In Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog, the setting is Prince Edward Island. What foods are found on this island in the sea?

Try some clam chowder? Here’s Martha Stewart’s recipe.

There’s a lovely book called The Anne of Green Gables Treasury (written by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson) which is unfortunately out of print, but I’m confident you can find a used copy. It has ideas for crafts, activities, and parties, all set on Prince Edward Island, a setting our two books have in common!

On each of my many visits to Prince Edward Island, I made a special point to “do lunch” at Dalvay, always ordering the same thing: steamed Island mussels fresh from the sea, bread hot from the oven, and sticky date pudding with toffee sauce.

photo of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, Steven Garrity, Wikimedia Commons

In my imagination I lifted Dalvay — a Canadian National Historic House built in 1895 — and placed the majestic structure on the northeastern coast of Maine on “a high cliff above a frozen sea — far, far away from it all.” Unlike Dalvay, in my story Eastcliff-by-the-Sea is “old and not nearly as fine as it used to be.”

It was never my intention to include “Eastcliff-by-the-Sea” in the title of my book. However, late in the editorial revision process, the Marketing Department at Simon & Schuster decided they wanted a different title, departing from my original choice, Throckmorton: The Story of a Simply Remarkable Sock Monkey. My editor favored inclusion of the setting’s name and characterization of the book’s plot as a mystery. Thus, a new title was born.

Resources:

Learn more about, and see pictures of, Dalvay-by-the-Sea. Note the Anne of Green Gables video connection, also the fact that the original Dalvay estate had horses, a stable, and carriages.

Here’s a rich history of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, including two granddaughters who became princesses!

Did my mention of sticky toffee pudding make your mouth water? Here’s the recipe!

Indeed, this is what happened. When we sold the property in 2012, the distance between the deck and the bank was closer to twenty feet. As a result of climate change, extreme coastal erosion continues on beautiful Prince Edward Island, at a loss rate of 43 centimeters (approximately 17 inches) per year. Almost unbelievable, isn’t it?

On Saturday, April 22nd, the United States celebrates Earth Day.

How did it get started? This is from earthday.org: “The idea for a national day to focus on the environment came to Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda.” (Read the full history of Earth Day.)

This year, our environment is challenged once again with raising awareness of the critical importance of preserving our planet. There will be a March for Science on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with supportive efforts around the country. Will you be taking part?

Is there a place that has a lot of meaning for you? Good memories? Beautiful vistas? Tourist attractions that are fun to visit?

Instead of making yourself the main character, choose your favorite animal and let them take a trip to your favorite place. What would they discover from their animal point of view?

Six months earlier, on the way home from a party near dawn, I’d totaled a white Volkswagen Beetle. Somersaulting through the convertible’s rag-top roof, twenty-three years of life flashed before my eyes; and I didn’t like what I saw. Too late, I thought. When my body stops rolling, I’ll be dead.

Twenty-two days after the accident, with every inch of my skin blotted with greenish-yellow bruises, I married a man whom I’d met at that party.

Later, when he asked me where I wanted to go on our honeymoon, I answered, “Prince Edward Island—because I want to see the island where Anne of Green Gables took place.”

The book’s protagonist was my childhood heroine. Anne Shirley was spunky and made mistakes. I envied her untamed imagination and indomitable spirit. Growing up in a small, red brick house where talking about feelings was forbidden, Anne was my true kindred spirit.

We honeymooners headed north from Wisconsin in a brown Ford van to Sault Ste. Marie, camped near Sudbury, showered in Quebec, and at Cape Tormentine boarded the car ferry to cross the Northumberland Strait.

L. M. Montgomery’s descriptions did not disappoint. The gables were green, the soil was red, the gulf waters cobalt beneath a periwinkle sky. We boiled lobsters in a pot over a campfire near the windswept dunes, and I believed with Anne Shirley’s fervor that our rash marriage would last forever.

As early as 1897, a journalist with Prince Edward Island Illustrated wrote: “This is the place for weary men and women to come to build up worn-out tissue, to rest the mind, to banish weariness.” So ten years later, divorced, with two young daughters in tow, I returned to the Island, worn out and weary. We flew from Halifax into Charlottetown by prop plane during a thunderstorm. I can still see the fear in my children’s eyes and the pink and lavender packs strapped to their backs.

I returned to PEI almost every summer after that. Seventeen grueling years as a public school administrator had taken its toll on my health and spirit. Ultimately, Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction (CFS) and companion depression trapped me in its insidious net.

One cloudless morning in the summer of 1999, I was sitting on a barn red, double-sided, wooden bench on the porch of a run-down cottage that my second husband and I had purchased on Argyle Shore. I could see the coast of Nova Scotia and a peppermint-striped lighthouse guarding its shore. A pair of seals, as black and shiny as a fisherman’s slicker, swam in unison through the gentle surf and shallow waters.

It was the time between tides.

I waited for my nearest neighbor—a red fox—to steal past for his morning drink from a fresh water stream that slices the bank on its way to the sea, and I thought about the musty-smelling sixth-grade autobiography that I’d recently found buried in a box labeled “Eileen’s Things” in my mother’s basement.

My brother had sketched my face on the cover, complete with pointy black plastic glasses. Below my penciled likeness, I’d written, “You are a Portrait in the Picture of Life.” On the back page, my teacher Mrs. Ross had penned in red ink: “This is excellent from beginning to end. I hope you will always keep your zest for living and learning.”

Re-reading my eager, honest, child-like words I remembered how my mother had hovered during the biography’s creation—reminding me to check my grammar, correct my punctuation. “Use your best penmanship,” she admonished. “If you make a mistake, don’t cross it out, start over.”

Calmed by the sea, I could hear her voice. I could feel her pride. By this time Alzheimer’s disease had destroyed her mind, silenced her voice. I wondered, “Do I still have time?”

On Prince Edward Island red clay soil brings forth lavender lupines that line ditches along dusty country roads. Rose-red fireweed creeps between prolific rows of new potatoes. “The lowest ebb,” writes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “is the turn of the tide.”

Within the next year I would enroll in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at St. Paul’s Hamline University. Almost 30 years after my first visit to PEI, I was assigned to write 20 pages of creative prose that thematically reflected Canadian literature. I knew my story would take place on Prince Edward Island.

I asked myself, “What if a Yorkshire terrier from Manhattan washed up on the south shore of PEI, tangled in a lobster trap, and met that red fox? What themes could I capture in that story?”

My first published novel for young readers, Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog, was my response.

The Publicity Department at Simon & Schuster has forwarded your letter of March, 2016 to me. Thank you so much for writing. I was delighted to hear from you! I am also happy to answer your insightful questions.

Regarding your first question, at the story’s end, Tango did not actually find his mother or see her in person. In the Epilogue, the story’s narrator tells the reader that Marcellina and Diego had two Yorkshire Terriers in their bridal party: Sadie and Pierre. A week later, McKenna spies a wedding photo of Marcellina, Diego, Sadie, and Pierre in a celebrity magazine, which Tango later takes a nap on. So, in this sense, Tango “sees” his mother, Sadie, again. In any case, the reader knows that somehow, some way, Diego and Marcellina searched for, and found Sadie at Cold Creek Kennel and adopted her and her new son, Pierre.

The reader never finds out whether Tango ever saw his three sisters—Theresa, Esperanza, and Dulcinea—again. I like to imagine that the people who bought Tango’s sisters at Paws ‘n’ Claws Pet Boutique gave each of them a good home where they lived “happily ever after.”

I do believe that Tango is content at the story’s end. Tango feels he has made the right decision to stay on Prince Edward Island, where he’s discovered his true identity, and to remain with Augusta and McKenna, who need and love the little dog very much. I am also very happy that McKenna now has a pet of her own.

I smiled at how you explained that the character you would trade places with is Tango, so you would get to go on crazy adventures. Maybe someday you will travel to Prince Edward Island. I think that you would like the island very much!

Because you expressed an interest in reading another one of my books, I am including with this letter a signed copy of The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea. I hope that you like the story of nine year-old Annaliese Easterling and Throckmorton, her simply remarkable sock monkey.

Thank you again for writing, Jolie. I hope that you will always love to read as much as you do now.

Best wishes always,

Eileen Beha
Children’s Book Author