As Quispamsis author Kathy-Diane Leveille releases her suspense novel Let the Shadows Fall Behind You she credits the Kennebecasis River for filling her with inspiration

Kathy-Diane Leveille has always been intrigued by disappearances.

“The first time I read (The Chronicles of) Narnia series and the kids go in the big wardrobe and they disappear … the magical part of that appealed to my imagination as a writer,” said the Quispamsis author, whose first novel will be released this month. “You’re going along and all of a sudden everything changes.”

Let the Shadows Fall Behind You was Leveille’s way of exploring the world of disappearances, which she did through the novel’s principal character Brannagh.

“She’s had disappearances happen all of her life to people in her life,” Leveille said. “The past that she’s trying to run away from is coming back.”

The story begins in Northern Ontario, where Brannagh’s boyfriend Nikki disappears when they’re out on a bird count. After he vanishes, Brannagh reluctantly agrees to return to the East Coast for a reunion of her childhood all-girls club Tuatha-de-Dananns. There, she stays at her grandmother’s cottage in West Saint John – close to where her mother was murdered years earlier.

“As she’s trying to solve the mystery behind Nikki’s disappearance she uncovers the secrets behind her mother’s murder,” Leveille said. “It’s a suspense novel but I say it’s about the fact that nothing can change the past but friendship has the power to change the future.”

Leveille said the 288-page novel, which is being released by Kunati Books, has three distinct time lines: the present, the immediate past and a further past.

“By the time you get to the close of the novel you have a better idea of why Nikki might have disappeared.”

At her home in Quispamsis, Leveille writes in an oversized brown chair, set up in front of a picture window that overlooks her main source of inspiration – the Kennebecasis River.

“I usually walk a lot along the river and most of my ideas come to me from something that clicks with a question,” she said. “I think this one is a combination of a lot of things.

“I think that nature has that energy and ability to bring us back to centre ourselves. It slows me down and brings me down into the moment. The river here is always changing. It’s so beautiful. Every season it’s different.”

Let the Shadows Fall Behind You will be Leveille’s second published text and her first novel. Her first book, Roads Unravelling, was a series of short stories.

“I knew when I was writing short stories that I wanted to write a novel because I wanted to tell the whole story with all the layers,” she said, seated in her brown chair. “There are so many elements in a novel when you’re carrying it: plot, the character developments, the tension … there were so many things. I think my first draft was probably 150,000 words because I just put so much into it. I was learning the craft of novel writing while I was doing it.”

Leveille said she started writing the novel about five years ago, and started sending drafts to publishers about two years into the process.

“I actually thought ‘Maybe this won’t be published. Maybe this is just my learning experience’ because there’s a lot to learn when you’re writing,” she said. “That’s one of the challenges of it. You conquer one thing and then there’s another thing to do.”

When she thinks of the journey she’s taken from scribbling ideas on paper to publishing her novel, Leveille’s eyes fill with tears.

“It’s what you dream of happening,” she said. “Every time you start a new project and face that blank page it’s thrilling and it’s terrifying. You really want guarantees that you’re going to have a beginning, middle and end and it’s going to be beautiful prose on top of that. Usually what will infuse the writing with some real depth is letting go of all that and just going out on a limb and risking and seeing where it takes you.”

Leveille said she has wanted to write a novel since she was a child, and wrote her first poem when she was in Grade 1.

“I played library but I would write my own books that would go in the library,” she said, laughing. “The thing that I loved the most with my first book and I’ll enjoy it with the novel, too, is going to the library and seeing my books there because when I was a kid the library was like my church.”

Leveille has decided to give half of the royalties from the book to a mother-baby bonding program for First Nation mothers and infants at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

The official launch of Let the Shadows Fall Behind You is May 10 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Saint John Arts Centre. She has signings from May 15 to June 27 in Saint John and Fredericton. To learn more, visit her website at http://kathy-dianeleveille.com.