MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.
Here MacRae dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, Come Shell or High Water:
Professional storyteller and mollusk biologist Maureen Nash sees narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger—the owner of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous among shell collectors, but it’s the cryptic letters from shop owner Allen Withrow that convince Maureen to travel to the small island at the tail end of a hurricane.Visit Molly MacRae's website.
In Maureen’s first hours on Ocracoke, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over a body, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, 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 the tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.
Winona Ryder will make a fine Maureen Nash. Maureen, in her early fifties, has an adventurous streak, a love for jokes and puns, and a healthy fear of unhealthy situations like being in a sinking boat surrounded by sharks. While practical, she’s also prone to flights of fancy. Ryder has a wide range of talents and proved, in Beetlejuice, that she can hold her own with a ghost.
There are other actors who might play Emrys Lloyd, the ghost, but I can’t think of anyone better than Adam Driver. Emrys died in 1750 at age thirty-seven. He claims he didn’t mean to be a pirate, only did it once, and it didn’t end well. He has a beautiful tenor and a bit of an ego. Can’t you picture Driver in a tricorn hat, full-skirted knee-length coat, waistcoat, knee breeches, stockings, and buckles shoes? If he can do a Welsh accent, he’s got the part.
British actor Miriam Margolyes (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, several Harry Potter movies, etc.) and the late Wilford Brimley will play siblings Glady and Burt Weaver. Glady and Burt spend a lot of time arguing with each other, correcting each other, and confusing Maureen by answering her direct questions with somewhat adjacent answers. But they like Maureen and decide to help her solve the murder, even though they don’t seem to trust her (and vice versa).
Frances McDormand is National Park Ranger Patricia Crowley. Patricia always looks unruffled and in control when she’s in uniform. On her days off, in civies, she admits she becomes “a mass of Sturm und Drang.” In the book, Patricia is in her early 50s, and National Park Rangers are required by law to retire at fifty-seven, but who cares. McDormand will be fabulous.
Dr. Irving Allred, the island physician, believes he sees “tokens of death” before people die. He’d also dearly love to see – or catch – a ghost. At best he’s a snoop and a quack. If Wayne Knight is available, he’ll be the perfect Allred.
To bring this movie to life, I’ll approach Nigel Cole who directed Saving Grace (2000, Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson), Calendar Girls (2003, Helen Mirren, Judy Walters), and many episodes of the British TV series Doc Martin. Cole is great at bringing out the subtle humor in situations and he knows how to film a setting so that it becomes a character too. Mr. Cole, if you’d like a new project, may we talk over lunch?
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Q&A with Molly MacRae.
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The Page 69 Test: Come Shell or High Water.
--Marshal Zeringue