Dave Margoshes’ new novel, A Simple Carpenter (Radiant Press, 2024) , is one of our most anticipated fiction releases of the year, and today, we are honoured to have this Saskatoon-area poet and fiction writer on our blog to speak to his remarkable book.

Set in the early and mid-‘80s in the Middle East, A Simple Carpenter plays out against a backdrop of strife in Lebanon and ethnic/religious tensions between Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine. This historical backdrop serves as an empathetic and thoughtful commentary on our modern political climate.

Part biblical fable, part magic realism, and part thriller, the story follows the epic journey of a ship’s carpenter stranded on a small Mediterranean island and visited by a frightening mysterious creature. He’s lost his memory but has acquired the ability to speak, write and understand all languages. After his rescue, he spends time in a Lebanese coastal village recuperating with a group of nuns who, observing him perform what appear to be small miracles, take him to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Later in Beirut he’s hired as a translator for the UN peacekeeping force, and is recruited as a messenger for a group named Black September. On a quest to find his true identity he travels on foot across the hills to the Sea of Galilee, encountering a series of strange and magical communities evoking biblical times along the way.

We are captivated by this staggering story, and welcome Dave to our Power Q & A series with a burning question. Keep reading!

Bring home *A Simple Carpenter* by Dave Margoshes!

Q: From the first line of the first chapter of your book, there is an overwhelming immersion in the senses, particularly sound and smell. It’s a breathtaking opening. Can you tell us about creating this scene—why it was important to start in this place?

A: For the benefit of those who haven’t yet read the novel, let me first explain, it begins with a sailor onboard a ship adrift in the Mediterranean, regaining consciousness after being in a coma for several days. He’s lost his memory so has no idea who he is, where he is, or what’s happened to him. Here’s the first 2 sentences:

“The blood in my veins sang and boiled. The sheets of my bunk were awash with sweat and other foul emanations of my body. I slept and slept, slipping in and out of consciousness. Through the haze of my own mind, I heard voices babbling in a stew of languages, their words clear and indistinct at the same time, their meaning incoherent.”

So yes, as you noted in your question, “sound and smell.” The narrator is a blank slate, hungry for information, and he can only rely on his senses.

Actually, in my first draft, the novel began with a scene that opens what is now Chapter 4, after a shipwreck leaves the narrator alone on a desert island. It begins this way:

“Later, during what I now think of as my sojourn of sand, I had ample time to ponder the implications of my lack of memory. … I thought of all [that had happened to him] as I lay in the sand of the small island I had washed up on, but I thought also of sand…. I lay, often for hours, in a bed of sand with a view of the sea, each portion of the back of my body, from skull to shoulder to buttock to calf to heel of foot, developing a deep intercourse with those crystals, my fingers threading through the sand at my sides, my lips engaging deeply in conversation with the grains of sand upon them, my eyelids and the hairs of my nostrils tugging and pushing against their incessant current.”

Here too, the narrator is dependent on his senses – the feel of the sand he’s lying on, the sound of waves on the beach, the heat of the sun.

In both cases, senses are extremely important. And both scenes set the tone for the novel’s main storyline, the narrator’s search for identity.

I switched those two scenes so the novel unfolds primarily in “real time,” relying less on flashback and memory.

More about Dave Margoshes:

Dave Margoshes began his writing life as a journalist, working as a reporter and editor on a number of daily newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, and has taught journalism and creative writing. He has published twenty books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies, in Canada and beyond, including six times in the Best Canadian Stories volumes; he’s been nominated for the Journey Prize several times and was a finalist in 2009. His Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories won two prizes at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. He also won the Poetry Prize in 2010 for Dimensions of an Orchard. His collection of linked short stories, A Book of Great Worth, was named one of Amazon. CA’s Top Hundred Books of 2012. Other prizes include the City of Regina Writing Award, twice; the Stephen Leacock Prize for Poetry in 1996 and the John V. Hicks Award for fiction in 2001.