#nat roy

Thank you for the ask!

The unwritten work that keeps playing on and on in my brain is called Dirigo. I originally wanted to get it down for Maine’s bicentennial in 2020, but that never happened. And now all the characters go off and play by themselves in my brain and they don’t care in the least that the seminal work that created them hasn’t even been finished yet.

Dirigo features a young Maine farmer named Eben Sprague and his sister Sairy, who live in their family’s ancient house in the midcoast of Maine in 1820. Sairy is a mural painter (think Rufus Porter-style) whose artworks take on lives of their own. Literally.

One morning after a gale, a sailor washes ashore on the strand of their saltwater farm. His name is Nathaniel Roy. Though bruised and battered by the storm, he reveals that he could not drown—physically could not—though his ship was lost and all other hands with her.

As Nat convalesces with the Spragues and makes friends with Sairy’s young child Hank Thistle (who is partial to wearing frocks and cocked hats), a spectral creature—the 14-foot-tall Fetch Moose—roams the forest behind the house, and Nat swears he sees himself foundering in the painted sea in one of Sairy’s murals—the scene of a shipwreck—at the local tavern.

Meanwhile, Eben and Nat find themselves deeply drawn to each other in a way neither of them expected…

Did I mention this was all inspired by the Great Seal of Maine?