Morgan Callan Rogers grew up in Bath and soaked up the culture of the sea. She got to know people who lived down the long fingers of the craggy peninsulas. They were fishermen, fishermen’s daughters and fishermen’s wives.

When she finally found the time and place in her life to write a novel, it was to the sea that she returned. Her debut, “Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea” was published in Germany in 2010, and this year it will be published in Spain, Italy, Australia and the United States.

The book’s central character is young Florine Gilham, whose idyllic childhood is turned upside when her mother disappears. Until that point in her life, she filled her days on the rocks by the sea, watching for her father’s fishing boat to come home. But with her mother gone, she finds herself isolated in her grief.

The book is set in coastal Maine in the 1960s; the jacket features an image of The Nubble at Cape Neddick.

Rogers received her bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine. She has worked many jobs, including as a librarian, secretary, journalist, actress, editor and teacher. For many years, she worked as a journalist in Portland.

She now divides her time between Maine and western South Dakota. She will celebrate the release of her novel with a party at 7 p.m. Jan. 26 in the bookstore at the Woodbury Campus Center of USM on Bedford Street in Portland.

Rogers is living in Portland for the winter. We spoke with her last week. 

Q: Your book seems to be gaining quite a surge of interest. As I understand, it was first published in Germany, and will be published widely around the globe in the next few weeks. What is the history of the novel?

A: I kind of have a fairy-tale story. I did my MFA in the Stonecoast program at USM and met a teacher there who liked my work and said, ‘When it’s done, send it to my agent in New York.’ I did, and the agent loved it. She took it on, and while shopping it around, a foreign scout came into the office. She showed the scout the manuscript, and they thought it would be a good fit for a small publisher in Germany. Now it’s on the best-seller list. It’s amazing. It will be published in Spain, Australia and Italy, and it will be released in the United States on Jan. 23 as a hardcover. 

Q: When did you write it?

A: I wrote it probably between 2003 and 2005, the first draft. Then we worked on it for three or four years. I worked very closely with the agent before we found something we both liked. It was a long process. 

Q: Tell me the story.

A: The book centers around Florine Gilham, a 12-year-old girl who lives in a tiny fishing village on the coast of Maine with her parents. Her father is a lobsterman, and her mother is the woman who fell in love with him and the coast of Maine. Every summer, the mother goes away with a friend on a girls’ weekend. And one weekend, she disappears. No one knows what happened.

The book focuses on Florine growing up without knowing what happened. It sounds grim, but it has a lot of Maine humor in it. 

Q: How did your life in Bath influence your desire to write?

A: I always wanted to write. When I was 8 years old, I started writing little horse stories and illustrating them. When I got older, I wrote stories about rock stars. I always wrote fiction, but never showed it to anyone. I did a lot of journalism work in and around Portland for many years, but always kept writing fiction. And I always put it in a drawer.

Living in Bath was a huge influence on this book — more than I could have thought. It’s totally fiction, but the setting is around that area. I only reinvented it in my mind to make it look different. The voices are those that I heard growing up, the way that they speak. 

Q: This is your first novel. What is your next novel?

A: There are a couple of things in the works, but I do not want to discuss them right now. I find that when you do discuss work in progress, you lose a little of it. 

Q: How did the Stonecoast program help advance your writing career?

A: I loved it, because it gave me a place not only to network, but to find like people who made things up. It was a perfectly normal way for them to think. It was nice on that first day to walk in to the registrar’s office and find people like me. We became very close, and I had a wonderful teacher. I came into my own there. I was allowed to be myself. I gained a lot of confidence. 

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

 

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