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By Sage Birchwater

Christian Petersen will be one of two authors attending the Quesnel Museum’s Heritage Speakers Series at the annual Christmas sale open house on December 3 at 7 p.m. in the Quesnel Museum.

Petersen released his third book this fall, All Those Drawn To Me, published by Caitlin Press.

All Those Drawn To Me is a collection of nine fictional short stories rooted in the Cariboo where Peterson has lived for 40 years. The stories cover a span of historical fiction from the mid 1800s gold rush in Barkerville to the present day.

The book really puts the Cariboo Chilcotin on the map. Those familiar with the region will recognize such place names as the Williams Lake stampede grounds, the Soda Creek gaol, the Quesnel River, Lakecity Ford, Nazko, the Itcha Mountains.

“I grew up in Quesnel and have lived in Williams Lake for most of the past 20 years,” says Petersen who started writing seriously 25 years ago. “I’ve always been an avid reader of fiction. Fiction is really a passion of mine. Apart from my personal life, writing fiction is the primary way I interact with the world.”

The title of the book, All Those Drawn To Me comes from the second story in the collection.

“It’s the voice of the Quesnel River,” Petersen says.

Many of his stories deal with the darker aspects of the human experience, tragedy, death and anguish.

“I think I see fear as a strong motivator in a lot of my characters, whether it is explicit or held inside. I like to think that even in the darker stories, there is some kind of overcoming of that. I think people grow through difficult and fearful experiences. As dark as things get, that’s largely what supplies us our growth.”

The title story conveys the author’s respect for the power of the river.

“There is no morality to a river. It’s a huge formidable force. I also see the river as a metaphor for life as it sweeps us along. Sooner or later, there’s no getting out.”

While some of the stories in the book are quite personal, Petersen emphasizes they are purely fiction. Some of the stories talk about real events that occurred in history, like the Barkerville fire, the hanging of the notorious McLean brothers, and Lyne’s gaol at Soda Creek.

“In Aurora, a story set during the Barkerville fire, the characters are completely fictional except for Mr. Moses who worked across the street, and the photographer Frederick Dally. I take off from that incident which was just a flight of fancy.”

Likewise in the story Horse From Persia, historical figure Alex J. Hare is standing on the gallows spilling his heart out.

“It’s quite fantastical,” Petersen says, “but I quite like the myth of it. There was no better time for that guy to go over what meant the most to him, including his deepest connections to his mother.”

The writing of Aurora and Horse From Persia dates back to 1990, and Petersen says they form the core of his book. Other stories are more recent.

Petersen acknowledges the financial help from Canada Council for the Arts that allowed him to attend a five-week writing studio in Banff in 2009.

“It was a dream to be able to have five weeks to write every day. That’s what I did was write fiction.”

He says his main mentor, both at Banff and for past 20 years is Jack Hodgins.

“He is a mentor and editor who will challenge every element and line of a story.”

While at Banff, Petersen says he wrote a couple of the stories in the book from scratch, and received feedback from the mentors on several other stories.

“This was really valuable. It helped bring the whole thing together.”

With three books under his belt, Petersen says he has started on a fourth, a novel that will take several years to finish.

Petersen says he hopes All Those Drawn To Me conveys a sense of the Cariboo from the gold rush to contemporary times, in different shades of light, good, bad and in between.

Petersen’s other books are Let the Day Perish, a collection of short fiction stories published by Porcepic Books in 1999, and Outside the Line, a novel published last year (2009) by Dundurn Press.