Complaint Review: Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Does THE SPAWNING GROUNDS by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Infringe the Copyright of THE FISHER KING by Hayley Kelsey? Read on to Decide for Yourself (and see more at https://medium.com/@hayleykelseyauthor)

History:

Between May 7-21, 2011, I gave away e-copies of my novel to 25 Goodreads and 20 LibraryThing Free Giveaway winners in exchange for reviews—4 were downloaded in Canada, where Anderson-Dargatz lives. She has been a Goodreads member since August 2008.

On July 6, 2013, I gave away over 464 e-copies of my novel in an Amazon KDP Free Book Promotion—2 were dowloaded and 1 was sold in Canada, where Anderson-Dargatz lives. 

Between May-June 2014, 5 copies were sold in Canada, where Anderson-Dargatz lives.

On January 19, 2014, I submitted submitted a query letter, synopsis, and first 50 pages of my novel to agent Hilary McMahon, co-worker of Jackie Kaiser, who represents alleged infringer Gail Anderson-Dargatz at Westwood Creative Artists.

The Spawning Grounds publication date was September 6, 2016. In response to an August 1, 2016 communication informing Knopf Canada and parent company Penguin Random House of Anderson-Dargatz’s alleged copyright infringement, the publisher delayed Canadian and U.S. publication.

In 2016, The Spawning Grounds was published in Canada and the U.S. by Knopf Canada. 

Does THE SPAWNING GROUNDS Have Striking and Substantial Similarities to THE FISHER KING?

• Similar setting: In The Fisher King: Pennsylvania dairy farm, coastal island. In The Spawning Grounds: Canadian dairy farm, coastal river.
• Identical main character’s name: In The Fisher King: Gina. In The Spawning Grounds: Gina (Note identical spelling).
• In The Fisher King, greed pushed big business (commercial farming and fishing) to over-farm and overfish, damaging the island and bay, depleting them of natural resources. In The Spawning Grounds, greed pushed big business (commercial farming and development) to over-farm, damaging the coast and river, depleting them of natural resources.
• In The Fisher King, traditional farming and fishing square off against big business and environmentalists to split the community. In The Spawning Grounds, traditional farming squares off against big business development, environmentalists, and Native Americans, to split the community. 
• In The Fisher King, King is a cantankerous, controlling patriarch who raised sons to be watermen. Milton is a cantankerous, controlling patriarch who raised his son to be a farmer. Both exert power over women in the family (Gail, Gina, Arlene). In The Spawning Grounds, Stew is a cantankerous, controlling patriarch who raised son to be farmer, exerts power over women in family (Elaine, Hannah).
• In The Fisher King, Gail struggles against patriarchs father, father-in-law. In The Spawning Grounds, Hannah struggles against patriarch grandfather.
• In The Fisher King, older sister Gail raises and protects dreamy younger brother Wes from father. In The Spawning Grounds, older sister Hannah raises and protects dreamy younger brother Brandon from grandfather.
• In The Fisher King, fragile younger brother suddenly dies due to patriarch’s neglect. In The Spawning Grounds, fragile younger brother nearly dies due to tyrannical patriarch’s neglect when grandfather falls.
• In The Fisher King, sons Don and Peter return, resume affairs with old flame Gail. In The Spawning Grounds, son Jesse returns, resumes affair with old flame Gina. 
• In The Fisher King, Gail has affairs to get pregnant because husband Sonny is sterile. In The Spawning Grounds, Gina has affair with Jesse to get pregnant because husband Grant is sterile.
• In The Fisher King, Gail is a tall 35-year-old; Aunt Amy is a family planning counselor to teens. In The Spawning Grounds, Gina is a tall 35-year-old family services counselor to teenagers.
• In The Fisher King, son Peter, an environmental activist, returns to island to save it by chaining himself to boat. In The Spawning Grounds, native son Alex, an environmental activist, returns to river to save it, engages in protest by chaining himself to bridge.
• In The Fisher King, Gail perpetuates generational illegitimacy by having affairs and becoming pregnant at end, which she keeps secret from the men involved. In The Spawning Grounds, Hannah perpetuates generational illegitimacy by having affair and becoming pregnant at end, which she keeps secret from the men involved. 
• In the end of The Fisher King, Gail is pregnant with illegitimate baby. In the end of The Spawning Grounds, Hannah is pregnant with illegitimate baby.
• In The Fisher King, aging patriarch falls ill but resists doctors. In The Spawning Grounds, aging patriarch falls ill but resists doctors.
• In The Fisher King, Sonny is injured, Wes suddenly dies in accident, Gail is “imprisoned in shed” In The Spawning Grounds, Brandon is injured and nearly dies in accident, is “imprisoned” in house.
• In The Fisher King, three deaths occur: Wes, Gail’s father, King. In The Spawning Grounds, three deaths occur: Libby, her baby, Elaine.
• The denouements are identical: The Fisher King ends ambiguously; the father of Gail’s son is left open; neither big business, environmentalists, nor locals win in the end; Sonny leaves homes, frees himself from family ties, gains independence, maturity. The Spawning Grounds ends ambiguously; neither bis business, environmentalists, nor family win in the end; Brandon is freed from family spell, gains independence, maturity.
• The themes are identical: In The Fisher King, big business greed exploits the island and bay; conservation and importance of reclaiming bay from environmental damage for fish; importance of community to feeling of belonging and sense of purpose; generational illegitimacy: main female character has affair and pregnancy; coming to terms with guilt over the death of family member; identity wrapped up in being farmers, watermen; characters are trapped by circumstances beyond their control; the health, economic, and environmental consequences of ecological damage; patriarch welcomes big business plan to make fishery profitable but resists change; family’s generations-old ancestral tie to the island/farmland and importance male fertility to inherit and pass on island/farmland, family name and history, genes, vanishing way of life. In The Spawning Grounds, big business greed exploits the land and river; conservation and importance of reclaiming river from environmental damage for salmon; importance of community (Native, white) to feeling of belonging and sense of purpose; generational illegitimacy: main female character has affair and pregnancy; coming to terms with guilt over the death of family member; identity wrapped up in being river dwellers, farmers, tribal members; characters are trapped by circumstances beyond their control; the health, economic, and environmental consequences of ecological damage; patriarch welcomes big business plan to make fishery profitable but resists change; family’s generations-old ancestral tie to the river/farmland and importance male fertility to inherit and pass on island/farmland, family name and history, genes, vanishing way of life.

Does THE SPAWNING GROUNDS Have Plot and Theme Similarities to THE FISHER KING?

There are the eight main elements that comprise the “heart” on which The Fisher King turns, and The Spawning Grounds takes all eight of them:

1. Business—Greed caused big business (over-farming, development) to exploit the land & river, depleting them of natural resources (salmon), damaging the environment, & destroying residents’ health.

2. Conservation—The importance of reclaiming the river from environmental damage for salmon.

3. Work—The importance of work, specifically farming & fishing, to identity; women are marginalized in men’s world of physical work & must prove themselves.

4. Setting—The importance of place, specifically farm & river, & historical connection to it, to identity

5. Community—The importance of community (Native, white) to feeling of belonging & sense of purpose. 

6. Inheritance—The importance of inheriting & passing on: farm, river, family history, vanishing way of life, genes.

7. Male infertility—The importance of male fertility to pass on: farm, river, family name, way of life, genes.

8. Generational illegitimacy—Main female character has affair and illegitimate pregnancy, mother may have done same, ancestor did same.

Does THE SPAWNING GROUNDS Have Line-by-Line Similarities to THE FISHER KING?

4—Setting: dairy farm, coastal riverbank SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 5—dairy farm, Trappe Island, coastal island

16—Alex made a face at hearing the nickname. He had a new girlfriend every week. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 160—Only Sonny received a different nickname altogether. 183—He visited...always with a new woman in tow...each year there was a new one.

17—”He’s family...But you’ve got to stop fishing. Zach is threatening to call Fish and Wildlife.” “Nobody going to tell me I can’t fish in this river,” Stew said. “I’ve been taking fish out of these waters all my life, just like my father and his father before him.”...“Every generation of my family—going all the way back to Eugene Robertson—fished here.” STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 206—“family is something else again. You can always get more business, but you can never replace family.” 138-139—I noticed a DNR (Dept. Natural Resources) emblem. 211—“Who do they think they are anyway telling us how much we can catch!”  190—“We’re fishing the same as we always did,” King said. “The same as my daddy and his daddy before him.” 117—He was a fifth-generation waterman, which meant he could trace his family far back into the 19th century.

18—Alex: “Keep it up and there won’t be any fish here to catch.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 268—”We can’t keep using up the country’s resources like there’s no tomorrow...and expect to have anything left!” 220—so you fish even harder until there are no fish left. 392—”there aren’t enough fish left to catch?”

25-throughout—Gina IDENTICAL TO 117-throughout—Gina

28—his body radiated heat NEARLY IDENTICAL TO 235—he radiated a continuous level of heat

29—Hannah took Alex’s arm to get him to look at her, willing him to explain...He clawed a hand through his hair. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 130—I willed him to put his foot on the transom...Please, I silently implored him. 203—He raked his hands through his hair. 250—His hands raked though his hair. 388—His hand raked his hair.

34—her own co-workers from family services. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 14—aunt Amy, a family planning counselor.

46—”From what Gina told me, I’d be silly to turn down that developer’s offer.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 418—“do you want to sell it to a developer?” 420—[Gina accepts developer’s offer]

50—”Grandpa doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do with his land.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 146—King...couldn’t stand being told what to do. 140—King: “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna ask permission to build on my own land…” 

54—his lunch was still on the tray, untouched, bland mounds if potato and meat. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 341—a plastic lunch tray appeared on Aspen’s table. She peered at the colorless vegetables and rubbery meat and made a face. 

60-62—Annette came back with a male nurse...Jesse saw the male nurse help Stew to the bed. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 408—Bruce was a male nurse who...hoisted patients in and out of beds.

69—pictures on the side of the fridge. Star Wars characters. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 321—On the door hung a poster of Luke Skywalker

82—[The baby] suckled, kneading her breast, and they both closed their eyes as they were enveloped in the sweet scent of her milk letting down. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 342—The baby was nosing against Aspen’s gown searching frantically for her breast...The only sounds was the sibilant, rhythmic pull of of his lips against her flesh. 406—filled with the sweet mingled smells of mother’s milk...We spent whole days together lying in bed nursing and dozing.

95—He was surprised that Gina appraised him with such obvious pleasure…he was all at once the boy in high school…that shy, skinny kid. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 310—Gazing at him was such a rapturous pleasure. 14—he was like a teenager again. 117—he was shy 236—making him shy

106—Stew searched her face without recognition. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 401—He stared at me for a long moment without a shred of recognition

119—And perhaps with him [Jesse] she would have the children that Grant couldn’t give her. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO Throughout—[Gail has affairs with brothers-in-law to have children that Sonny couldn’t give her]. 178—Sonny’s inability to impregnate me. 356—Sonny was sterile.

128—Alex was polished, educated in a way his cousin would never be. Zach was a decade older and had never left the valley. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 302—I’d never seen Don looking anything but polished and professional. 107—“He’ll [Sonny] never leave [the island].”

135—Alex...watched her, a small smile playing on his handsome face. He was amused by her STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 118—King...watching me...a small smile on his lips. 162—His lips were turned up at the corners in a tolerant smile as if he were amused 127—His lips lifted in amusement.

135—Alex nodded as if he had come to a decision about her. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 105—Then he nodded decisively, once, as though settling a different question to his own satisfaction.

143—Alex: ”...the salmon in this river are endangered.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 7—herring and shad that they were always on the endangered species list. 

145-146—He felt sound more than he heard it.” STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 194—I heard the sailboat before I saw it.

156—He flinched and put up a hand to protect himself, expecting the blows he had experienced as the boy Samuel. When she didn’t strike, he looked up. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 87—Wes flinched, bracing for a blow...Wes’s head whipped up.

185—”Gina had once told him she hated his unwillingness to...tell the lies that were necessary to keep any relationship alive.” “I was so stupid, about everything,” [Jesse] said...“There are so many things I would have done differently,” he said. STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 239—I told myself that all marriages harbored small deceptions. 7—“God, we were young and stupid,” I said. 266—”I missed a lot,” Peter said. 417—I couldn’t help but wonder how all of our lives might have turned out differently. 

210—Jesse: ”So you haven’t told him about us.” Gina: “No.” “Will you?” “You almost sound like you want me to.” STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 350—“You haven’t told him, have you?” My eyes flitted away. “Do you want me to.”

230—”Instead they found their love like teenagers, in the back of Jesse’s mini-van down a grassy side road...in Gina’s woodshed.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 14—Suddenly, he was like a teenager again..He grabbed me in the shower, in the boat, in the cab of the truck. 265—One night...he appeared at the shed. 270—[Peter and Gail have sex in shed.]

234—Hannah looked at herself at the mirror...and attempted to tame her hair.” SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 276—My face in the mirror...my hair a frizzy nest. 

241—”Jesse pulled a hand through his hair.” Brandon: “You imprison me! You keep me in this house, I go nowhere. I need to get out...Let me go!” he cried...”Let me out!” STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 388—His hands raked his hair.  89—It seemed that no matter where I turned the door was bolted. There was no escape. 149—he’d masterminded not only to imprison me. 323—my imprisonment in King’s shed. 396—“you were a virtual prisoner in the shed…”

251—Gina said. She didn’t ask. She stated it as a fact. STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 356—she said. It wasn’t a question 150—she said, blithely, as though stating a fact. 330—It was a statement of fact neutrally delivered. 105—he said. It wasn’t a question. 251—he said. It wasn’t a question.

274—Hannah touched her shoulder and her mother shrugged as if dispelling a horsefly. STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 49—I lightly tapped his thigh...He brushed my hand away as if it were one of the flies circling through the air.

276-277—lips on her mouth. No, he was breathing his own air into her. SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR TO 312—my mouth filled with a current of warm air. I breathed his breath.

277—Rain pelted down  IDENTICAL TO 363—the rain pelted down. 

286—over time, as the river healed itself, the sockeye would return. STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 426—With no watermen left to catch them, fish will reproduce and rebound and the bay will teem with them again.

295-296—He went on touching her, kissing her, as if she hadn’t spoken, and she settled back into the bed as he shifted to mount her, his erection insistent at her thigh. She opened to him, pulled him deep inside, wrapped herself around him, and he came as soon as he entered her. Then, finally waking, Alex kissed Hannah’s cheeks, her hair, her collarbone. He ran his hand down her torso and strummed her...She drifted, floating on the perimeter of sleep...Within her the possibility of a child swam upriver, navigating the underground crevices of her body as salmon fry chart tiny waterways under rock, until it reached her reef. Her single egg drew this potential towards itself, pulled this possibility in, and the bloom of life began, here in this riverbed inside her. STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO 59—he continued kissing and stroking me. 59—I let him gently turn me onto my back. 137—Slowly...he lowered himself onto me. 59—The length of his p***s pressed insistently against my coccyx. 305—his erection insistently prodding my thigh. 238—I pulled my legs up and wrapped them around his back to invite him even deeper. 239—He entered me...he came. 136—kissing my neck, burying his face in my hair. 137—Later, lying in his arms floating in the lilting space before sleep. 15—The finished chart invariably reminded me of a tide calendar with its wavy cerulean lines flowing like an undulating current across the path of days marking ebb and flood tides. I found myself identifying with its watery ripples, its swells and dips. That’s me, I thought, staring at the graph, and imagined an ocean inside me where waves were continually building until they crested and broke over and over again, rhythmically, endlessly. 172—An image arose, unbidden, before me...I saw an egg, released from an ovary, travel slowly down a fallopian tube...a cluster of sperm, their tails lashing wildly back and forth as they swam madly towards the egg. They were so sleek and elegant, the perfectly smooth symmetry of the oval head, the shapely contour of the tapered tail—like a school of minnows. Then one—the strongest and most agile—separated itself from the pack and, burrowing deep, merged with the egg and the union was complete.