Katherine Johnson lived in Medicine Hat as a teen and in southern Alberta for longer, before spending much of her life travelling extensively then settling on Vancouver Island. Southern Alberta appears in her new book Chipped, and she is coming to Medicine Hat on Mar. 7 for a book signing event.--Photo courtesy Katherine Johnson
zmason@medicinehatnews.com
A Vancouver Island-based author with roots in Medicine Hat is returning to the city next month, and she’s bringing her new book with her.
Katherine Johnson will be at the Indigo Books in Medicine Hat Mall on Mar. 7 from noon to 5 p.m. doing a book signing for her second novel, Chipped.
Chipped is a story told from the perspective of Chip, a stone hippo talisman imbued with sentience who is purchased by Isabelle, a Canadian nurse, in Mombasa when Isabelle travelled to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Chip becomes Isabelle’s good luck charm and a guiding force, gifted with the ability to understand her thoughts. But when she suddenly dies, Chip is bequeathed to her niece Sara, who Isabelle loved but Chip can’t stand. Sara also inherits her aunt’s journal, and through both these forces, begins to learn about her aunt and herself.
Through Chip’s omniscient perspective, the reader learns about both women, their struggles and the unlikely bonds between them.
Johnson and her family moved to Medicine Hat from Ontario when she was in the 10th grade. She lived in Medicine Hat and Calgary for years in her youth before departing for 13 years of travel as a lab technician with Doctors Without Borders.
She retired from Doctors Without Borders nine years ago. Since then, she co-founded a scuba school in the south of France, and more recently, relocated to Vancouver Island with her husband, where the two operate a scuba lodge in remote Barkley Sound on the West Coast of the island.
Many of the far-flung places Johnson herself has visited appear in her new book – and so does the less exotic locale of southern Alberta. The seed for the story is also inspired by her own life.
“I journaled quite extensively on Kilimanjaro, so I always wanted to tell a story based on that climb. And I do have a little stone hippo who climbed with me. So it was a matter of, how do I combine this into something intriguing?”
Johnson says she had long gravitated toward stories with an unexpected narrator. Writing from Chip’s perspective presented an interesting challenge for Johnson.
“What could he understand? Who can understand him? Can they really understand him? Or is this really their own decision-making going on? They’re attributed to him. There’s all these questions running through.”
Chipped provided a vehicle for Johnson to explore some of the themes that interest her most, including the idea of place and the ways environment can shape plots and characters.
“I really like novels where the setting is actually part of the story. We’re Canadian, so we know about that, right?”
The theme that interests her most in this novel though, is relationships between women.
“The themes I tend to write are about female empowerment and trying to find your own strength. That tends to to be where I go. And with Chipped, I also explore the value of relationships between older individuals and younger individuals.”
Although her life has taken her far away from Medicine Hat, it’s a place she still has ties to. Her parents still reside here, and she says she still has a soft spot for that dry prairie cold.
It’s just one piece of Johnson’s story, and just one piece of Chipped. But both book and author are a testament to the way these small pieces can find outsized ways to impact one’s path forward.
