Exploring Themes of Patience and Renewal

Music Monday 9: The Resonate Prophesy

When I first heard Anna Ternheim and Dave Ferguson’s duet of “The Longer The Waiting,” I couldn’t help but draw connections to the themes I explore in my novel, When The Trees All Burned. Their intertwining voices—hers with a delicate strength, his with a weathered wisdom—create the perfect tension that mirrors the relationships caught in my apocalyptic narrative.

What strikes me most is how their version, with the back-and-forth exchange, emphasizes the dialogue of separation that runs through my story. In a world where characters must decide who to save and who to leave behind, this duet’s conversational nature feels especially poignant. Two voices promising each other a future that neither can guarantee.

The sailor in their song faces the uncertain seas much as my characters face an uncertain world. “If I surrender my life to the sea, you can marry another, it's alright with me”—there’s a selfless acknowledgement of potential loss that resonates deeply with the sacrifices made in When The Trees All Burned. When everything is at stake, what promises can we reasonably make? What permissions must we grant to those we love?

I wrote my novel with this tension in mind—the push and pull between holding on and letting go. Ternheim and Ferguson capture this beautifully when they sing together, “The next time I hold you, I'm not letting go.” It’s a promise made against impossible odds, just as my characters make vows in the shadow of an apocalypse that threatens to render all promises void.

The seasonal metaphor in their song—waiting through winter for spring’s return—parallels the cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth that underpins my narrative. “When the mornings are warm and the valleys are green, I’ll come back from wherever I’ve been.” There's something universally human about this faith in renewal, even when faced with devastating loss.

What particularly moves me is the way their voices blend in the final promise: “We will give up the ocean forever, I know.” This shared commitment to eventually choose each other over the calling that separates them speaks to the core question in my novel: What would you sacrifice for the chance at tomorrow? Who would you become to ensure that someone else survives?

The haunting quality of Ternheim’s voice alongside Ferguson’s grounded tones creates a musical landscape that feels like the emotional topography of When The Trees All Burned—moments of desperate hope rising from a foundation of harsh reality. Their duet transforms a simple folk song into something that feels both ancient and urgent, much like the timeless human struggles playing out against my novel's contemporary apocalypse.

In crafting my story, I wanted to explore how crisis reveals character—how what we choose to wait for and what we’re willing to surrender says everything about who we are. The sailor and their beloved in this song, making promises across an uncertain distance, could easily be characters from my pages, clinging to connection as the familiar world dissolves around them.

Perhaps what connects this song most deeply to my novel is its fundamental optimism—the belief that separation, even apocalyptic separation, doesn't have to be the end of the story. That sometimes, if we’re brave enough to wait, what comes after can be sweeter for the distance we’ve travelled.

In both this duet and in When The Trees All Burned, I find the same essential truth: that human connection, in all its fragility and persistence, might just be the one thing worth saving when everything else burns away.