The Landscape of The Search Party
Guest Post By Hannah Richell
Good morning, dear readers. Today you are in for a special treat. Hannah Richell the author of our February 2024 book club pick, The Search Party, has written us a lovely post where she gives us a peak inside her inspiration for her novel. Enjoy. ~ The Book Tide
The Landscape of The Search Party
Have you ever walked through a creaking house, stepped into a dark wood, or sat at the side of a lake and thought to yourself, ‘something happened here’?
I’m a firm believer that every place has a story to tell. Sit beside a winding river, walk along a dusty corridor or poke your nose into an abandoned cottage and the tendrils of ideas will stir. Landscape and buildings have always been the starting point for my novels. I’ve written five books to date, and each of them has sprung from a setting. I’ve taken my readers to a clifftop house in Dorset where tragedy befalls a family, to a lakeside cottage deep in the Peak District where a group of friends attempt to live off grid, to a crumbling manor with a secret room deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside, and to a tense family wedding at a ramshackle farmhouse on the banks of a Somerset river. Now, with The Search Party, we head to the rugged north coast of Cornwall, where four families are reuniting for a disastrous glamping weekend.
For some writers, character is often the way into a story, but for me landscape is the foundation upon which I build my novels. I don’t think I could write a single word of a first draft until I’ve settled on the location my characters are to inhabit. I want the place to feel as much of a character as the people who move through it.
This latest Cornish location might just be my favourite. It came to me during the pandemic, while I was landlocked at home in a small English town, where I found myself craving huge, open skies, windswept beaches, and the ocean beating onto weathered shores. Having visited Cornwall on family holidays, I knew the area I wanted to write of: a rugged peninsula to the west of Zennor, a place where the steep cliffs are littered with the ruins of a once-thriving mining industry and legends tell of mermaids luring sailors to their death. I created a fictional peninsula called Morvoren Point (morvoren being the Cornish word for mermaid) and an eco-glamping site, “Wildernest”, where the characters would meet. Throw in old tensions and secrets, conflicting parenting styles, threatening skies and someone with revenge on their mind and the scene was set.
To me, Cornwall has always felt idyllic, but transformed into a locked peninsula in the middle of a raging storm with nothing for shelter but a few flimsy bell tents, even paradise can turn sour. If you want to see how my characters handle the elements, who will leave relatively unscathed and who will succumb to the dangers of this treacherous place, I’m afraid you’ll have to read The Search Party.
Happy glamping, readers!
~ Hannah Richell
Thank you, Hannah, for giving us a glimpse into the the beautiful, yet menacing environment that served as inspiration for The Search Party.
We are so excited to be able to share more from Hannah in the coming days about how she used different types of parents to ratchet up the tension, she will give us a glimpse into her personal life, and next week she will join us for our podcast talking all things The Search Party.
Stay tuned for all of that and if you have questions for Hannah please feel free to comment below. We will ask her during our podcast and would love to give you a shout out during the filming.
~ The Book Tide