Launch: Richard W. Wise’s The Dawning

INTERVIEW BY TRACEY WARR

Richard W. Wise has published four books. His first non-fiction book, Secrets of the Gem Trade, was published in 2001, with a revised edition in 2016. His first historical novel, The French Blue, was set in the 17th-century gem trade and won a 2011 International Book Award in Historical Fiction. He followed up with Redlined, a mystery thriller with a literary twist set in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Redlined was nominated for the National Book Award and the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction. His latest novel, The Dawning, is set in the Ice Age, in southwestern France, 31,000 BC. It tells the story of two young lovers from a Cro-Magnon tribe and their clash with a clan of Neanderthal hunters.

How would you describe this book and its themes in a couple of sentences?

The Dawning: 31,000 BC is a story about the deep past and a meditation on the present. Aside from the romance and adventure, the theme revolves around the development of human political and social culture which I contend is based on human nature, a nature which has not changed since the beginning of human history.

In contemporary literature, prehistory is often portrayed as an idyllic period, free of strife, where men and women were equal and there was magic in the air; the domain of Rousseau’s noble savage. While an interesting theme, it is total fiction. In The Dawning, I have attempted to portray the people and the period as I believe it really was.

What attracted you to writing fiction about prehistory?

The magnificent 30,000-36,000-year-old paintings discovered in 1994 at Chauvet Cave in Southern France. The art is dynamic and sophisticated and tells of a culture which could hardly be called primitive.

You have drawn on archaeological finds for your setting in southwestern France. If you’ve been to your setting in person, what details from your own journey did you weave into the story?

My wife and I visited the Ardeche River, the area around Chauvet Cave, where the novel is set as well as the caves surrounding Les Eyzies de Tayac. You can’t enter Chauvet, there is a facsimile with reproductions of many of the paintings, which I did visit, but I also wanted to see paintings in situ. We were able to visit six of these caves including Rouffignac, Font de Gaume, Combarelles, Cougnac and Abri du Poisson and Abri du Cap-Blanc and facsimile II as Lascaux. We had the good fortune to be personally guided by archaeologist Christine Desdemaines Hugon, an expert on Palaeolithic art and author of Stepping Stones. At times we were the only ones inside. My reflections on these paintings became the descriptions of them in the book.

You paint a vivid picture of daily life in prehistory: hunting, making fire, travelling, the weather, animals such as cave lions and hyenas. What kinds of research did you do for this story?

I took an archaeology course at University of Virginia, read about twenty-five books, everything from scholarly tomes to the Boy Scout Manual. There are a number of groups practicing experimental archaeology and there are published journals. I watched videos of fire making, flint knapping and spear throwing to name just a few.

Which research books did you pull off your shelf most often?

The Bulletin of Primitive Technology (experimental archaeology) was useful. I bought a set. Desdemaine-Hugon’s Stepping Stones was another. Don’s Maps and The Bradshaw Society were two very useful websites.

The shamans play significant roles in your story. How did you imagine your way into these characters and their influence in their communities?

The first shamans were tribal wise men. Often, they were the dreamers, the non-conformists, the tinkerers. Small groups of hunter/gatherers produced little surplus. Everyone had to, literally, pull their weight. No one was just wandering around, shaking rattles and mumbling to themselves.

I favor the Eastern European term, šamán and used it throughout The Dawning. “Shaman” carries with it a boatload of connotations—men in horned headdresses and painted faces, covered in feathers. These images conjure up something of an anachronism. I doubt that tribal wise men fit that image in these small mobile clans in earliest times. More likely, they earned their keep as part-time healers and storytellers.

Are there elements of your own life experiences that you have woven into your story?

Very little. My academic background is in philosophy. My views of human nature—which is pretty dark—definitely influenced my characterizations.

There is tension between the two half-brothers, Baal and Ejil. Do you have tricks for getting to know your characters?

No tricks. The experts tell us that these people were just like us. We share the same nature. So, analogies about the relationships of modern human siblings were useful.

Not so many novelists have chosen to write about the period of prehistory. Jean Auel, William Golding, Raymond Williams spring to mind. Have other prehistory novelists been significant for you?

Don’t forget Jack London. I haven’t read Williams. Auel’s first book was brilliant though it’s a bit dated given what we’ve learned through DNA studies and other discoveries over the last twenty years. Golding took on the impossible. How do you write close third person with characters who lack self-consciousness? Neanderthals did have a sense of self.

Tell us about your publishing process.

I’ve been an independent publisher for twenty years. My Brunswick House Press published its first book in 2003. It’s titled Secrets Of The Gem Trade. My third career was as a gemologist/gem merchant. The second edition is still selling briskly.

What is your next project and how far advanced is it?

I’m experimenting with the short story.

What is the last great book you read?

Albert Camus, The Stranger.

You can find more on the painted caves of southwest France on Richard’s blog. And you can find him signing copies of The Dawning on October 23rd 2022 10:30am at Bluebird Bookstop, Crozet, Virginia, and on November 1 2022, 7:00pm, at Second Act Books, Charlottesville downtown mall.