Karen L. Abrahamson writes fantasy, romance, and mystery novels and award-nominated short stories. When not writing, she can be found with a camera and backpack in fabulous locations around the world. Learn more about Karen and her books and her website.
The remains of the Bella Coola cannery
The Inspiration Behind the Story
I tend to set my stories in unusual locations that inspire me. The Phoebe Clay Mysteries take place on the stormy waters of Johnstone Strait on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in the sweltering Arabian Sea heat of Kochi, India, and the also sweltering heat of Angkor, Cambodia. I’ve been fortunate to visit all of them. The latest book, Trapped on Cedar Trails, (releasing September 30, 2022), returns Phoebe Clay to British Columbia, Canada, this time to the rainy Great Bear Rainforest of the B.C. Central Coast.
The novel centers on Bella Vista, a fictional town that is a poor relation to the real-life Bella Coola. Like Bella Coola, Bella Vista has its own derelict fish cannery. These places are left over from the days when the Pacific Northwest ran thick with salmon and the fishing boats couldn’t possibly get their catch back to Vancouver for canning before the fish spoiled. As a result, in remote locations along the central coast you’ll find these huge old L-shaped buildings built over the water where the boats could pull in and transfer their haul. Inside these remote canneries, men and women, often First Nations or Chinese, would can the fish that would then be transported to the cities.
At the time, people could live in dormitories, or claim a bit of land and build a cabin. Typical of the day, the communities were segregated into sub-communities of First Nations, Chinese and European. The canneries had stores that catered to the fishermen and the cannery staff. All this changed early in the 20th century with the advent of the huge cannery ships. As a result, the canneries and this iconic west coast life faded away.
Today, the old fishing fleets are gone and few of the canneries remain. Fires and west coast rains have largely destroyed the huge old buildings. I stayed at the Tallheo Cannery Guesthouse across the water from Bella Coola. Here, half of the old structure remains standing stately on its pilings along the shore. The other half collapsed long ago and now the owner of the cannery works long hours trying to preserve this bit of west coast history. We stayed in the old (supposedly haunted) dormitory house that was once reserved for the European employees. The old store and the communications buildings still stand as well, though the First Nations and Chinese communities have been consumed by time and the dense vegetation of the rainforest.
Standing on the pebbled shore in the shadow of the west coast mountains, with the wind off the ocean tugging at your hair and the sun disappearing behind the peaks, I could imagine the trials of living in those very isolated communities. As the shadows lengthened, I could conjure the ghosts who probably inhabit the area. Of course, while ghosts might seem dangerous, more realistically the danger to visitors is the chance encounter with one of the rainforest’s huge grizzly bears.
From these thoughts and this beautiful place came the inspiration for the story which grew into Trapped on Cedar Trails.
Phoebe Clay Mystery, Book 4
The discovery of a woman’s body trapped in driftwood off a small, west coast town turns a five-day photography class into a nightmare for Phoebe Clay, her sister Becca, and Phoebe’s niece Alice. Did the woman fall off a boat or has something worse happened? Either way, Becca wants to return home immediately, but Alice, a student in the class, won’t hear of it. Phoebe just wants to stay out of the mother-daughter drama.
The specter of murder hangs over the family as they join the other students at an isolated fish cannery guesthouse on the coast of British Columbia. Then on their first night, Alice spots ghostly figures outside and on the first morning, Phoebe finds a dead grizzly bear on the cannery’s shore. She doesn’t want to get involved, but there’s something wrong at the Bella Vista Cannery Guesthouse, and someone is not who they say they are.
Against her better judgment, she begins quiet enquiries while trying to keep her sister and Alice safely uninvolved. But not knowing who to trust means answers come at a price. When Alice decides to pursue her own risky investigation, events take a sharp turn, revealing an insidious plot that threatens the lives of everyone Phoebe holds dear.
On the run on the cannery’s treacherous, rain-soaked, night-shrouded cedar trails, Phoebe and her family will face the greatest danger they’ve ever met—brutal foes determined to ensure the family doesn’t survive to reveal the cannery’s secrets.
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