Victoria has been home base for Icelandic-Canadian author W.D. Valgardson ever since he took a chance position as a creative writing professor at the University of Victoria several years ago. He thought he was coming here for a year, but the UVic job turned from a yearlong position to one that spanned three decades. Now, after spending the summer in Manitoba, Valgardson is ready to head back to Vancouver Island to launch his new crime novel, In Valhalla’s Shadows.
In Valhalla’s Shadows was a passion project for Valgardson, taking six years to write. The novel examines post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the effects it has on first responders—something Valgardson has witnessed several times in his life.
“In childhood, I saw the effects on my grandfather, who’d fought in the First World War in the trenches. In those days they called it ‘shell shock.’ Nobody had ever heard of PTSD; it wasn’t called that,” says Valgardson.
Valgardson also recalls his experience as a graduate student living in Iowa, seeing soldiers return from Vietnam and the effect the war had on them.
“You could see the missing arms and legs, but most people didn’t pay attention to the tremendous emotional and psychological toll on the individuals, the soldiers coming back, and all their families, because psychologically and emotionally they had been so changed by their experience,” says Valgardson.
Valgardson continued to work in Missouri after graduate school and, through that experience, had the opportunity to travel with his landlord/next-door neighbour, who was a highway patrolman.
“Because of the way the law works there, he was able to take me patrolling with him,” says Valgardson.
The experience allowed Valgardson to witness the incredible emotional cost of working as a first responder. When a former RCMP officer whom Valgardson knew and admired died by suicide, the author’s focus turned once more to PTSD and its life-altering effects.
“When you know somebody who’s affected, then you start to pay attention. Otherwise it’s just, ‘Oh, it’s, you know, that newspaper report,’ or it’s something mentioned over coffee. But when it’s someone you know, then you are affected individually,” says Valgardson.
These experiences culminated in the creation of In Valhalla’s Shadows’ protagonist, Tom Parsons, an ex-police officer struggling to pick up the pieces of his broken life after leaving Winnipeg for a small lakeside town.
“He sort of appeared and started to tell me his story, and I had to gradually piece it all together: who he was and what his life was like and everything—what had happened to him,” says Valgardson. “It’s an interesting process. It’s not a matter of sitting down and making it up. In many ways, as a writer, it’s learning to listen, so that potential stories that exist inside you… [so] you actually hear what is being told to you.”
In Valhalla’s Shadows book launch
7 pm Wednesday, September 12
Free, Bolen Books
bolen.bc.ca