St. Pete novelist Harold Bell plants ‘Seeds of the Yew’
Friendship and family are forever top of mind for the protagonists of Seeds of the Yew, the second book from St. Petersburg novelist Harold Bell.
Here are a small group of like-minded young people, from different cultures, who have come to live next door to one another in Mossley Hill, a region of Liverpool in North England. There’s a big yew tree in Greenbank Park, alongside their five row houses.
Bell’s previous book, Under the Yew, documented their budding friendships and desire for adventure and fresh horizons. The novel took place in the years 1968 to 1974.
Set in 1979, Seeds of the Yew continues the narrative. “I lived abroad a lot,” explains Bell, who insists that the books are not autobiographical. He worked in the oil business, and as a carpenter, and as a hydraulics expert. “I was always just a working Joe,” he says. He played soccer on local teams for 20 years.
“I always had the idea that I could write a book. And I thought to myself ‘I’ve got all these characters, and I’ve been to all these places, and had all these experiences. I got plenty to put in a book.’ But I didn’t have the story.”
Until he did.
“I made up characters from Iran, Trinidad and Venezuela – places I’d spent time – and paired them with a couple of Americans. They got together after high school, one of those ‘let’s go spend the summer exploring’ things. And possibly making something happen. They all had an idea what they wanted to do in their lives.”
It’s not a “hippie commune,” or an experiment in socialism or communism, or any other ism, for that matter. They simply like each other.
“They had a reason to go to Liverpool, because one of the characters – Cyril – had a tryout to play soccer there. And another one of the characters had an older brother that lived there, anyway.”
As Seeds of the Yew opens, the Shah of Iran has been deposed and the Islamic Revolution is in its full throes. Musician Abbas Ardavan, part of the “Greenbank Gang” (he lives with his wife Robin and their small son, Gabe) fears that his parents will never get out of Tehran.
Housemate Lucas Carter – a language teacher at Quarry Bank School – leads a daring diplomatic mission to get Hassan and Aleah Ardavan safely out of their burning homeland, where he had military connections in an earlier life.
“My writing’s very linear,” Bell says. “Each chapter is titled with a date, and I don’t go back and forth at all. So I would have something on Luke, when he went to Iran, and then the next chapter might be about what’s going on back home … because I have to keep up with all these characters.
“So one chapter will be about Cyril’s next football game, and the one after that Dani’s working at the animal hospital … I just keep going back and forth with the characters in the group and trying to wind my way through the story.”
The narrative ends with a triumphant concert by the Eclectics, a local rock band including several members of the company, at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.
In between are stories about jobs, and babies and dogs, and sports and weather and the news of the day. It’s like living their lives alongside them, practically in real time.
Bell “became” a writer in 2019, after he and his wife Nancy returned from a holiday in Liverpool. There was just something about the place, he says, and the warmth and kindness of the people.
“I got back from there and I said ‘OK, now I got a target. I have a thread that I can follow.’ We both said it was the best vacation we’d ever had. We walked the city every day. And that’s when I decided to do it.”
He’s already completed an early draft of the third Yew volume.
How did he pull this off? He’s not entirely sure. “Most writers, if they want to write a book they’ll start off with a short story, or a journal, or a blog,” Bell laughs. “I just sat down and wrote a 500-page novel. And it was the first thing I ever wrote.”
Seeds of the Yew is available through St. Petersburg Press, on Amazon and at Tombolo Books.
