Tag: First Editions Club (Page 1 of 7)

Author Q & A with Michael Farris Smith

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 8)

Oxford’s Michael Farris Smith reinforces his rising prominence as “one of Southern fiction’s leading voices” with his newest Southern noir offering, Blackwood.

Set in “a landscape of fear and ghosts,” this tale of an artist who returns to his (fictional) hometown of tiny Red Bluff, Miss., quickly turns dark as he realizes that the heartbreak of his past is now mingled with an evil that has tortured generations.

The recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award, Smith’s previous novels include The FighterDesperation RoadRivers, and The Hands of Strangers. His short stories have received two nominations for a Pushcart Prize, and his essays have been published in the New York Times, Catfish Alley, Deep South Magazine and others.

Smith is a graduate of Mississippi State University, and he began writing while at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

As a child in 1956, main character Colburn inadvertently witnessed–and unexpectedly participated in–his father’s suicide. The weight of this, his greatest burden, soon begins to drag him into deeper gloom when he returns to his hometown of Red Bluff, Miss., 20 years later. Why did he really go back, and why did you choose to set this story in this time period?

Michael Farris Smith

I think I chose to set the novel in the ‘70s, with the initial event occurring in the ‘50s, just because this felt like an older story to me. Almost like a tall tale or ghost story you hear told again and again in some small town. I think a lot of people from smaller places can certainly relate to this. As to why Colburn decides to return, I don’t know if it’s something I can answer so directly. He’s been carrying this around for a long time, he’s haunted by it, confused by it, curious about it, and so maybe he feels like he’s ready to face it.

Another formidable, undeniable “character” in Blackwood is the kudzu–the living, invincible vine that could swallow not only the landscape, but any manmade object in its path. Explain its role in this story.

The kudzu is what started this story, much like the idea of endless hurricanes started Rivers. This is the second time I’ve had the landscape be the jumping off point. I’ve always thought the great expanse of kudzu was strange, spooky, dark. We’ve all seen it, how it takes everything, methodically and patiently. I just had the idea of a valley covered in kudzu and the small town surrounding it, and the whispers and maybe even madness that seems to be living on its edge, and then going beneath the vines to find out what is going on. I let my imagination have it and that was that.

“The voice” seems to pervade the community. Tell us about its intrusion into the lives of those who hear it, and its gossip value among those who have merely heard about it.

The gossip value carries some of the weight, no doubt. Back to earlier when I mentioned that Blackwood had the feeling of being a ghost story passed along, year after year, I think the characters in the novel experience the same. One person claims to hear the voice. Another thinks it’s ridiculous. Another falls somewhere in between. It seems like those who are drawn to the notion of a voice below are the ones who want to hear it.

Among the many story lines and characters whose lives are beyond “complicated” in this tale is the presence of characters known as the man, the woman, and the boy–who all live tragic lives. In the end, it is the boy with whom Colburn finds an attachment. Why is this quasi-relationship so important to Colburn?

The best way I can answer is that we are all looking for someone to find things in common with, people who make us feel accepted or part of something. Hopefully it comes from family, but for too many people, like Colburn, that isn’t the case. He’s spent a lifetime with the shadows of his mother and father drifting in his mind, and he has been a loner, isolated, and maybe this is his chance to find that connection he has missed.

The names of the woman and the boy are never revealed, although the man finally tells the local sheriff, “My name is Boucher.” You know what my question is! How does this fit in with the main character of your previous novel, The Fighter?

I’ve never had characters spill from one novel into another until now, and that wasn’t the original plan. I was very late in the process of Blackwood when I realized the man and woman who have broken down in Red Bluff are the man and woman who abandoned young Jack Boucher in Tunica at the beginning of The Fighter. It was such an exciting idea, and the time frame fit, and it gave their story so much more complexity. It raised Blackwood to a higher level, and in some ways, I feel like it has raised the level of The Fighter, as well.

Please tell me about the title of the book, Blackwood, and its significance to the story.

On page 56, I used the description of the “blackwood underneath” in a passage where we first really go under and see what it’s like. As soon as I used the word blackwood, I knew that was the title. It fit the landscape but also fit the kind of story I knew I was going to tell.

Lemuria has chosen Blackwood as its March 2020 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction. Signed first editions can be found at Lemuria and at our online store.

The Border Between: ‘American Dirt’ by Jeanine Cummins (with new material in review)

This review was originally posted on Tuesday, January 21, 2020. The introduction was added on Thursday, January 30.

Advance copies of American Dirt arrived at the store from Flatiron Books with a lot of fanfare, as do many books. I first heard about American Dirt from another reader at our store whose taste I tremendously respect, from whom I had first learned about Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (another story about a culture very different from mine, and one of my favorite books of all time, albeit written by a writer with first hand cultural experience with parts of the story she was telling). I read American Dirt myself, and was genuinely moved by what I thought was a compelling human story written with what I still believe were good intentions. However, prominent members of the Latinx literary community have disagreed, arguing that celebrating such an inauthentic depiction of their culture would be a disservice to the real experiences of Mexicans and migrants (Rebuttal view points will be linked below the review). Reasonable people can debate what the exact guidelines should be for writing about other cultures, especially ones socially and economically marginalized by those in power, but one of the chief pleasures of reading fiction I have found is to expand experiences beyond what I can live myself. If we who are not Latinx wish to experience that culture, it feels appropriate to listen to Latinx voices, from authors to beta readers to critics, at whatever stage of the process we hear them.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is, with all due respect to its competition, probably the best book of any kind that I’ve read in almost two years. It is a novel whose narrative and emotional power comes from being stretched taut between dual forces: senseless terror and redemptive generosity, life and death, dreams and nightmares, home and hope. I would recommend this book to anybody who reads for the same basic reason as I do: to have your soul made more expansive by the experience.

Lydia Pérez is a normal woman with a middle-class life in Acapulco, Mexico, when that life is destroyed violently and instantly at her niece’s quinceañera as her entire family–except for her eight year-old son, Luca–is murdered because of her husband Sebastián’s reporting on the leader of a local cartel. If anything could even be added on to this horror, Lydia knows this cartel leader, known to her as Javier Crespo Fuentes, one of her most cherished, thoughtful customers at her bookstore.

Questions of complicity haunt Lydia in her spare moments. But she doesn’t have time for guilt; she doesn’t have time for grief. Her number one priority is to keep her son safe by leaving Acapulco, the state of Guerrero, and all of Mexico. Only in America, el norte, does Javier’s reach not extend. Both Lydia–and her gifted son, forced to act beyond his years–are plenty smart, but also not prepared, because who could bear to be prepared for this? Marked for death, with nobody in their family left to turn to, Lydia and Luca are forced to press every advantage, rely on their wits, and learn which strangers to trust, and, even more importantly, who not to.

Lydia and Luca form a family unit, of sorts, with fellow migrants Soledad and Rebeca, who are sisters from the mountains of Honduras escaping trauma and danger of their own. Lorenzo, a former sicaro from the very cartel Lydia and Luca are fleeing from, flits in and out of their journey, casting a shadow of doubt and fear on the hopes of escape.

Don Winslow, the author of cartel crime books like The Power of the Dog calls it “a Grapes of Wrath for our times,” and I think the Steinbeck comparison is apt. You could call American Dirt an issue book, in the way it humanizes the headlines, and shows who migrants are and what they face, but it definitely stands on its own two feet as a gripping story all on its own.

The balancing act of Cummins’ novel manages is to be tense and terrifying without seeming exploitative. The story shows the cruelty of a broken world without reveling in it. It shows not the machinations of power, from the perspective of the cartels or the politicians, but the consequences of it. It shows migrants as individual humans, each with different stories, even if there are all centered in tragedy. Each of those stories is worth telling, and each one, worth hearing.

Lemuria has chosen American Dirt as its January 2020 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Reading for further consideration:

Author Q & A with Mark Barr

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 29)

Mark Barr’s debut novel Watershed literally sheds light on the true story of how electric light first came to rural Tennessee in the 1930s–and how its arrival changed those communities in ways they never expected.

Through its pages, Barr chronicles the stories of fictional characters Claire and Nathan, whose complicated fates are drawn together only through the enormity of the construction of the hydroelectric dam that would supply the power to turn the lights on. Barr’s meticulous research adds an attention to detail that draws the reader into the time and place of the story.

A software developer who likes to spend his spare time baking bread, Barr has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including those from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. He earned an MFA from Texas State University.

Barr resides in Arkansas with his wife and sons.

What was it about the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric dam project in 1930s rural Tennessee that caught your interest and inspired this story?

I had been working as an advertising copywriter, and I was assigned to write a brochure for an electric cooperative client. During my preparation for that, I was shocked to learn that, while electricity was available in our large cities in the early years of the 1900s, it wasn’t until 1937 and the Rural Electrification Act that much of the rural countryside finally got electrical service. I was kind of shocked, not that we’d experienced this divide, but that we don’t much collectively remember it.

The prospect of life with electricity was an unknown in 1930s rural Tennessee. Explain how the dam’s construction in Watershed would bring more changes to the community than just electric power–and how the book’s title reveals that.

We don’t stop to think about it much, but we today enjoy a standard of comfort and living that is far beyond 99 percent better than what our preceding ancestors had. Consider the fact of air conditioning when it is hot, lights when it is dark, our global communications network and internet–all of these things are available by and large because of electricity. It’s a foundation for so many other conveniences. It is hard to overstate the reach of its benefit.

Please tell us about the fears and ambitions of central characters Claire and Nathan.

I think a lot of the novel has to do with our past and our inability to ever escape it. Nathan is bound to his. Claire is shaped by hers, even as she grows into a new life. When I set out to write the book, Nathan was, to my mind, the main character. It surprised me when Claire came along and then grew into what I now think of as the primary character. It’s Claire’s struggle and growth that defines the arc of the novel’s story. I feel that it is because of Claire that the book is an optimistic one.

With the scarcity of jobs during the post-Depression years of the ‘30s, explain the tension between the locals and the outsiders who competed for employment on this project in Hardin County, Tennessee.

Here’s a story that reflects the scarcity of jobs during this time period: I visited a couple different dams that had been built in 1937 during my research. At one of them I learned that, during the construction effort, a camp had sprung up just adjacent to the dam site. It was comprised of men seeking work. Each morning, men from the camp would venture over to the dam site to inquire if anyone had died during the previous day, and if so, if a position had opened up as a result! A version of that story made it into the novel.

What can you tell us about future works you may have in progress now? Do you plan to stick with historical fiction as your main interest?

I’ve got a couple different projects that I’m working on next. The one that currently has the upper hand is set in an Illinois coal mining town in the 1990s. I’m drawn to stories about communities as they change, and this one deals with the strains placed on a particular town, generationally, after the mines shut down.

Lemuria has selected Watershed its November 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction. Signed first editions of Watershed are available in our online store

Author Q & A with Ann Patchett

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 22)

New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s seventh novel The Dutch House is a tale that lingers long after the final page.

A story of home, love, disappointment and forgiveness, the novel centers around the family home of siblings and parents through decades of their changes, longings and, eventually, a comfortable sense of healing that bridges to the next generation.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Patchett has won numerous awards and fellowships, including England’s Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has authored six previous novels, three books of nonfiction, and a children’s book.

In November, 2011, she became co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she lives with her husband, Karl VanDevender, and their dog, Sparky.

Reviews for The Dutch House often refer to it as “a dark fairy tale,” and, indeed, its main characters–two siblings whose childhoods were darkened by the abandonment of their mother, followed by the presence of a cruel stepmother, and their attachment to a large and looming home–spend their lives lamenting their misfortunes in later years, but are still drawn back to the house. Tell us briefly about their childhood regrets.

Danny and Maeve regret that they didn’t get the house. They regret that their stepmother won, and they lost. Funny, but when I think about regrets, I tend to think about my own actions and not the actions of others. I think they see themselves as fairly blameless in how the events of their childhood unfolded, and I think they’re right. I don’t want to give too much away but when Danny is a teenager, he feels he dealt with a terrible situation terribly, but I believe that as an adult he doesn’t blame himself or harbor any regret.

The house that siblings Maeve and her younger brother Danny grew up in–and would be banished from–is practically a character itself. The design and features of this unique structure, not to mention its furnishings–loom as large as its physical presence. In what ways does this house stand as a metaphor of this story?

Ann Patchett

I think of houses as our public face. Our house is how other people see us. Houses represent our success and our failure, our good times and bad. It’s where we store our memories. If you’ve ever had the experience of driving past a house you used to live in, you remember very quickly how you felt when you were there. So, for Danny and Maeve, the house represents a happier time when their mother was still with them, and it also represents the security of wealth. They had never imagined another kind of life for themselves, and while Maeve was already out of the house, and in a very small apartment, Danny had no idea about the turns that life might take. Children rarely do.

The story goes far beyond the siblings’ childhood years, continuing through their middle age and beyond–as it unfolds their divergent careers and personal lives, and, near the end, the unexpected appearance of a character. When you’re developing a story, do you map out the way their lives evolve for such a long time?

I do. Different writers approach this question differently. I really have to know where I’m going, or I just meander around and get nowhere. I like structure and plot, so I work out the larger details of the novel before I start writing. It’s my favorite part of the process, thinking a story up. I don’t write things down. I keep everything in my head. That way I don’t get too attached to a certain idea. I can change my mind. I can just forget about something. My outlines aren’t specific, but I have a clear idea about all the characters, who they are, what they want, as well as their arrivals and departures.

It seems that the Dutch House redeems itself at the end. What does that state for the entire story?

I’ve been told this is a very sad book and I’ve been told it has a happy ending. I like the fact that different people can read it in different ways. The house never changes. It is, after all, just a house. It’s incapable of feelings, a fact that irritates Danny and Maeve who believe on some level that the house should have collapsed in solidarity when they were thrown out. Again, I don’t want to give anything away. Let’s just say the house is loved and obsessed over for many generations.

Ultimately, this story doesn’t seem to be the expected “good guy, bad guy” tale; rather, it’s pretty much everyone doing the best he or she can. Could you comment on that?

I’m awful at writing villains. I definitely lean towards sympathetic characters, mainly because most all of the people I know personally are sympathetic. We seem to be living in a world of good and evil now, and who is good and who is evil depends on who you’re listening to. But I think most people do the best they can. That said, Andrea is the closest thing I’ve ever come to a villain, and I can even see how she was young and in over her head. I keep meaning to try harder with my villains, but I spend so much time with my characters and look at them so closely I can’t help but feel some empathy for most of them.

Lemuria has chosen The Dutch House as its September 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A with Lara Prescott

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 17)

Lara Prescott’s fictional account of three young women employed in the CIA’s typing pool who rise to the upper echelons of espionage during the 1950s Cold War is based on the true story of the agency’s undercover plan to smuggle copies of Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago into the USSR.

The Secrets We Kept, Prescott’s debut, has been released to much acclaim that included the possibility of movie rights.

The winner of the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for the first chapter of The Secrets We Kept, Prescott’s stories have been published in the Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Day One, and Tin House Flash Fridays.

Prescott received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin, and today she resides in Austin.

The Secrets We Kept is based on a true but probably little-known slice of Cold War history during the 1950s that saw the American CIA make a strategic push to have Russian author Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Doctor Zhivago published and made available to Soviet readers. The ploy not only resulted in the book’s publication in 1957, but to top it off, it was (much to the embarrassment of Russia’s Communist officials) granted the Nobel Prize for literature the following year. How did this event come to your attention, and what inspired you to base your debut novel on this feat?

Lara Prescott

I first learned about the Doctor Zhivago mission in 2014, after my father sent me a Washington Post article about newly declassified documents that shed light on the CIA’s Cold War-era “Books Program.” With my interest piqued, I devoured the incredible true story behind the publication of Doctor Zhivago. What I discovered was that the CIA had obtained the banned manuscript, covertly printed it, and smuggled it back into the USSR.

The first CIA memos on Doctor Zhivago described the book as “the most heretical literary work by a Soviet author since Stalin’s death,” saying it had “great propaganda value” for its “passive but piercing exposition of the effect of the Soviet system on the life of a sensitive, intelligent citizen.”

And it was seeing the actual memos and so many other declassified documents like them–with all their blacked-out and redacted names and details–that first inspired me to fill in the blanks with fiction.

Explain how art, music, and literature were considered so important to Soviet culture that they could be used to spread the idea of freedom among its citizens during this time.

During the Cold War, both the Soviets and Americans believed in the unmatched power of books. Joseph Stalin once described writers as, “the engineers of the human soul.” And in a 1961 secret report to the U.S. Senate, the CIA’s former chief of covert action described books as, “the most important weapon of strategic propaganda.”

Each side believed the longtail of cultural influence–how people could read a book, view a work of art, or listen to a piece of music and come away from the experience a changed person. In the case of Doctor Zhivago, the CIA wanted Soviet citizens to question why a masterpiece by one of their most famous living writers was kept from them.

Tell me about the main female characters and why they were so well suited for their roles as spies.

The characters of Sally and Irina are very much inspired by early female spies. Elizabeth “Betty” Peet McIntosh’s book Sisterhood of Spies first exposed me to a world of real-life heroines, including Virginia Hall, Julia Child–yes, that Julia Child–and Betty herself. These women got their start in the OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA, during World War II, and, after the war, some transitioned to the CIA, just as Sally does in the novel.

Today, we may have a woman as the head of the CIA, but, back then, most women–even those who had served their country so courageously–were relegated to secretary or clerk positions. The character of Irina is first hired for such a position, but quickly is utilized in the Agency as someone who picks up and delivers classified documents. These were jobs women were suited for, as they’d often go undetected as someone who could possibly be handling secret information.

Considering the different cultural and economic roles of women at the time of the book’s setting–when they were often held back from career success–you portray intelligent, hardworking women who genuinely enjoy their work and are good at it. At what stage was what we now call “feminism” in those days?

I believe the experiences of these hardworking and highly qualified women being held back from advancing in their careers were the seeds of modern-day feminism. During this time period, women were already beginning to question why they were being paid less money than their male counterpoints and why they were not given promotions. This sense of workplace inequality gradually developed into second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

Have you been surprised by the book’s acclaim to this point, beginning even before its publication, and with movie rights already in the works?

Absolutely! It has been an almost surreal experience. I feel so very grateful to have had the opportunity of such a large platform for people to discover and read my debut novel. The greatest joy comes from meeting readers who have been touched by the book in some way.

Lara Prescott will be at Lemuria on Thursday, November 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss The Secrets We Kept. Lemuria has chosen The Secrets We Kept as its December 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

The secret is out on ‘The Secrets We Kept’ by Lara Prescott

By Valerie Walley. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 29)

The Secrets We Kept is a debut novel by Lara Prescott based on the true events surrounding the 1957 publication of Dr. Zhivago, a 20th century literary masterpiece combining a sweeping love story with intrigue, political hardship, and tragedy, set between the Russian Revolution and WWII. One of the greatest love stories ever written, it was made into the haunting film featuring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it, which he was made to turn down by an embarrassed and outraged KGB. It was banned reading there until 1988. But if you haven’t read it, now you’re up to speed, and you can read The Secrets We Kept!

Set in 1957, The Secrets We Kept tells of the CIA’s mission to weaponize a work of art by using this publication against Russia behind the Iron Curtain. The novel is set against the backdrop of the decades long love story between author Boris Pasternak and his muse, Olga (the inspiration for Lara), who spent years in and out of Russian prisons. The stuff of her own life and her relationship with Boris could be a novel in itself. The novel alternates between this story and the stories of two contemporary, unconventional, and mold-breaking women ahead of their time. Sally and Irina are seduced and spurned by the CIA’s typing pool, eventually becoming spies themselves. Their stories, along with a chorus from their co-workers–in some cases first generation college graduates, speakers of multiple languages, and pilots–have now been relegated to the CIA typing pool once the men have returned from WWII. These are the voices telling the story of bringing Dr. Zhivago into print by smuggling it back into Russia. These three women–Olga, Irina, and Sally–do change the course of history through the secrets they keep.

In settings from the Russian countryside, and Pasternak’s own dacha, and on to 50’s Milan and Paris, and grounded back into the reality of an era in which women were trying to find a meaningful workplace in male dominated postwar fifties DC, this is an unputdownable, stylishly plotted and told novel for all.

I urge you to pick up The Secrets We Kept and be swept away into Russia and intrigued by the thrilling story of spy craft. Ultimately, though, it will be each woman’s story that will haunt you for a long time. And while you don’t have to have read or watched Dr. Zhivago, you will probably want to.
Fun fact–Lara Prescott is named after Boris Pasternak’s heroine and as a child often listened to “Lara’s Theme” played by her mother’s jewelry box. You’ll be able to find out more about her obsession with all things Russian, and Dr. Zhivago in particular, when she’s here for a reading at Lemuria on November 21.

This bold and unconventional historical thriller is already a runaway bestseller. Perfect for book clubs, it was also chosen by Reese Witherspoon‘s Hello Sunshine book club.

And along the way you’ll find out how a piece of art changed the world and the course of history in so much a lovelier, more meaningful way than anything social media will ever be able to do.

Valerie Walley is a Ridgeland resident.

Lara Prescott will be at Lemuria on Thursday, November 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss The Secrets We Kept. Lemuria has chosen The Secrets We Kept as its December 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A with Téa Obreht

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 8)

Téa Obreht’s sophomore novel Inland paints a stark picture of the brutal 19th century American West in a frontier tale that culminates with the meeting of two unlikely characters who give their all to the parched desert, the unforgiving land, and the never-ending drought of the Arizona Territory. A strong touch of mysticism and more than a few conversations with the dead add suspense and intense interest to the story.

Obreht’s internationally bestselling debut novel The Tiger’s Wife earned her the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and her works have appeared in The Best American Short StoriesThe New YorkerThe AtlanticHarper’s Magazine, and others.

A native of Slovenia (formerly Yugoslavia), Obreht now lives in New York with her husband, where she teaches at Hunter College.

Tell me about the “frontier story” your research uncovered that became the basis of the narrative of Inland.

Téa Obreht

Stuff You Missed in History Class, a podcast I absolutely adore, dedicated an episode to something called the Red Ghost. It centered a yarn about two Arizona women who have a disastrous encounter with a monster on their ranch, and went on to frame the incident in the context of the weird, side-lined true history of the Camel Corps, the military experiment which brought camels from the Ottoman empire to the American southwest in 1856.

I’d never heard of either the yarn or the history before, despite having researched regional history and folklore for quite some time, and was absolutely blown away by it–not only because even the weirdest part of this very weird story was apparently true, or because the idea of a camel among saguaros (cactus) presented such a  compelling narrative challenge, but also because at the heart of the story were these real people, Hadji Ali and Greek George, who had traveled here from an empire which, at that time, also held the Balkans.

The brutal setting of Inland obviously shaped its characters. How does this setting really become a sort of “character” of its own story?

I think the setting’s most prominent “personality” trait, if you will, is its complete lack of investment in what stories do and don’t survive it. The prevailing and most dangerous myth of the West tells us that an individual’s triumph or a story’s survival are directly proportional to goodness and worth; that good people “make it” because they deserve to.

Nora and Lurie spend their respective storylines learning the falsehood of this mythology by watching–and frankly helping perpetrate–the breakdown of communities and individuals all around them. They are fearful of a similar fate and are working against the inevitable reality that they don’t matter to this landscape and that it is determined to forget them.

Main characters Nora, a homesteading wife and mother awaiting her husband’s return from a desperate trek to find water for the family; and Lurie, a fugitive running from the law, share the common trait of talking with the dead-and, for both, the “conversations” are with family members. You also used mysticism in your first novel, The Tiger’s Wife. Tell me about your interest in this phenomenon–and how it colors Inland.

I’m deeply fascinated by the trappings of belief–the way we reel  between resisting mysticism and needing it. What I found additionally alluring about this period of American history was the clash of technology and spiritualism taking place from coast to coast, and how that would have shaped these characters’ perception of, and relationship to, the supernatural plane. 

There’s Nora, who “talks” to her dead daughter, but insists she knows these conversations to be illusory, that the ghost is obviously just a figment of her imagination. And then there’s Lurie, for whom seeing the dead is a fact of life–albeit one from he derives no comfort because the spirits he encounters are the products of the violent, turbulent history in which he himself participates. His ghosts are people who suffered violence in death or burial, and he fears a similar fate might await him, and thus takes no solace in the confirmation of an afterlife.

Caught between them is Josie. She is Nora’s niece, a medium from New York, whom Nora derides terribly for the charlatanism of “pretending” to commune with the dead–through, of course, Nora is guilty of this kind of pretending, too.

Coming from different circumstances but sharing the urgent reality of a deadly drought, why would you say Lurie and Nora were “destined” to meet?

Because, by the time they meet in the book, despite all their recklessness and weaknesses, they are the only people in the entire world who can give each other what they need.

Do you already have plans for your next book–and can you give us some hints of what it will be about?

I still feel drawn to the West, and will no doubt write about it again down the line. But I think the next one might be a desert island book.

Téa Obreht will be at the Eudora Welty House on Thursday, September 12, at 5:00 to sign and read from Inland. Lemuria has selected Inland as one of its two September 2019 selections for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A with Karl Marlantes

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 11)

Karl Marlantes says his penchant for writing long novels comes naturally: he has much to tell through his stories and the undercurrents he masterfully weaves just below the surface.

His latest case in point is his second novel, Deep River, which fills more than 700 pages as it winds its way through the tale of three sibling Finnish immigrants in early 20th century America.

His award-winning debut novel, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, was a New York Times bestseller that also had much to say, as Marlantes draws on his own experiences as a highly decorated U.S. Marine during that conflict; and his autobiographical What It Is Like to Go to War explores his personal impressions on war.

An Oregon native, Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he now lives in rural Washington.

What influenced your interest in history (in general), and the specific time and location of Deep River, set in the Pacific Northwest from 1893 to 1932?

Karl Marlantes

I’ve always loved reading history. It provides great lessons for anyone who cares to think about what has gone on before. One of the quotes in my non-fiction book, What It Is Like to Go to War, is from Otto von Bismarck: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” That time period was also interesting to me because it was, in my opinion, the time of most dramatic change. My grandmother went from no electricity, no running water, horses and buggies, to freeways and landing on the moon. The question of how to adapt in a human and loving way to changing technology is still with us, and still inadequately answered.

The book chronicles the saga of two brothers and a sister who are forced to leave their farming life in Finland and migrate to a logging and fishing community in Washington state to escape the harsh Russian occupation of their homeland. The siblings come to America with differing dreams and personalities: there is Aino, the activist who was introduced to socialism at age 13 by her teacher; Ilmari, a blacksmith with dreams of church building; and Matti, the fortune-seeker. Tell us briefly about each of these characters, and their ultimate roles in the novel.

All of us adopt a stance toward life, based on such things as character, aptitude, and what happened to us as we were growing up. Kierkegaard refers to the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. These stances are how we deal with such imponderables as our own death and destiny.

Aino is an atheist–she firmly believes no one is coming to help, so we must build heaven on earth, in her case through communism and then the IWW (International Workers of the World). Her brother Matti learns early that rich people suffer much less than poor people. He is like many Americans who think we can just take out an insurance policy against mortality by driving virtually indestructible SUVs to soccer games. Ilmari is traditionally religious. There is a heaven, and we’ll all get there, but in the meanwhile, there are some serious unanswered questions, like why some children suffer and go to heaven just like the ones who don’t. He moves from traditional Christianity to an amalgam of Christianity and mysticism, which has been my own spiritual journey.

The characters are also highly influenced by their counterparts in The Kalevala. Aino who refuses marriage to an older man through suicide; Matti, hot-headed Lemminkäinen; Ilmari, the powerful blacksmith; Ilmarinen, who forged the magic sampo, the mill that grinds out eternal bounty; and Jouka, who echoes Joukahainen, the celebrated minstrel.

Explain “sisu” and its importance in the lives of the characters in Deep River.

Sisu is what won The Winter War of 1939 against the overwhelming might of the Russian army. As a child, if I fell and hurt myself and even started to whimper, my mother or grandmother would ask, “Where’s your sisu?” I would find it and not whimper. It’s courage, stubbornness, stoicism, many such traits combined and very hard to define.

In the lives of my characters, it is a major force in surviving, getting done what must be done to put food on the table, standing up against odds that any reasonable person would run from. Sisu is not reasonable. And, as Vasutäti points out, it is not always applicable.

Along with your debut book Matterhorn, you are developing a reputation for lengthy, robust narratives that fully develop your characters, their timelines and their settings–and both are packed with historical details and sweeping landscapes. Did you set out to produce epic works (that would rise so quickly to bestseller status), or did your stories just work themselves out to be generous volumes?

I swear I’ll correct that image with my next novel, but then again, stories tend to just keep happening to me while I’m writing. I never set out to write epic works. I do know, however, that among my favorite novels are War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Brothers Karamazov, all hefty volumes. As a reader, I like to get into a world, and if the writing is good, feel disappointed when I leave it. So, in that respect, long novels are good. I am also much taken by true epics, the “Táin Bó Cúailnge” of the Irish, the “Song of Roland” of the French, “The Iliad and Odyssey” of the ancient Greeks, “The Aeneid of the Romans,” and “The Kalevala of the Finns.”

Many reviews note that Deep River is, in part, somewhat of a comment on today’s political state in America. Could you address that?

The two major protagonists, Aksel and Aino, are almost allegorical figures for this tension in American political life between the collective and the individual. We seesaw between the two, The Great Society followed by Ronald Reagan. The Roaring Twenties followed by The New Deal.

Aksel and Aino both learn that they need each other to make it through life. It’s called compromise, something we have lost in today’s political scene. There are many parallels between the time of the novel and now, not even remotely allegorical: wars being fought that involved no immediate threat to our own security, opposition to those wars being characterized as unpatriotic, giving up individual privacy and freedom to the Espionage Act of 1917, which was sold to protect us from “bolshevism” and used to crush the IWW in the name of national security, and the Patriot Act of today, which was sold to protect us from terrorists and justified by the same reasoning, horrible income inequality, the struggle to make a living wage, the unconscious destruction of our natural environment, the problems associated with immigration, false stories in biased newspapers, all compounded by a feckless federal government.

Karl Marlantes will be at the Lemuria on Wednesday, August 14, at 5:00 to sign and read from Deep River. Lemuria has selected Deep River as its August 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

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Marlantes will also appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 in coversation with Tom Franklin and Kevin Powers at 12:00 p.m. at State Capitol Room 113.

Author Q & A with Lisa Howorth

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 4)

Oxford’s Lisa Howorth combines a humorous twist with the looming realities of an America on the cusp of the 1960s in her sophomore novel, Summerlings.
Set in 1959 and narrated by 8-year-old John, the story centers around the boy’s world during a summer he would never forget: at once a carefree season spent planning shenanigans with his friends, but living with his grandparents and missing his parents, longing to make his neighborhood in Washington, D.C., a more friendly place to live, and surviving an unexplainable spider infestation that has taken over his town.

Lisa Howorth

Howorth’s narrative makes a case for more than a few obvious comparisons of the America of 60 years ago with today’s social and political climate–with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.

The Washington, D.C. native and former librarian is also the author of the novel Flying Shoes, as well as stories about art, travel, dogs and music that have appeared in the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, and other publications.

Howorth and husband Richard are the founders of Square Books in Oxford.

Summerlings packs a lot of grown-up worries into a heartfelt story about the summer of 1959 for close childhood friends and neighbors growing up in Washington, D.C. There are social and political alignments left over from World War II, the heartbreak of divorce–in a time when it was an anomaly–and the Cold War that reinforced suspicions of neighbors against each other. Since you grew up in Washington, D.C., does the setting of this story align itself with your own memories and feelings about that time and place?

Yes–absolutely! The fictional setting of Summerlings is very similar to the ‘hood of my early childhood–Chevy Chase at the District line. It didn’t really occur to me until late in life that mine was an intriguing and unusual neighborhood; typical for D.C., but for nowhere else. To us kids, of course, it was just our ‘hood, and the Washington we knew.

The story is narrated main character John, who, at 8, has his hands full with his parents’ divorce, his mother’s extended hospital stays for what he is told is a case of tuberculosis, a neighborhood bully, a spider plague of Biblical proportions, and a plan to make his neighborhood a friendlier place. As played out with his best friends Ivan, Max, and Beatriz, John’s assessments of his day-to-day challenges often reveal a degree of wisdom beyond his years, always tempered by the judgment of a child. In many ways, the story reminds us that each generation faces its own share of grave problems. What is it about John that reveals his resilience despite his problems?

The story is narrated by John as an adult looking back. As an 8-year-old, he does have a degree of wisdom beyond his years, as traumatized children do. Also like such children, he’s resilient, because what choice do kids have? John understands that his world is shaped by the incomprehensible–and sometimes cruel–actions of adults, but he has no power and must navigate the best he can, resigned to his belief that “the world is the weirdest place on earth.”

There is a fleeting scene in the story in which John’s mother is home for a brief visit, and the family sits down for dinner. He calls it “heartwarming,” and says “I was content. We were like a normal family.” Why was this such an important experience for him?

John is bereft of both parents and he longs for them, especially his mom. When she briefly returns from St. Elizabeth’s, he’s so happy, reveling in her attention and love, and hoping her “TB” is cured. And most kids want stability and normalcy–whatever that is–in their family life, and he’s able to briefly feel that. Unfortunately, as you say, his comfort is fleeting, not even lasting through their crab cake dinner.

The spider plague of that summer was like no other, and was a great equalizer that ensured a common suffering among the city’s residents – and even IT carried political suspicions. Explain the spider plague for readers.

I created the spider plague because I thought it would be fun to capture the goofiness of kids with their collecting obsessions, and would also make the adults seem a little ridiculous with their own obsessions in the Cold War years: the plague must be another plot by the Soviets to “bury” us, as Khrushchev famously said.

Also, I love writing about the natural world in a place, and I’m crazy about E.O. Wilson’s memoir, Naturalist, particularly about his Alabama childhood collecting bugs. By the way, Wilson’s mentor was Marion R. Smith, a myrmecologist (a scientist who studies ants) who worked in Mississippi and D.C. and has a cameo in Summerlings.

John laments late in the story that children are constantly being told, “You’ll understand when you’re older,” yet they are faced with problems they must process at the moment. In what ways does this entire story, which took place 60 years ago, remind us that some things never change–and what can we learn from that?

Well, I think I make it clear that the issues of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s resonate strongly today, most obviously the ongoing concern with Russia. When I began writing this book, I didn’t really set out to make this a strong theme, but the more I researched, the more I found: 60 years ago, Khrushchev vowed publicly to interfere in our elections, they were poisoning people, refugees were being turned back from the U.S., and we all feared Communism and nuclear war.

But there’s also, I think, a way to see things positively: things appear to be terrible, but we do come through. At least so far! And on a lighter note, it was fun to write about how exciting and pervasive the music and films of the ‘50s were, too–we still cherish all that, remembering the iconic lyrics and scenes. The good things also last.

Lisa Howorth will be at the Eudora Welty House on Wednesday, August 7, at 5:00 to sign and read from Summerlings. Lemuria has selected Summerlings as its July 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

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Howorth will also appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Southern Fiction” panel at 2:45 p.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

Karl Marlantes adds new song to American literature with ‘Deep River’

By Matthew Guinn. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 14)

The American canon just got a new addition.

Karl Marlantes’ sprawling Deep River deserves no lesser estimation. It echoes the sweep of his contemporaries Toni Morrison and Jim Harrison at their best, but also harkens back to the epic naturalist novels of Jack London and Frank Norris. And in singing the beauties and perils of the American landscape, it has few equals in any era of our literature. Deep River is a new American classic.

Fitting that Deep River is a tale of immigrants, folk from old lands seeking a new one, and that it spans not only two continents, but two centuries. In this case, it is a Finnish family, the Koskis, tenant farmers suffering under the brutal Russian occupation of Finland. The oldest Koski brother has already immigrated to Washington State. His letters home tell of logging trees so gargantuan they must be seen to be believed by European eyes, of freedom from serfdom, and of bountiful, good-paying work.

By a turn of events the reader cannot anticipate, his sister Aino is the next Koski to follow him to America. The novel coheres around Aino even as Marlantes adds in scores of vivid characters—Finns and Swedes—who form a tight-knit immigrant community logging and fishing Washington State. Reaction is mixed to the brand of socialism Aino brings with her from the Old World and trouble finds her again. And again.

Aino is surely the most exasperating heroine in American literature. Time after time, she helps turn a good situation bad by her dogged agitation for the dream of socialism and the “Wobblies” labor party. People are hurt by her, and she leaves a wake of damage behind at every stage of her life. In matters of love, one never knows which way her heart will lead her. And yet we follow—exasperated, intrigued—because she is enigmatic, unpredictable, totally alive. She is as fully human—that is to say, complex and fallible—as we are. She is the lightning rod to whom all her fellow characters respond.

Yet Marlantes is careful and adept not to let Aino dominate his story. If there is a single dominating force in the novel, it is work. One is hard pressed to name a novel that has celebrated labor so eloquently. Deep River is a paean to the joy, dignity, cunning, and stamina of skilled physical labor and the men and women who perform it. Our digital century tends to forget the artistry required to bring down a 300-foot tree precisely by hand, or the intuition needed to read the currents on a river to determine where fish are running. Marlantes reminds us.

He also reminds us how thoroughly women and Native Americans contributed to forming America, and on this point it is clear how much Deep River adds to our national literature. So many of the classic novels of American experience are boys tales told for grown men that dismiss the contributions of women or neglect them entirely. Marlantes gives careful attention to the dignity of what used to be called “women’s work” and the skill and grace it requires, to say nothing of the harrowing experience of childbirth in the early years of the twentieth century. The senior Koski brother could never have built his empire without the guidance of Vasutati, the native healer who reminds him that “constant change” is in fact “life everlasting” and is such a vital force she is able to flirt with him even in death. All of the Pacific Northwest is here, fully represented. All work is honored.

In Deep River, Marlantes is after the whole tapestry of American experience, and he comes closer to getting it than any writer before him. And running counter to the blasé petite-nihilism of our postmodern moment, he reminds us that though life is hard, it is also good. His characters never say aloud that there can be dignity in struggle, meaning in pain. They live it, on every page. Could any worldview be more American?

“What a country this is,” one of the Koskis exclaims at a moment of opportunity seized. What a country, indeed. And what a novel to sing its epic song.

Novelist Matthew Guinn earned his Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of South Carolina. He is associate professor of creative writing at Belhaven University.

Karl Marlantes will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, August 14, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Deep River. Lemuria has chosen Deep River as its August 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

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Marlantes will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 in conversation with Kevin Powers and Tom Franklin at 12:00 p.m. in State Capitol Room 113.

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