From Ant to Eagle(64)

For a second she looked confused then she smiled and put her book on the bedside table. As she stood up she said, “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Okay, let’s go.”

The air was chilly but the sun was warm as we walked through the fields to our Secret Spot. When we got there we stood in front of the trees for a moment, just staring. The place looked the same from the outside but when we entered it felt different. The forest was quieter, like all the spring sparrows had decided to stop singing at once, and the decaying leaves underneath our feet were soft and soundless.

On the far side of the forest we stood staring out over the spring-touched landscape. Lake Huron shimmered its familiar gold and blue in the distance. Tiny patches of snow lay hidden beside trees and hills but everywhere else the world was awakening. A small gust of wind picked up and the landscape changed. The trees bent and waved while the young grass danced in unison.

I looked at Aleta beside me. She was just as lost in the moment as I was. I reached my hand and found hers and she wrapped her fingers around mine.

In my head I heard Oliver’s words as I watched a hawk soaring above.

I am the thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

Then there was Sammy’s voice, a whisper in the maples. It’s so beautiful, Cal.

I breathed in long and hard. “Yes, Sammy, it is.”

I walked back into the forest and found a comfortable root to sit on. From my backpack I grabbed the journal and a pen. I began flipping through the pages, looking at each picture and reading the inscriptions below.

These will be my guide, I thought.

I traced the last drawing with my finger—an eagle in gold pencil crayon—then flipped to a fresh page.

I stole a look at Aleta. She was sitting in her own maple chair, concentrating as she wrote in her journal. She looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back briefly, then began to write.

My name is Calvin Sinclair, I am eleven years old and this is a story about my brother.





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my friends and family who read this novel in its infancy and helped it grow—thank you. A special thanks to Wiz who has read this book as many times as I have, and to my mother who has supported my book as much as she has always supported me.

To Michelle Halket, for taking these words and transforming them into a novel. Without you, this story would exist only on my computer and in a much poorer state.

And to my wonderful wife and children—you are the most important part of my life—thank you for being so patient with my writing. I love you.





Alex Lyttle is a pediatrician living in Calgary, Alberta with his wife and three children. He was raised in London, Ontario—the setting of his first novel, From Ant to Eagle, which he wrote based on his experiences working in the Pediatric Oncology unit.

When he is not working, writing or playing basketball, he enjoys learning new magic tricks to perform for his young patients.

Catch up with him at alexlyttle.com.





DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What do you believe is the central theme of the novel?

2. How would you describe Sammy and Cal’s relationship before Cal meets Aleta?

3. Why does Dr. Parker do magic tricks? What is it that Cal learns from Dr. Parker and Oliver that helps him relate better to his brother?

4. Why did Oliver choose to read the poem at the funeral? What do you feel about his version of heaven?

5. Everyone deals with the death of a loved one differently. Discuss the contrast between the various characters’ methods for dealing with loss, (e.g. Cal and his parents, Aleta and her father and sister.) 6. Did you want the novel to end differently? If so, how?





INTERVIEW WITH ALEX LYTTLE

How much of From Ant to Eagle is based on your real experiences as a pediatrician and how much did you make up?

It is no secret that there is as much truth in this novel as there is fiction. I began writing the novel during my oncology rotation in medical school and wrote as a form of catharsis. Many of the characters are drawn from real patients—their names and ages changed for confidentiality reasons. Sammy and Cal are not based on specific people, but instead, are a combination of various people. Pieces of their relationship are also drawn from my relationship with my younger brother. The levels, the love of Goosebumps books, and—as the amazing Andrew Norriss put it, “the casual brutality of their relationship”—are all experiences I shared with my brother, for better or for worse.

Between medicine and parenting, how did you find time to write?

During the seven years it took me to write this novel, I also got married, had/raised three children, wrote two medical board exams, and worked long hours as a pediatric resident. So the obvious question is: where did I find the time? Clearly it wasn’t easy—it took seven years after all—but the truth is, if you love something enough, you will find time to do it. For me, writing wasn’t something I needed to make time for, it was something I obsessively did. Between diaper changes and playing with the kids, between 24-hour call shifts and studying, I always found a few minutes here and there to write. If you aspire to write your own novel, I encourage you to not wait. There will always be other things going on, but if you start now, and find that you truly enjoy it, the time will find you.

This is a sad novel; did you set out to make it that way or did it just evolve into that?