as Reluctant Descendent. Still,
#4 is not happy.
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