To See the Stars

To See the Stars, a compelling, grittily realistic novel, has as its central character/narrator the engaging, hopeful 14-year-old Edie Murphy. Author Jan Andrews (1942-2017), the first president of Storytellers of Canada, loved stories, and incorporated two in this, her last novel. A tale of the seal who took off her skin and a song about an old woman “tossed up in a basket/Ninety times as high as the moon” are highly significant in the story, tying in with Edie’s Newfoundland background, providing her with insights, and serving as metaphors.

To See the Stars has five chapters, each of which could stand alone, and which, all together, show Edie’s coming of age and developing social conscience. The time frame is 1908 to 1911. Each chapter depicts the struggles of everyday working people, particularly women, from fish salters in the outport village of Atterley to housemaids in St. John’s and garment workers in New York City. Edie’s unique voice and perspective give the novel authenticity and immediacy. Listening to her confidences, young readers may not realize how much they’re learning about the lives of poor people a hundred years ago.

In the first chapter, “Star Struck”, readers see Edie, the third of eight children, in the outdoor market full of goods that a merchant has brought to their outport at the end of the fishing season. She is drawn to a bolt of iridescent shot silk, but her mother refuses to buy it for her dance dress, purchasing more serviceable material instead. Edie refuses to go to the dance, which is held in another community, so the rest of the family sets out by boat, leaving her behind. Home alone and liking it, Edie is disturbed by a knock and finds on her doorstep Jenny, a local girl who was believed to be working in St. John’s, now about to give birth.

The disturbing, yet interesting, account of the birth is just one of many scenes that make the novel hard to put down. The baby comes “slithering [out] by itself”, only to be rejected by the young single mother who says, “I should put her in the sea.” She then runs out of the house, leaving Edie alone with the newborn. With the baby in her arms, Edie runs out looking for Jenny, then realizes that the infant seems to be giving up. She holds the child up to see the stars, and the baby wails and grabs hold of life. The stars are a recurring motif.

The first chapter establishes that women will be central in this novel and that their sisterly solidarity will be a major theme. Not only does Edie try to help Jenny, but also Edie’s mother seeks to protect Edie, denying her the silk dress for fear that if she looks more mature than her years she may end up like Jenny. (Jenny drowns herself.) This chapter is about oppressive social mores, but, as the novel progresses, readers see girls and women boldly doing things of which society disapproves, things like forming unions.

In the second chapter, “The Seal in the Harbour”, a female seal starts hanging around the Atterley wharves. Fascinated by the animal’s brave proximity to humans, Edie visits it when she’s free. Then her father tells the family a story about seals who took off their skins to play on land. A man who saw them took a female seal’s skin to warm himself and then fell in love with her. He refused to return her skin, insisting that she marry him and stay on land. Though she found happiness in her children, she missed the sea and her own kind.

Shortly after the appearance of the harbour seal, a dapper distant relative of Edie’s friend Liz, comes to the village and says he can find jobs for the girls in St. John’s. Edie and Liz are eager to see such wonders as hot running water and electric lights. Though Edie’s parents are reluctant to let her go, it has been a poor fishing summer, and they can use any money she can spare to get the family through the winter.

After an arduous journey by cart and steamboat, the girls find St. John’s overwhelming. Placed as a housemaid to an elderly demanding widow and under the supervision of a bossy cook, Edie feels like a seal out of water. She misses Liz who has been placed elsewhere. To Edie’s dismay she learns that Liz’s dapper relative expects to be paid out of her salary for finding her a situation. Though capable of running a large family household with no modern conveniences, Edie finds it hard to adapt to the technology of an urban home and is told that breakages come out of her wages.

One day, seeing a seal in the St. John’s harbour that looks like “her” seal from Atterley, Edie asks it what she should do. Remembering her father’s story, she recalls that the seal never forgot who she was and, although she missed the sea, made a life for herself on land. Edie realizes that her identity can never be taken from her, and she resolves to find happiness in her new situation. Allying herself with the cook helps Edie improve her financial and working conditions.

Human relationships are important in the rest of the story, too, which shifts to an American setting. The cook’s niece, a single mother of three in New York, needs a boarder to make ends meet, and so Edie goes to live with her and finds a job in a garment factory. She gets involved in the organizing efforts of the Women’s International Garment Workers’ Union which was attempting to negotiate safe and fair working conditions and a living wage for the women and men in clothing factories on the Lower East Side. During the 1909 strike (an historical event), Edie is jailed overnight. She emerges bruised and humiliated after being tormented by cops, and she falls into what today would be called depression. However, while following the old singing woman, she discovered Central Park, and it becomes her oasis, restoring her spirit and self-confidence. More anguish lies ahead. Although Edie was not employed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory when a horrific fire in 1911 took the lives of many women workers, she is devastated by this tragedy and considers returning to Newfoundland. Eventually, Edie decides that her New York friends need her and that she will continue the struggle for workers’ rights.

The three New York chapters are based on extensive research at the East Side Tenement Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. Reading them, it occurred to me that in the first decade of the 20th century, Canadian workers, both men and women, were also demanding decent wages and working conditions, and I wondered why the author didn’t take Edie to a Canadian industrial city teeming with slums and desperate workers. Granted, a city on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard would be a likelier destination for a Newfoundlander than, say, Winnipeg. Yet the 1909 New York garment workers’ strike and the 1911 Triangle Fire have been written about extensively while many dramatic events in Canadian workers’ history are crying out to be used as subject matter.

In a Postscript, Jennifer Cayley writes that Jan Andrews worked on To See the Stars for twenty years (It was in the process of publication when the author passed away.) “Over all that time she went on believing in Edie,” says Cayley, “until finally her story began to take a shape that felt like a book.” To See the Stars is a skilfully shaped novel in memoir form, unique because of Edie’s distinctive cadences and figures of speech. In showing human kindness and the solace provided by nature, the novel uplifts and inspires readers despite its tragic elements. While the font of type is quite small, the illustrations and cover by Tara Bryan make To See the Stars a work of art in appearance as well as in story.