An Interview with Molly MacRae by E. B. Davis

 

“…it turns out that tripping over bodies and being electrocuted, accused of murder,

and flickered at by ghosts makes me jumpy and irritable.”

Molly MacRae, Come Shell or High Water, Kindle Loc. 1575

 

When widowed folklorist Maureen Nash visits a legendary North Carolina barrier island shell shop, she discovers its resident ghost pirate and the mystery of a local’s untimely death . . .

As a professional storyteller, Maureen Nash can’t help but see the narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger—the proprietor of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous with shell collectors, but it’s the cryptic letters from Allen Withrow, the shop’s owner, that convince Maureen to travel to the small coastal town in the middle of hurricane season. At the very least, she expects she’ll get a good story out of the experience, never anticipating it could end up a murder mystery . . .
 
In Maureen’s first hours on the storm-lashed island, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over the body of a controversial Ocracoke local, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, all these unusual occurrences would seem to be random misfortunes, but Maureen senses there may be something connecting these stories. With Emrys’s supernatural assistance, and the support of a few new friends, Maureen sets out to unravel the truth, find a killer, and hopefully give this tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.

Amazon.com

 

Come Shell or High Water is the first book in WWKs Molly MacRae’s Haunted Shell Shop mystery series. This book is close to my heart. It is set on Ocracoke Island, one island south, in the Outer Banks chain of barrier islands of North Carolina, of my home island of Hatteras. Be prepared for some “shell” puns and jokes in this novel, like “like a bat out of shell” or “annoying as shell.”

 

At the start of the book, Ocracoke is just post-hurricane. Visitors have been banished from the island until services and business owners can recover from storm damage. This is a realistic scenario and routinely done by the authorities in times of storms. But it isn’t only hurricanes that can strike Ocracoke. Right now, Route 12, the only road through Ocracoke (which must be accessed at the north/south ends by ferry) is closed due to a nor’easter causing ocean overwash—which means the ocean has breached the road rendering it unnavigated by automobile. Weather happens here.

 

Main character, Maureen Nash, is a likeable middle-aged widow with two grown sons. She’s normal except for talking to her dead husband and seeing pirate ghosts.

 

Please welcome Molly to the flip-side of WWK.                                           E. B. Davis

 

What is Maureen’s connection to Ocracoke?

She and her husband first visited Ocracoke on their honeymoon and fell in love with it. When they had children, they started taking them to the island each summer for vacation.

 

Maureen is only in her 50s. Why is she retired already?

You could say she’s retired from the research and fieldwork jobs she’s had as a malacologist (see next
question to find out what a malacologist is), but only because those jobs, like some of the rare freshwater mussels she studies, are hard to find where she lives in northeast Tennessee. She isn’t really retired, though. She works part time in the children's department of the public library. She’s also a professional storyteller and has had some success getting picture book retellings of folktales involving shells published.

 

What is a malacologist? And how many are there in the US, like three?

Ha! You made me laugh. A malacologist is a type of wildlife biologist who studies mollusks—animals like squids, octopuses, snails. slugs, clams, and mussels. How many malacologists are there in the US? According to a 2020 report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics there are a whopping 19,300 and employment growth in the profession is predicted. How cool is that? A scientist who studies only the shells, and not the animals that make them, is a conchologist.

 

Are there fables about shells?

There are folktales about shells, and the creatures that make them, from all over the world. “The Boy and the Snails” is an Aesop’s fable (not snail-friendly at all). There’s a lot of symbolism associated with shells, too, going back thousands and thousands of years. They’ve been incorporated in ceremonies and rituals worldwide. Burying shells in graves is a tradition in many cultures and dates back to at least the Middle Stone Age in Africa. (Francesco d'Errico, Lucinda Backwell, “Earliest evidence of personal ornaments associated with burial: The Conus shells from Border Cave” Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 93, 2016, Pages 91-108, ISSN 0047-2484, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.01.002.)

 

What is Maureen’s greatest fear?

Sharks.

 

Maureen hitches a sketchy entry onto Ocracoke. Why is it “illegal,” and who enables her?

It might not technically be illegal, but the immediate aftermath of a hurricane is no time for tourists to be traipsing around a small, fragile island. There can be a massive amount of clean up plus the need to repair and rebuild. Roads might be impassable. Power might be out for days or weeks and fresh water and food in short supply. The authorities rightly restrict access so the residents can get back on their feet or return if they evacuated.

 

In Maureen’s case, the person in Ocracoke from whom she’s renting told her she can still have the place if she can get to the island. The ferry isn’t running, but an old friend of Maureen’s is a ranger in the US Park Service. The friend is boating over to Ocracoke to check the condition of the national park campground. She agrees to take Maureen along, as an unauthorized favor, provided Maureen doesn’t tell anyone.

 

During her ride to Ocracoke, she acknowledges that she isn’t really drowning, but is half-drown by her own assumptions. What is she referring to? How does she make them work for her?

She’s referring to her assumptions that she can walk the deserted, post-hurricane beaches without getting into trouble and that her other reason for going there—to snoop around and find out why shell shop owner Allen Withrow has been sending her late husband intriguing but scammy-sounding letters—isn’t totally mad.

 

Why does Maureen take a walk on the beach?

She’s taking biologist E.O. Wilson’s advice about spending time in nature to get her head right, and to see what shells or other interesting things the hurricane washed ashore.

 

Without knowing how she arrived, Maureen wakes up inside a shop near town with amnesia after suffering an electrical shock. Who finds her and what is their connection to the shop?

Glady and Burt Weaver, octogenarian and septuagenarian sister and brother, find her. They live across the street from the shop.

 

The shop is called The Moon Shell. What is a moon shell?

The shop’s original owner (Allen Withrow’s mother) named the shop after a large Clench’s helmet shell, carved with a moonlit ocean scene, that she owned. But in the real world, Naticidae, with the common name moon snail, is a family of predatory sea snails. Their shells are called moon shells.  

 

Why doesn’t Maureen like texting?

She knows it’s irrational, but she doesn’t like to text with her sons because the last time she heard from her husband was in a text asking, “1:00 lunch at the café?” But he was gone before 1:00, killed in an electrical accident. She doesn’t go to the café anymore, either.

 

Is Glady glib or truthful when she says she can solve the murder better than law enforcement because she has a long running mystery series?

That’s just so hard to say, isn’t it? If you ask Glady, I’m sure she’ll say it’s the truth.

 

 Other people’s assumptions actually help hide Maureen’s reason for being on the island. Why do they think she’s there? When it comes down to it, after the fact, it’s convoluted but not inaccurate, sort of.

Glady and Burt have heard Allen say he’s expecting someone. They’ve also long thought he needs help in the shop (he’s in his eighties). They assume the person he’s expecting is someone he’s hired. They find Maureen in the shop and make another assumption—Allen hired her, and she’s expected.

 

Who is Emrys Lloyd? Why can Maureen see him while others can’t or at least what’s her first theory is soon after she comes to from being shocked? Why is he an Accidental Pirate?

Emrys is a ghost. He’s also a pirate. He says he didn’t intend to be a pirate, he didn’t want to be a pirate, and he only did it once. Sadly, that one time didn’t work out well for him. That was in 1750.

 

When Maureen regains consciousness in the Moon Shell, Glady and Burt tell her they saw a flash in the shop from their house. They went to investigate and found her and a table lamp on the floor. None of them is sure what happened, but they assume she turned on the lamp, it shorted and shocked her, and she fell, hit her head, and knocked herself out. The problem is, now Maureen sees and hears someone else in the shop that Glady and Burt don’t. She thinks she must be addled as a result of what happened.

 

Why doesn’t Glady want Maureen to go to see the doctor after her electrical shock?

Maureen would love to know the answer to that question, too. When Maureen tells Glady that she really thinks she should call the doctor, Glady says, “Mm, no. You really shouldn’t.”

 

Prior to building high on pilings, buildings suffered routine flood damage. What did the islanders do to prevent floating houses and to mitigate flood damage/mold?

Until the hurricane of 1899 islanders apparently scuttled their floors by chopping a hole with an axe. A drastic move? Yes, but better to let the house flood than have it washed off its foundation. Soon after that hurricane, the Thomas family built the first house in Ocracoke with a trapdoor in the floor specifically meant for letting in flood waters. You can read a wonderful account of scuttling a floor during the 1899 hurricane at the Ocracoke Island Journal. The story involves a duck.

 

I was dismayed that Maureen’s old friend, Patricia, sort of turns on her. Why would she do that without Maureen’s provocation?

Maureen was dismayed, too, but Patricia thought Maureen had gone back on her promise to keep quiet about her unauthorized lift to the island.

 

What are Emrys’s patterns or loops?

There are stories of ghosts that endlessly repeat the same motions. Emrys gives the example of a gray lady who walks a corridor over and over, never varying. Maureen says that sounds like being caught in a film loop. Emrys’s pattern, his loop, is based on the carved moon shell. He says that, when he’s caught in his loop, “My entire focus is on the shell, with no conscious awareness of anything else. As though the shell is my lifeline, my source of breath and heartbeat.”

 

Why doesn’t Emrys like children?

He blames it on their high little voices. He and his wife didn’t have children before he died. I bet, if he’d had children of his own, he would have been a good father and head over heels in love with them.

 

The victim, Allen, owned The Moon Shell. Who is he to Maureen? Who is he to Glady?

He’s no relation to either. Maureen goes to Ocracoke to find out who Allen is to her late husband. He and Glady knew each other most of their lives.

 

You have a good grasp of Ocracoke and life on Ocracoke. Where did you get your experience/knowledge?

My husband and I started visiting in 1979, and we took our children to the island for many years. We haven’t gotten there often in the past 30 years, though. To try to make up for that, I subscribe to the community newspaper and read “Ocracoke Newsletter” and “Ocracoke Island Journal,” two online resources from a wonderful island shop called Village Craftsman. I’ve also read a number of books about life on the island. There’s a bibliography of those books in Come Shell or High Water. I also had the good fortune to correspond with a woman who taught school in Ocracoke.

 

What’s next for Maureen? Since I don’t think there were any murders on Ocracoke since the 19^th century, can we predict that the murder rate will accelerate wildly?

In book two, There’ll Be Shell to Pay, the body of an unidentified woman is found in a tidal inlet, Emrys is missing, and a trio of tourists calling themselves the Fig Ladies are playing detective. I feel pretty bad about bringing murder to the island (over and over), luckily Maureen is there to clean it all up. That book comes out in June 2025.

 

Here are some of the vocabulary words I learned reading this book!

Susurrus—whispering, murmuring or rustling (often by water).

Apocryphal—of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.

Paramnesia—a condition involving distorted memory or confusions of fact and fantasy, such as confabulation or déjà vu. Surprise—doesn’t have anything to do with Italian cheese!