Val McDermid and Jo Sharp, a Scottish power couple in crime writing and geography, have published their first collaborative novella, 'This Door of the Seas', after years of avoiding joint projects. The book fictionalizes the 1698 Darien venture, a failed Scottish attempt to establish a trading colony in Panama that bankrupted Scotland and led to the 1707 union with England.
A Cautious Collaboration
Sharp, Scotland's first female Geographer Royal and a professor at the University of St Andrews, says they were wary of working together. 'We’d always been very wary of working together because we’d quite like to stay together.' McDermid, author of 51 books, adds, 'My mother always used to say I don’t play well with others.'
The idea emerged from Sharp's research for a book festival talk. She discovered the first Geographer Royal, Sir Robert Sibbald, had sent an observer to the Darien colony. 'I just found this fascinating, because it was a bit of history I had not heard about,' she says. McDermid suggested writing together, and Sharp immediately agreed.
Historical Accuracy and Myth-Busting
The novella aims to be 'charmingly plausible', a phrase McDermid values. The story is told through letters from Dr James Wallace to his wife and Sibbald. Sharp did most of the research, including ship manifests at the National Library of Scotland, while McDermid recovered from open-heart surgery. They unpicked myths that the venture was a bumbling failure; in reality, 80% of the 2,000 Scots died from disease or famine, and similar colonial attempts by other European nations also failed nine out of ten times.
Sharp notes, 'One of the things that we talked about a lot is that we didn’t want to be part of a whitewashing of Scotland’s history.' The book avoids portraying Scotland as less culpable in empire and racism.
Political Parallels
The couple, supporters of Scottish independence, see parallels between 17th-century refugees and modern migrants. McDermid says, 'When the country that you’re living in offers you no hope, then the slenderest strands of hope you grasp.' The novella is published on 6 August, and they will speak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 17 August.
