Swiss novelist returns to North Carolina past

Helen Sanford Wilhem skims over the pages of her new book. Richard Dawson

It was, as Helen Sanford Wilhelm says, a crime thriller waiting to happen. The setting was a small traditional hotel in the Bernese Oberland and she was thinking: "Agatha Christie ought to be here."

Christie wasn’t, but the story took shape anyway, and after vacationing with her two young children in a hotel even older than its mostly elderly guests, an inspired Wilhelm was well on her way to completing her first published novel.

That was many years ago, and since then she has had a series of novels published, nearly all of them against a Swiss background with mystery pervading the mountain air. Her latest – “Messages from a Distant Star” – is an exception.

Published in English, and set in the United States, it has enabled the author to draw from what it was like growing up in a small town in her home state of North Carolina before de-segregation laws were introduced.

Hotel at Grimmialp

While her children went skiing during the day, Wilhelm soaked up the atmosphere in a small hotel at Grimmialp, putting her thoughts on paper as she observed the comings and goings of fellow-guests.

From her notes and the subsequent creative process there emerged a novel about a woman returning to the Swiss hotel where she’d stayed as a child with her aunt, and the solving of a 30-year-old murder mystery dating back to that stay.

Her earliest book and the one that followed were published only in German. Although written in English and accepted by a publisher of mystery thrillers who had it translated, it has never been printed in the original version – which the author describes as “deeply frustrating”. All her subsequent books have been published in English.

Helen Sanford became interested in writing fiction when she was still a child in seventh grade, back in North Carolina. In high school, she was editor of the school magazine, and formed a “writers’ and artists’ club” with fellow students.

Hard work

But it was never completed. One day she informed her English teacher of her ambition to be a writer and was given some never-to-be forgotten advice: “I was told it’s 90 per cent hard work and 10 per cent talent, ” she said with the infectious laughter which punctuated our conversation.

While working in Mexico as a volunteer for rural development projects, she met – and later married – Rolf Wilhelm, an economist with the Swiss development aid agency. His work took them to various countries, including Nepal, Bolivia and El Salvador, which as well as providing background material for her later fiction writing, enabled her to continue her interest in development aid.

For over three decades, Helen Sanford Wilhelm has lived with her husband – the children having long since reached adulthood and left home – in Oberschierli, a village near Bern with picturesque mountain views.

It’s a peaceful setting for a novelist, and Wilhelm tries to spend part of every day at her desk, working on novels or short stories, the first drafts of which are always written in longhand.

Lots of reading

Recalling her high school teacher’s advice, she has spent long hours with pen in hand, “learning by doing” and virtually teaching herself the art of writing dialogue. “I learn from other writers too,” she says. “Good writing comes from lots of reading…and lots and lots of rewriting.”

Wilhelm’s latest published work, “Messages from a Distant Star”, marks a departure from previous novels because it’s the first to be set in a location outside Switzerland: “It’s my only book in which the setting is based on the small town where I grew up.

“When I was young the schools there were racially segregated so society was divided. I always felt I wanted to be free from anything to do with inequality and discrimination based on colour.”

De-segregation came in the 1950s. But long after she had moved to Switzerland, Wilhelm avoided revisiting her hometown in her fictional work: “Although I went back often, I wanted a broader world and never really wanted to write about the town.

“Then some years ago I began to think there’s a lot of rich material there. Once I’d decided to write the novel I made more background notes than for any of my other stories, and while doing so was amazed at the complexity of society in a town of only about 7,000 inhabitants.”

The novel’s central character is a woman who returns to the scene of her childhood after many years away from it, and goes through a deep process of self-examination as the present meets the past. Although it is based on Wilhelm’s hometown and while she admits to having put a lot of herself into the story, all the characters are fictional.

“Messages from a Distant Star” is published by IDEA Inc. of Austin, Minnesota, and in Switzerland is available at Stauffacher’s bookstore in Bern.

by Richard Dawson