The Scent Keeper

The Scent Keeper

by Erica Bauermeister
The Scent Keeper

The Scent Keeper

by Erica Bauermeister

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Overview

Erica Bauermeister, the national bestselling author of The School of Essential Ingredients, presents a moving and evocative coming-of-age novel about childhood stories, families lost and found, and how a fragrance conjures memories capable of shaping the course of our lives.

Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world--a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.

Lyrical and immersive, The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250200143
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/21/2019
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 48,871
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Erica Bauermeister is the author of the bestselling novel The School of Essential Ingredients, Joy for Beginners, and The Lost Art of Mixing. She is also the co-author of the non-fiction works, 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Washington, and has taught there and at Antioch University. She is a founding member of the Seattle7Writers and currently lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

Erica Bauermeister is the author of the bestselling novel The School of Essential Ingredients, Joy for Beginners, and The Lost Art of Mixing. She is also the co-author of non-fiction works, 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

She has a PhD in literature from the University of Washington, and has taught there and at Antioch University. She is a founding member of the Seattle7Writers and currently lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING

Back before there was time, I lived with my father on an island, tucked away in an endless archipelago that reached up out of the cold salt water, hungry for air. Growing up in the midst of the rain and moss and ancient thick-barked trees, it was easy to forget that the vast majority of our island was underwater — descending down two, three, five hundred bone-chilling feet. Forever really, for you could never hold your breath long enough to get to the bottom.

Those islands were a place to run away, although I didn't understand that at the time. I had nothing to run from and every reason to stay. My father was everything. I've heard people say that someone is their "whole world," their eyes filled with stars. But my father was my world, in a way so literal it can still grab my thoughts, pick them up, and toss them around like driftwood in a storm.

Our cabin was set in a clearing at the center of the island. We were not the first to live there — those islands have a long history of runaways. Almost a century ago there were French fur trappers, with accents that lilted and danced. Loggers with mountainous shoulders, and fishermen who chased silver-backed salmon. Later came the draft dodgers, hiding from war. Hippies, dodging rules. The islands took them all in — the storms and the long, dark winters spat most out again. The beauty there was raw; it could kill as easily as it could astonish.

Our cabin had been built by the truest of runaways. He set up in a place where no one could find him and built his home from trees he felled himself. He spent forty years on the island, clearing space for a garden and planting an orchard. One autumn, however, he simply disappeared. Drowned, it was said. After that the cabin was empty for years until we arrived and found the apple trees, opened the door. Raised the population of the island to two.

I don't remember arriving on the island myself; I was too young. I only remember living there. I remember the paths that wandered through those watchful trees, the odor of the dirt beneath our feet, as dark and complicated as fairy tales. I remember our one-room cabin, the big chair by the woodstove, and our collection of stories and science books. I remember the smell of wood smoke and pine pitch in my father's beard as he read to me at night, and the ghostly aroma of the runaway's pipe tobacco, an olfactory reminder that had sunk into the walls and never quite disappeared. I remember the way the rain seemed to talk to the roof as I fell asleep, and how the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet.

Most of all, I remember the drawers.

My father had begun building them when we moved into the cabin, and when he was done they lined our walls from floor to ceiling. The drawers were small things, their polished wooden fronts no bigger than my child-sized hands. They surrounded us like the forest and islands outside our door.

Each drawer contained a single small bottle, and inside each bottle was a piece of paper, rolled around itself like a secret. The glass stoppers of the bottles were sealed with different colored waxes — red in the top rows, green for those below. My father almost never opened the bottles.

"We need to keep them safe," he said.

But I could hear the papers whispering inside the drawers.

Come find me.

"Please?" I'd ask, again and again.

Finally, he agreed. He took out a leather book filled with numbers and carefully added one to the list. Then he turned to the wall of drawers, pondering his choice.

"Up there," I said, pointing up high to where the red-wax bottles lived. Stories always begin at the top of a page.

My father had built a ladder that slid along the wall, and I watched him climb it almost to the ceiling, reaching into a drawer and drawing out its bottle. When he was back on the ground, he carefully broke the seal. I could hear glass scritching against glass as he pulled out the stopper, then the rustle of the paper as he unrolled it into a plain, white square. He leaned in close, inhaling, then wrote another number in the book.

I meant to stay still, but I leaned forward, too. My father looked up and smiled, holding out the paper.

"Here," he said. "Breathe in, but not too much. Let the smell introduce itself."

I did as he said. I kept my chest tight and my breath shallow. I could feel the tendrils of a fragrance tickling the inside of my nose, slipping into the curls of my black hair. I could smell campfires made from a wood I didn't recognize; dirt more parched than any I had ever known; moisture, ready to burst from clouds in a sky I'd never seen. It smelled like waiting.

"Now, breathe in deeply," my father said.

I inhaled, and fell into the fragrance like Alice down the rabbit hole.

* * *

Later, after the bottle had been stoppered and sealed and put back in its drawer, I turned to my father. I could still smell the last of the fragrance lingering in the air.

"Tell me its story," I asked him. "Please."

"All right, little lark," he said. He sat in the big chair and I nestled in next to him. The fire crackled in the woodstove; the world outside was still.

"Once upon a time, Emmeline ..." he began, and his voice rolled around the rhyme of it as if the words were made of chocolate.

Once upon a time, Emmeline, there was a beautiful queen who was trapped in a great white castle. None of the big, bold knights could save her. "Bring me a smell that will break the walls," she asked a brave young boy named Jack ...

I listened, while the scents found their hiding places in the cracks in the floorboards, and the words of the story, and the rest of my life.

CHAPTER 2

THE SCENT HUNTER

After that, I asked every day: "Please can we open another one?"

He'd relent eventually, but never as often as I wanted him to.

"The bottles protect the papers," he said. "If we open them too often, the scents will disappear."

It made no sense to me. Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back. They told you their own stories, letting you know when the tide was low or the oatmeal was done cooking or the apple trees were getting ready to bloom. But they never stayed.

Even as a young child, however, I understood that those scent-papers were different, magical somehow. They held entire worlds. I could recognize bits of them — the smell of a fruit, but one more full and sweet than anything I had ever tasted. Or an animal, lazier than any I had ever met. Many of the scents were utterly foreign, however — sharp and fast, smooth and unsettling.

I wanted to dive into those worlds; I wanted to understand what made their smells. Even more than that, I wanted to be Jack the Scent Hunter, the hero of my father's stories, flying through the canopies of dripping jungles and climbing to the tops of mountains, all to catch the fragrance of one tiny flower.

"How did he do it?" I asked my father. "How did Jack find the scents?"

"By following this," he said, tapping the bridge of my nose.

I paused. "How?" I asked.

My father smiled. "You just get out of its way, I suppose."

I didn't understand exactly what he meant, but from then on I tried my utmost to let my nose lead me. I lifted it to every change in the weather, and then checked the smell of the dirt to see how it responded. The salt from the sea was a constant twist in the air, but when I breathed in I noticed how it got stronger when the waves were crashing. I caught a bright green scent, falling through the Douglas firs like a waterfall, and tracked it back to the breeze, the way it moved through the tops of the trees, brushing the needles together.

Every day I was out of my loft at dawn, determined to find every smell I could.

"You're my wake-up call," my father said as I clattered down my ladder. "My lark of the morning."

* * *

We spent much of our days outside. We raised chickens for eggs and tended the fruit trees and the vegetable garden. Even so, the majority of our food was gathered from the untamed portions of our island. I cannot remember a time when I was not a part of this process, and by the age of eight, I considered myself an essential, if not quite equal, partner in our survival.

"Foragers feast," my father would say, and we'd set out into the woods, cedar bark baskets in our hands. In the summer, we harvested bright red huckleberries, and salal berries so dark blue they looked like night in your hand. In the fall, we found mushrooms hiding under the trees — I was captivated by the convoluted morels, each one a labyrinth of nooks and crannies.

"Tell me its story?" I asked my father one day. I pushed the curls back from my face and looked up at him. "Please?"

He looked down at me and thought for a moment, considering the morel in my hand.

Once upon a time, Emmeline, he began, Jack found himself in an enchanted forest where the trees were as tall as the sky. In the forest there was a beautiful sorceress who lived in a mansion made of scents, and when Jack saw her, he fell in love. The sorceress took him to her magnificent house, but once he was inside, he found he could not get out.

"Oh no," I said, shivering into the danger of it.

"Should I keep going?" he asked.

"Yes, please."

"I won't let you go," said the sorceress, and she led him into a room filled with a fragrance so mesmerizing he forgot the world outside. Whenever he started to remember, she showed him another room, each more enchanting than the last.

Jack wandered that mansion for years, until one day he discovered a room he'd never seen before. When he entered, he smelled a scent that took him back to all the things he wished he'd done, and all the things he had wished he could be. Then he saw a key, hanging by a blue ribbon on a hook next to a door.

I waited in anticipation. I loved magic keys.

And so, my father said, he took the key and opened the door and never went back again.

I waited, thinking there would be more, but my father just put the mushroom in my basket.

"That's not enough, Papa," I said. Even I knew endings were more complicated than that.

"Oh but it is, little lark," he said, and kissed me on the head. "Now, let's get going. These baskets won't fill themselves."

* * *

Perhaps the best place to forage was our lagoon, an oval of protected water, ringed by rocks and fed by a narrow channel that churned with the tide. You could spend your whole day harvesting there. Along the shore were wild onions and sea asparagus and the grassy stalks of sea plantains; under the beach rocks were tiny black crabs no bigger than my thumbnail. The boulders that lined the shores were packed with barnacles and mussels, and the seaweed came in infinite varieties. My favorite was bladderwrack, with its little balloons that popped in your mouth and left the smell of salt behind.

The best work, however, was hunting for clams.

"There!" my father said, pointing to a spout of water that fireworked up from the beach. I raced toward it, trying to get there quick enough to catch the spray and feel it run through my outstretched fingers. But even though I was small and fast, I arrived to find only the smell of salt and a slight indentation in the sand at my feet. I stuck a small stick next to the spot to mark it.

"There's another!" I yelled, and ran down the beach in the other direction.

"Good job," my father said, following the trail of my sticks with a small shovel in his hand. At the end of an hour of running and digging, our basket was full.

Usually, we'd have to save the clams, drying them for the winter, when the dark came and wrapped around us like a heavy blanket. I didn't like winter; the rain turned into a mood of its own, and the food on our plates faded in color until all that was left were dry things — apples, clams, a crackle of seaweed. My father faded, too, and his stories disappeared almost completely.

"Do we have to dry the clams?" I asked, and that day my father smiled his summer smile and agreed to a picnic. We made a fire and cooked the clams, adding some wild onions and sea asparagus for flavor, and ate out of bowls made of abalone shells, with mussel shells for spoons and berries for dessert. Then we sat on the sand as the sky turned the palest of blues, and my father watched the water snarl its way through the narrow channel.

It always made me nervous, that channel. Four times a day the tide changed, and the water started its rush in or out of our lagoon through the winding, rock-filled passage. It was an angry, dangerous thing, eager to chew up anything that came near its mouth.

My father saw the way I was studiously avoiding looking in its direction and lifted his mussel shell spoon in a toast.

"Here's to the channel that keeps us safe," he said.

It did, that much was true. Except for the lagoon, our island was entirely steep sided, its edges a vertical plunge down to the water. Evergreen trees clung to its steep rock walls, their lowest branches sheared off in a perfect horizontal line denoting high tide. The only way to access the island was through the channel. I had seen pictures of castles, towering things, impervious to all below. Our island was a castle, its angry channel our drawbridge.

"It's scary," I said.

"But it keeps out pirates and bears," my father noted.

I had seen pictures of both in my books. I had no desire to confront either.

"Here's to the channel," I said, and raised my spoon.

* * *

Every once in a while, we arrived at the lagoon to find the beach wildly scattered in seaweed, all the way to the high-tide mark.

"Mermaid party," my father declared, and it made sense. The sand was decorated with such abandon that only the most fanciful of creatures could have done it.

"Let's see if they left us anything," he'd say. We'd check behind the rocks and search the huckleberry bushes that lined the beach. Sure enough, we'd find treasure. Black plastic boxes with heavy closures that snapped shut tighter than a scent bottle. Inside were the most marvelous presents — rice and flour, chocolate and coffee. Sometimes there were even books or shoes or clothes.

One day, when I was nine or so, we discovered a particularly wonderful treasure trove — two black boxes, one of them containing a new pair of boots and a blue rain slicker, just my size.

"How do the mermaids know what we love?" I asked my father.

"They're magic," he said, and it made sense, for only magic would be able to find a way through our channel.

We hoisted the boxes in our arms and carried them triumphantly back to the cabin. Jack might hunt little flowers, but we had scored big and heavy game. We feasted that night, but carefully, putting most of our plunder in the pantry. We knew the ocean was a fickle thing, its mysteries unpredictable. It could take as much as it gave. The lingering scent of the runaway's pipe tobacco was a never-ending reminder of that.

After dinner, my father and I read books to each other, as we always did. My father loved the science books, and he would teach me about the weather or the stars or the names of the trees around us. We spent hours looking at drawings of peculiar sea creatures, and flowers and animals that seemed to come from another world.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to a picture of a brown animal with slender legs and a little beard on its long chin.

"A goat," my father said.

"Are goats real?"

He nodded.

"Would the mermaids bring me one?" The goat looked quick and smart and maybe funny. A goat could be a friend, I thought.

My father paused for a moment. "You never know what a mermaid will do," he said finally.

"Can we ask them?" We always took the empty boxes back to the beach. Be kind to the mermaids, my father always said, and we'd write a thank-you note and leave it inside the box.

"Try it and see," he said with a shrug. "You never know." The subject appeared to have reached an end. This was how it often was with my father. He could spend hours telling you all about the inner workings of a tree or the weather, but other times, he just stopped talking.

"How about a story?" I asked, taking advantage of his silence to swap the science book for the big, thick collection of fairy tales. Its cover had golden writing and a picture of a princess and a crumpled little man who fascinated me. The fables inside were fantastical, intricate things, filled with girls who slept forever and houses made of candy and lies.

My father had told me that many things in fairy tales weren't real, but my problem was I didn't always know which ones. I knew the woods were real, of course, but for me, living on an island with only my father, the image of two children holding hands was no less extraordinary than the idea of spinning straw into gold. I wondered what it would be like, to hold a hand the size of my own, to know someone else who had more questions than answers. I wondered about a lot of things back then.

"Why don't I have a mother?" I asked my father, staring at the illustration of a woman with long blond hair, a child in her lap.

"Because you have me," he said. He turned the page, and I saw the picture of the wicked lady with the pale skin and dark hair, staring into the mirror. My father hadn't given me a real answer to my question, but he'd offered a reasonable trade-off, I figured — for in fairy tales, where there were mothers there were always witches.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Scent Keeper"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Erica Bauermeister.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Prologue,
Part One: The Island,
The Beginning,
The Scent Hunter,
The Machine,
The Gift,
The Scents,
The Beach,
The Lie,
The Intruder,
The Message,
The Bottle,
After,
Part Two: The Cove,
Wonderland,
Dodge,
The Secret Cove,
The Boardinghouse,
The Sheets,
School,
Fisher,
In The Woods,
The Resort,
The End Of Summer,
The Nightingale,
The Stories,
The Dinner,
Runaway,
The Return,
The Island,
The Bluff,
After,
The Search,
The Shirt,
The Choice,
Part Three: The City,
Arrival,
Inspire, Inc.,
The Store,
Training,
The Island,
The Mall,
Rene,
The Park,
The Boat,
Cocktails,
The Dinner,
The Story,
The Wall,
The Bottle,
Acknowledgments,
Also by Erica Bauermeister,
About the Author,
Copyright,

Reading Group Guide

General questions:

1. What is the smell of childhood for you?

2. If you could preserve one scent, what would it be?

3. If technology was not an issue, what invention would you create?

4. In the course of the book, Emmeline lives on the island, in Secret Cove, and in the city. Each location affected her profoundly and differently. How have the places you’ve lived affected you?


Nightingale/scent questions:

5. What do you think the story of the Nightingale means to John? To Emmeline? Why do you think John cut it from the book?

6. The Nightingale machine is a fi ctional invention. Discuss its role in the book.

7. Both John and Victoria have a wall of scents. What do you think they mean to each of the characters?

8. Emmeline’s father strives to preserve memories through scent. Emmeline’s mother uses scent to infl uence others. Rene is trying to re-create scents that are disappearing in the modern world. What are the up- and downsides to their actions?

9. What do you think about Emmeline’s relationship with scent? How does it change as she grows older?


Emotional Arc questions/Parents:

10. Secrets are an important element in The Scent Keeper. Which secrets do you think the characters were right to keep? Which should they have told and when?

11. What do you think about John’s decision to take Emmeline to the island? How do you feel about their relationship?

12. What do you think was the most important lesson that Emmeline learned on the island?

13. At one point, Emmeline comes to understand her father has been revealing his past through stories. What do you think he’d been trying to tell her?

14. Emmeline experiences the deaths of Cleo, her father, and Dodge. How does her reaction to each differ? What does each one tell us about her?

15. How do you see Emmeline’s relationship with her parents change throughout the book?

16. What do you think happens at the end of the book?


Fisher:

17. What role does Fisher plays in Emmeline’s life? How does that change?

18. What do you think about Emmeline’s decision to take Fisher to the island? How does it compare to her father’s decision to take her there as a baby?

19. Emmeline blames herself for her father’s death, and for the confrontation between Fisher and his father. Do you think she was right to do so?

20. Fisher chose to leave his abusive father (and Emmeline). His mother chose to stay. What do you think about each of their decisions?

21. At one point in the book, Fisher’s mother says: “Martin used to tell me how salmon always return to the same stream to spawn. They say it’s the smell that draws them upstream. Maybe we’re more like fish than we think.” How does this apply to the characters in the book? Do you agree with the statement?


Literary questions:

22. Several chapter titles are repeated in the book. Why do you think that is?

23. The Scent Keeper is told through Emmeline’s perspective. Imagine if it had been told through the varying perspectives of the major characters—Emmeline, Fisher, John, and Victoria. How would that change the book?

24. How does the prologue affect your reading of the rest of the novel? How would the book have been different if it had come at the end?

25. Fairy tales and stories are present throughout the book. What is their role in the book? In our lives?

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