Tag: Jana Hoops (Page 1 of 13)

Author Q & A with Taylor Brown

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 15)

A native of the Georgia coast, Taylor Brown offers readers his fourth novel, Pride of Eden, as an “environmentalism” tale of majestic animals that should be living in the wild, and the flawed characters who fight to save them from human exploitation.

Brown’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Rumpus, Garden & Gun, Chautauqua, The North Carolina Literary Review, and many other publications.

He is the author of a short story collection, In the Season of Blood and Gold, and each of his three previous novels, Fallen Land, The River of Kings, and Gods of Howl Mountain, became a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. He has also captured the Montana Prize in Fiction.

An Eagle Scout who graduated from the University of Georgia in 2005, Brown has lived in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and the mountains of western North Carolina. Today he makes his home in Savannah, Ga.

Pride of Eden reveals environmental and moral lessons through a narrative that combines the heroism of its flawed characters with the tenderness and fury of the animals they work to save–AND “an underworld of smugglers, gamblers, breeders, trophy hunters and others who exploit exotic game.” It’s also an original, out of the ordinary kind of story. Tell me how you formed the idea for this tale–you must be an enormous animal lover yourself!

Taylor Brown

Indeed, I’ve always been an animal lover, and animals have always found their way into my workthough more indirectly until now. A few years ago, I visited Carolina Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro, North Carolinaa big cat sanctuary that takes in tigers, lions, ocelots, servals, and other wild cats from all over the region. There’s a story behind every denizen there, and most come from pretty bad conditions such as roadside zoos, negligent private owners, circuses, etc. Their stories really moved me, and I began to formulate the idea of someone who took the “rescue” part of an exotic wildlife rescue quite literally…

Main character Anse Caulfield is a retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran who runs Little Eden, an exotic animal wildlife reserve off the Georgia coast. He lives to rescue elephants, big cats, rhinos, and other animals, to save them from a life lived in sideshows or as part of a hunter’s “collection.” What drove Anse to devote his life to this cause?

Anse has witnessed, and even been an accessory to, a lot of trauma visited on the animal kingdom, whether it was his experience in Vietnam, his time as a soldier of fortune in Africa, or his career as a quarter horse jockey. So, I think he’s burdened with a lot of guilt and hoping to atone for some of those things in his past, whether they were his own sins or those of his fellow man. That said, he’s a bit of an outlaw and curmudgeon at heart, and he doesn’t always go about things in the most legal manner.

Author Ron Rash has called Pride of Eden a “visionary novel of scarred souls seeking redemption not only for themselves but, in their limited way, for us all.” In what ways would you agree with this observation?

I do think the characters in this book are seeking redemption in their own way. Most of them are dealing with some trauma in their past that continues to haunt and pain them on a daily basis. One of the beautiful things about our species is that we often heal through helping others, be they our fellow humans or members of the animal kingdom.

I think these charactersAnse and Malaya especially–have witnessed things that make them question the “humane-ness” of humanity. By working to help these captive and abused animals, they’re helping to redeem not only themselves, but their faith in humanity as a whole. On the other hand, they’re certainly not saints–they’re as flawed as anyone, and things don’t always go according to plan.

In addition to the obvious flashes of your sizable imagination throughout Pride of Eden, you add a dash of mystery. Is there any chance there will ever be a sequel to this story?

Thank you, Jana. That mystery reminds me of the words of a writer friend of mine, Matthew Neill Null, who once said, “The lives of animals are mysterious, and mystery is the lifeblood of fiction.” Those words continue to resonate with me, whether I’m watching the red-tailed hawk that hunts over our neighborhood or writing about the elephants and rhinos I visited in South Africa. I tried to infuse that mystery into the novel.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some ideas percolating for a sequel to “Pride of Eden.” Without giving anything away, I’m particularly interested in the story of wolf reintroduction in the American West, as well as the work of Animal Defenders International (ADI), who’ve been instrumental in rescuing animals from circuses in various countries of South America and bringing them to sanctuaries in the U.S. and South Africa.

Why is this a book that you believed needed to be written NOW?

Well, I think the clock is ticking for so many species. Scientists say we’re living through the “Anthropocene Extinction,” in which human activity is correlated with extinction rates hundreds of times higher than normal. It may well be the defining story of our epoch.

We’re living in an age when there are about as many captive tigers in the state of Texas alone as left in the wild in the rest of the world, and in 2018, the last male northern white rhino died living under 24-hour armed guard. I can’t imagine living in a world without such magnificent creatures. I think, if we’re more intimate with the lives and stories of animals, we may be more likely to love, respect, and protect them – and in the process, save something crucial of our own hearts.

Taylor Brown will be at Lemuria on Monday, March 23, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Pride of Eden.

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.

Author Q & A with Lee Durkee

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 1)

Twenty years after his first book Rides of the Midway made its debut, Lee Durkee has returned with his new release The Last Taxi Driver, a one-night study of the life of Lou Bishoff as he takes stock of the things that really matter, while transporting his final passengers to their own destinations.

In between his novels, Durkee’s stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Sun, Best of the Oxford American, Tin House, New England Review, Mississippi Noir, and other publications.

His memoir Stalking Shakespeare, which recounts his 10-year quest to locate lost portraits of William Shakespeare, will be released in 2021.

Born in Hawaii, Durkee grew up in Hattiesburg and lived in Vermont for 18 years (among other places) before moving back to his home state to escape the harsh winters. A former cab driver himself, he now lives in North Mississippi.

I’ll start with the obvious first question: why so long (20 years) between Rides of the Midway, your debut novel, and The Last Taxi Driver, your new release?

Lee Durkee

I have so many answers to this question! Let me explain to you why I failed so spectacularly at publishing for 20 years. My friend Bill at Square Books (in Oxford) used to give me pep talks at the bar at City Grocery in which he emphasized how hard Michael Farris Smith worked, and other well-meaning friends have gently lectured me about drinking or smoking to excess. But I suspect the real reason I never published a second novel was a lack of practicality in what I wrote about.

I don’t have much control over what pours out. My relationship with writing is an opium-like addiction I enjoyed every day for those 20 years of obscurity during which I wrote two unloved books set in Kathmandu as well as a hip-hop version of Hamlet set to Nas’s Stillmatic. I also wrote two books about Elizabethan portraits and a short story collection set in Tokyo told from the point-of-view of nine different Japanese sex dolls. Then there were my Vermont novels, one in which I hideously murdered my real-life jerk of a landlord by having him stuffed, while still screamingly alive, down an ice hole drilled into a frozen lake. None of these books could be described as commercial ventures.

Please tell me about your own experiences as a taxi driver yourself. Did crazy things happen? Were you ever frightened? How did getting that job come about? And, finally, how did that experience influence The Last Taxi Driver?

I drove for two different cab companies in Oxford for a year each and was frequently very frightened. There were times I drove 70-hour weeks–the only way I could eek out a living while saving money for my own car. My first cab company specialized in trailer parks and projects and dirt roads. We also carted the poor people who got kicked out of the local hospital back to their hovels to die. But, as to being afraid, it was mostly the cackles of drunk frat boys who worried me. Like the time I kicked a hoard of them out of my cab for yelling the N-word at this couple. These giant frat boys got out, surrounded my cab, and started kicking the doors etc., while calling me the N word. And I’m white! That’s how racist those punks are. Racists always assume their cab drivers are fellow racists. Same with perverts. The things I heard those kids say about women and Obama would harrow your blood to hear. I drove with a big Kershaw knife under my leg. Other cabbies I worked with had guns.

It was my friend Joyce Freeland, a do-good lawyer, who got me hired by my first cab company after I’d explained to her I couldn’t bartend any more due to back spasms. And the actress Joey Lauren Adams hooked me up with my second cab job. Both Joyce and Joey are members in high standing of the Save Lee from Himself Club, whose president is (Oxford author) Lisa Howorth.

And yes, both taxi jobs influence the novel. Grist was the whole point of me not working in an English department like 98 percent of all writers today do. We live in a world where the bulk of noir fiction is now being written by schoolteachers who have never even had night jobs. They write with their imaginations! Along those lines, the first thing I do whenever I pick up a new book these days is turn it over, trying to deduce if the author has ever stepped outside of an English department.

The Last Taxi Driver is the detailed story of cab driver Lou Bishoff’s last evening on the job, as he shares it in first person, with a penchant for getting off the subject now and again. Despite the state of his personal life (girlfriend problems, his health and his career direction) he always has humor to fall back on, lending a kind of slanted optimism to what many would deem a dire existence. How does Lou, who seems to take things in stride as he reasons through his sometimes-tangled trains of thought, manage to keep it together?

Actually, I’m not sure Lou does keep it together, and his shift-from-hell can certainly be read as a descent into madness. But dark humor must be a survival mechanism, right? I’ve worked in restaurants all my life, and the jokes you hear there are 1,000 times funnier and dirtier than the meticulously censored ones you’ll hear inside English departments. Both my novels are rife with the black humor of servers who have to smile-smile-smile and then walk back into the kitchen and just let loose that venom. I am nothing if not a child of restaurants. They raised me, they sustained me.

How much of Lou Bishoff is Lee Durkee? (They seem to have a lot in common.) What are the differences?

I suppose Lou could be described as a more tragic version of me who exists in a darker dimension–cue Rod Serling. But that’s also true for other characters in The Last Taxi Driver. There are tricks writers play to make you think a book is more autobiographical than it is. We want you to think that. I’ve always been a huge fan of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which takes the illusion of verisimilitude to a new level–he even named his main character Tim.

But Lou, like all characters in fiction, is mostly a creature of plot. To say Lou is me would be wrong–Lou at least has a girlfriend. And half of Lou’s dialogue was ripped off from customers I’ve eavesdropped on. Like all my characters, Lou is a mutt who is made up of traits culled from a dozen or so different people.

Tell me about your upcoming memoir, set to be released in 2021.

Stalking Shakespeare is a memoir about my decades-long obsession with being the first person to ever find a portrait of Shakespeare painted from life. The memoir is funny, not academic, and concerns my time living in Vermont, Tokyo, London, and my eventual return to Mississippi after 37 years away. I’ve long given up writing anything that isn’t funny.

Signed first editions of The Last Taxi Driver can be found at Lemuria and at our online store.

Author Q & A with Jerry Mitchell

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 2)

An assignment to cover the press premiere of a movie 30 years ago would bring a decades-old Mississippi murder case back into the nation’s spotlight–and change the life of not only court reporter Jerry Mitchell, but untold numbers of many who thought justice would never come.

A staff writer for The Clarion-Ledger in 1989 when he attended the press screening of the blockbuster Mississippi Burning film in Jackson, Mitchell inadvertently found himself sitting near two veteran FBI agents and a seasoned journalist who had all been involved with the 1964 murder investigations portrayed in the movie.

The conversations he held with his seatmates after the movie would be the springboard of a career dedicated to pursuing justice for some of the nation’s most infamous cold case murders of the civil rights movement.

Mitchell was stunned to find out that night that none of the 20 Ku Klux Klansmen involved in the deaths of three civil rights workers had been brought to trial. He soon decided to take on the task of investigating–and ultimately reopening–the case himself.

His career memoir, Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era recounts nearly 20 years of investigations of four notorious cases that helped send four Klansmen and a serial killer to prison.

Jerry Mitchell

Mitchell’s work has earned him the title of “one of the most decorated investigative journalists in the country,” with more than 30 national awards to his credit. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, he was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” Columbia’s John Chancellor Award, the George Polk Award, and many others.

After more than 30 years as an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in Jackson in 2019, providing investigative reporting to news outlets and with a goal to “train up the next generation of investigative reporters.”

Below he shares some insights about his career, his new book, and his hopes for the future of investigative journalism.

As a young person, what influenced your interest in journalism, and, specifically, investigative reporting?

My mother had me reading three newspapers a day by the time I was 7. I had no choice! I first experienced journalism in high school and soon gravitated to investigative reporting. Reading All the President’s Men inspired me and made me want to expose wrongdoing and right wrongs. I guess I’ve been doing it ever since.

Tell me about the movie that spurred your interest in the decades-old cold cases of murderers who had never been brought to justice, and why that film prompted you to begin a journey that would take almost as long to right those wrongs.

Watching the film Mississippi Burning outraged me. How could more than 20 Klansmen kill three young men and never be tried for murder? It made no sense. In addition, I saw the movie with two FBI agents who investigated the case and a journalist who covered the case. Watching the film with them made all the difference because they gave me the full story of what happened. That really kickstarted my investigation into the Mississippi Burning case and those that followed.

The late Pulitzer Prize winning author/journalist David Halberstam once called your work “a reflection of what a reporter with a conscience can do,” and Race Against Time has been described as “a remarkable journalistic detective story and a vital piece of American history.” That said, who should read this book, and why?

I would hope anyone who likes to read true crime or true detective stories would enjoy the book. How these horrible killings came to trial decades later is a fascinating tale. Prosecutors, investigators, FBI agents and others all deserve a tremendous amount of credit for piecing these cases together against impossible odds. Most important, the book tells the story of these courageous people in the civil rights movement and their families, who never gave up hope, never stopped believing. They continue to inspire me.

Where do you think Mississippi–and our country–stand today in the journey to racial equality?

Our journey to racial equality in this nation seems to have always been one of a few steps forward and a few steps back. It seems lately we have been taking steps back with white supremacy and white nationalism on the rise. My hope is that we, as a nation, can begin to see what brings us together, rather than what tears us apart. We need each other. Now more than ever.

Please tell me about the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, the nonprofit that you started, and why investigative reporting is especially important in today’s world.

Newsrooms are vanishing across the nation and especially Mississippi. That’s why we started the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in 2019. We provide newspapers and news outlets with investigative reporting they don’t have the money or manpower to do. We provide news outlets with stories that make a difference. For example, we reported on the powerful control of gangs in Mississippi prisons months before this gang war resulted in the killings of five and countless injuries.

We believe in shining a light into the darkness. We believe in exposing corruption. We believe in telling the truth because the truth still matters. We hope others will join us and help support this valuable mission. Our new offices are located on the Millsaps College campus, where we will begin working with college students in Mississippi. Our goal is to train up the next generation of investigative reporters.

 Lemuria has selected Race Against Time its February 2020 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Jerry Mitchell will be Lemuria on Tuesday, February 4, beginning at 4:00 p.m. to sign copies of Race Against Time.

Michell will return on Wednesday, March 18, to sign books at 4:30 p.m., before joining in a conversation at 5:00 p.m. with Rena Evers-Everette, daughter of the late civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

Author Q & A with Allie Povall

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 26)

Oxford resident and retired attorney Allie Povall’s exploration of what became of many of the South’s major military leaders after the Civil War provides an in-depth–and often surprising–look into their lives after they put down their weapons and left the battlefields.

Rebels in Repose: Confederate Commanders After the War highlights how these men followed their own divergent destinies, and how they interacted with each other: some became friends; others vehemently blamed their counterparts for the loss of the war. Whatever their fates, the memories of the American Civil War would mark them forever.

Povall, a Lexington native, served as a naval officer in the Vietnam War after he received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Mississippi. He went on to earn a law degree from Ole Miss and an LLM from Yale Law School, then enjoyed a long and successful legal career before his retirement in 1998.

He has authored three previous books, including The Time of Eddie Noel, a finalist for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Best Nonfiction Award in 2010, as well as Forward Magazine’s Best True Crime award that same year.

What influenced your interest in the Civil War and inspired your idea to write Rebels in Repose: Confederate Commanders After the War?

Allie Povall

I grew up in Lexington, Miss., and I was raised on Civil War lore. I had three great-grandfathers who served in the Confederate Army and a number of great-great uncles who also served, at least one of whom died at Shiloh. One of my high school teachers was Margie Riddle Bearss, and her husband eventually became historian of the National Park Service and an expert on the Civil War. She did much to kindle my interest in that conflict. By the time I finished high school I had, following Mrs. Bearss’s guidance, studied and written about the Civil War in depth.

Later, I would lose that interest and move on to other things, like law, but later in life–after I retired from the practice of law–I began to wonder about both Confederate and Union generals and what they did after the War. It really was just curiosity. So, I read a book about Robert E. Lee and his years after the War at Washington College, which eventually became Washington and Lee, and I loved the human side–as opposed to his military persona–of Lee as presented in that book. That epiphany led me to take a look at some of the other Confederate commanders, and that process led to this book, which is my fourth.

On what basis did you select the nine officers featured with their own chapters in your book, and the 10 others who were included in the final chapter?

There are no bright lines between the nine and some of the others, and the selection process for the generals to go in the “Ten Others” chapter was, with respect to at least some of those generals, mildly arbitrary. What I tried to do, however, was to address the “major” commanders first and then the lesser known and less major generals second. Some–Richard Ewell for example–in the “Ten Others” chapter might have gone in the first group, but I tried to concentrate on those generals who made the greatest contribution to the Confederate cause, whether good or bad, and there were some bad Confederate generals.

What do you hope your readers will gain from your examination of the fates of these Confederate offices after the Civil War ended?

The Civil War, in my opinion, was the defining event of American History. It left the South in shambles, and it changed in many ways–legal, political and militarily, for example–the way that this country functions. The War, thankfully, ended slavery, and it led to the passage of several amendments to the U.S. Constitution–the Fourteenth, with its “Due Process” and “Equal Protection” clauses in particular–that fundamentally altered American jurisprudence and that extended the protection of “fundamental rights” to all Americans, thus establishing the legal underpinnings of the Civil Rights movement.

In examining the lives of these men–from childhood until their deaths–I have tried, through them, to tell some of the story of American history during the period from about 1820 to the early 1900s. I also address their roles in the War, and in the War’s aftermath, I tell how they took widely divergent paths as they tried to adjust to the Union victory. Some went to Canada, some went to Mexico, and some sought positions in the Egyptian, Rumanian and Brazilian Army, for example.

I want the reader to see how, in some cases, their lives were intertwined after the War, in both good and bad ways, as well as how their lives were intertwined with some of the lives of their Union counterparts. I want the reader to understand, finally, the impact that the War had on the South, and through these men, the impact that it had on its leaders, who, after the War, were just ordinary men trying to make a living in the aftermath of a catastrophic war that resulted in an economically decimated South.

Why is this information still relevant in today’s America, and what lessons can we learn from it?

As I said, I believe that the Civil War was the defining event in American history, and I believe an understanding of it and its aftermath, as I present it in this book, is essential to understanding how we got where we are.

It is, therefore, important, I believe, to see how African-Americans took charge politically of the southern states after the war, only to lose control–even though in some cases they had a majority of the voters–to whites, through violence and the race-inspired Jim Crow state constitutions that deprived blacks of the right to vote and basically, the right to coexist equally with whites. These conflicting forces would give rise to the Civil Rights movement a hundred years later. I hope that my readers can learn that the fundamental underpinnings of the South that arose around the turn of the 20th century were set in motion in the immediate aftermath of the War, and that we must resolve never to let those things happen again.

Please tell me about your next book.

I originally planned to do one book on Confederate and Union commanders, but the combined book would have been too large for most publishers to swallow, so I decided to split it into two companion books. I have started on the Union book–Warriors at Sunset: Union Commanders After the War– and hope to have it done in the next couple of years. If you look at the bibliography for Rebels in Repose, there are about 100 sources and about 400 footnotes. The point is that the research for a book like this is, in a colossal understatement, daunting. Nevertheless, that is my goal, and I am on my way.

Signed first editions (of the paperback original) of Rebels in Repose are available both at Lemuria and its online store.

Author Q & A with James D. Bell

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 19)

Brandon resident James D. Bell’s sophomore novel Maximilian’s Treasure reinforces this writer’s achievement as an award winning, bestselling author (not to mention his penchant for suspenseful adventure), following his success with his debut hit Vampire Defense (Sartoris Literary Group).

Bell, an attorney and retired judge who served at the county, circuit, and chancery levels in Mississippi, combines courtroom drama, romance, suspense and two gripping battles–one in a Philadelphia, Miss., courtroom and the other in a Central American jungle–taking place at the same time in Maximilian’s Treasure.

His legal career has found him involved in some of the most significant cases in Mississippi, allowing him a generous framework of actual experiences he has drawn on for his novels.

He has also penned a short story for Mardi Allen’s Dog Stories for the Soul.

Bell and his wife Joanne are the parents of four children.

Your second novel, Maximilian’s Treasure, is a legal thriller packed with murder, courtroom drama, romance, adventure, and humor. Can you give us an overview of the plot?

Rumors of hidden gold fuel a battle over possession of a Choctaw family farm. Two young lawyers, John Brooks and Jackson Bradley, agree to help the family keep their farm. Early legal success prompts the drive-by murder of the patriarch of the family. The grandson chases the suspects, whose bodies are found on the farm, scalped.

At the same time, clues to a vast treasure are found on the farm. Jackson, pursued by fortune seekers, adventurers, an exotic beauty and a homicidal maniac, follows the clues to a Caribbean reef and then to the Chiapas jungle. John stays behind to defend the grandson and continue the fight for the farm. His efforts are complicated by arson, murder, race riots, and the realization he lost his one true love. The adventures of John and Jackson rush toward an intertwined triple climax.

You have stated in your blog that this story is based somewhat on a case that you and a fellow attorney actually worked on together years ago as young lawyers. Please tell me about that true story.

James D. Bell

A stately elder told my friend and me he believed that Maximilian, the Emperor of Mexico, sent gold to support the South’s war effort. The war ended when the gold was near his farm and was hidden there. He asked us to help him look for the treasure. We travelled with him to his farm and had a great day listening to his stories while we searched with him. You might think this unusual. It’s not. It’s just another day of law practice in Mississippi, where the unusual and outlandish is an everyday occurrence.

Explain your motivation as a writer to “bring back the moral to the story.”

Every book and every movie used to have a purpose, a “moral to the story.”  I feel we have lost that purpose with some of today’s entertainment. I am motivated to bring back the moral to the story. Maximilian’s Treasure is packed with hidden treasurers for the reader to discover.

After your successful career as an attorney and a judge, what inspired you to turn to writing?

A close friend may have taken his own life.  I wish I had shared with him the message of hope and meaning for life found in Jesus Christ. Maximilian’s Treasure is my “second chance” to share the message that life is not a series of random coincidences; everyone is essential, every life has purpose and our actions have lasting impact.  What happened long ago matters today. What happens in Mississippi matters in Mexico and what happens in the Caribbean matters in Mississippi.

What can readers expect from you next?

I’m working on two novels. Brooks and Bradley travel to the International Criminal Court at the Hague to defend a former priest falsely charged with war crimes in Whom Shall I Send.

Nicodemus follows the life of an expert in Scriptures that predict the coming Messiah. He hears rumors of a prophet fulfilling those Scriptures and goes to see for himself. He always arrives too late to see miracles but hears the excited utterances of others. Finally, he catches up with Jesus one night and receives a message that at first is too hard for him to understand.

Signed copies of Maximilian’s Treasure are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Author Q & A with Susannah Cahalan

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 12)

New York Times bestselling author Susannah Cahalan shines a light on a turning point in the field of psychology with her second book, The Great Pretender.

The award-winning author of Brain on Fire, Cahalan presents in her new book a thoroughly researched and thoughtful assessment of Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan, whose 1973 undercover investigation into the country’s mental illness facilities would bring about major–and more compassionate–approaches to treatment.

The twist that Cahalan reveals is that Rosenhan was not forthcoming in many of the “facts” of that study–leaving readers with plenty of clues to make their own conclusions about his intentions.

As a writer who shared her shocking struggles with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain in her first book, Cahalan has become an influential voice on the approach to mental health in America.

She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

After your experience of having a rare autoimmune disease of the brain that was misdiagnosed as a mental illness (and led to your first book, Brain on Fire,) what caught your interest to write a book about Stanford psychiatrist David Rosenhan’s well-known study and subsequent article “On Being Sane in Insane Places’?

Susannah Cahalan

My interest was piqued during a conversation with two Harvard researchers who study the brain. I told them a bit about a woman who I call my “mirror image,” a young woman around my age who went misdiagnosed for two years and would never fully recover. It prompted one of the researchers to say that we both essentially were modern-day pseudo-patients–testing the nature of psychiatric diagnoses and finding it lacking, much like a famous pseudo-patient experiment in the 1970s.

I read the study that night in my hotel room and immediately was transfixed, not only by the focus on misdiagnosis but the beautiful, spot-on descriptions about how you are treated when there is a psychiatric label attached to you. I immediately knew that I wanted to learn more about the study and the man behind it.

In what ways has Rosenhan’s 1973 study been groundbreaking in changing the field of psychiatry?

You can’t really underplay the role that this one study had on psychiatry and public perception of the field. The study occurred right at the center of a lot of controversy hitting psychiatry–rampant public distrust, a movement away from Freud, issues with diagnosis, lack of clarity about its role within the rest of medicine. This study hit into the heart of all of its insecurities. It was an embarrassment to the field, and as I found out, even played a role in reshaping the field towards a more biological approach, encapsulated by the creation of the DSM-III. It also gave fodder to the antipsychiatry movement and to the growing push to close institutions, something called deinstitutionalization.

The Great Pretender is a journalistic investigation of Rosenhan’s study, as you searched diligently for the truth of what happened during his “experiment” that led to healthy people spending time in psychiatric facilities. As a result of your research, you discovered false statements and misinformation he included as “facts” in his report. What did you come to suspect was his motive was for this behavior?

I can only speculate about motives. I think that he truly believed that he was doing positive work–at the time institutions were often terrible, shameful places and I believe that he felt he was accurately pinpointing a real problem. I also think that he wanted to make a splash with this piece, and I think that he allowed himself to take many liberties with the truth to get that splash.

Why did you believe it was important to write this book and expose not only the good that became of Rosenhan’s work, but also the untruths he intended to pass off for true statements?

This study had such a tremendous effect and is still taught in many classrooms around the country. It’s still trotted out as evidence that psychiatry lacks validity and its institutions are harmful places.

Though I do think there are serious limitations within psychiatry and its institutions, it’s important to accurately pinpoint those problems so we can make progress. What this study does is allow us to look back, take a more nuanced and careful look at the mistakes and the misconceptions of the past, allowing us to clear the way for a real, open and honest discussion about the issues in mental health care for the future. At least I hope so.

Do you have suggestions for how your readers may be able to help those who experience mental health issues, in ways that could help make a difference?

On an individual level I think it’s important to understand that someone who struggles with serious mental illness is not always “ill.” We all at various points cross in and out of what we know as sanity and insanity. It’s so easy to discount people based solely on their diagnosis and I hope that this provides some more insight into the complexity of that experience. I hope it shines some light into the complexity of all of our experiences with mental/physical/emotional health.

I also hope that it calls into question why so many of us sympathize with people when they have a “physical” illness, but we are far more likely to ascribe blame or be frightened or suspicious of someone with a mental illness. Why do we do this? I think part of it is the fear of the unknown–the brain is one of the final frontiers and the idea that someone could lose themselves without a known reason is deeply unsettling.

That said, I hope you look at people actively struggling with serious mental illness with more compassion–much like you would someone with any kind of chronic physical illness–after reading my book. That’s my dream.

Lemuria has selected The Great Pretender its January 2020 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Author Q & A with Mildred D. Taylor

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 5)

Mildred Taylor wraps up her 10-book series that has followed the lives of the Logan family from slavery to the Civil rights movement with her final addition, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come. With familiar character Cassie Logan at the forefront as her own story evolves along the timeframe of civil rights events, she is supported by familiar family members who provide a constant link to generations past.

Born in Mississippi in 1943 and raised in Toledo, Ohio, Taylor developed a strong attachment to Mississippi as a child, thanks to frequent trips “home” to visit extended family members who were always eager to offer stories of their own childhoods.

She earned a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Toledo in 1965; and went on to write Song of the Trees, the first of the Logan family series, a decade later.

It would be Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, published in 1976, that would become her most recognizable work when it was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1977.

The collection has earned many other awards for Taylor throughout her lengthy career, including an NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, Buxtehuder Bulle Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for fiction, Christopher Award, Jane Addams Book Award, American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults, the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and others.

What inspired you to become a writer, and to use this tool as a way to bring to life the real-life struggles of racism, for young people?

Mildred Taylor

From the time I was a child, I was fascinated by the stories my father told about the history of my family and the history of others in his Mississippi community. He was a master storyteller, using dialect of the many characters in a story and sometimes becoming an actor using great motions to tell the story. There were many of us in the family who heard the stories; I was simply the one tapped on the shoulder to write them down. My father passed before Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was published, but his words and those of others who told the history live on through all my books.

Your new book “All the Days Past, All the Days to Come” is to be the final chapter of the Logan family saga, begun with “Songs of the Trees” in 1975. Looking back to the beginning, did you ever expect that this collection of stories would become so enduring to readers for so many years?

Because I was so very much enthralled by the stories, by the history, it never surprised me that others would be as well. What surprised me was that I could tell the stories well enough so that people around the world would care about the history of my family, and about the lives of people in my family’s Mississippi community.

This final book (as its predecessors) recounts many true historical events along the time frame of each volume. Having lived through many of these events yourself, is it still difficult to look back on those times, and do you believe enough progress has been made today?

I could not get free of the stories and the obligations I had to myself and to the history of my family and the history of so many African Americans whose stories I wanted to tell. As one friend told me: “It is something you have to do. We’re of the last generations who knows–who remembers how it truly was–racism and degradation and what we had to go through to rid ourselves of all that. Younger generations think they know, but they have no idea of what it was truly like.”

Because of the historical timeline I am trying to follow, this final book is my greatest challenge yet. At a time when racism is again at the forefront, I believe it is important to look back at history, to look at how we have evolved since slavery began in our country, what has been sacrificed through a civil war, lynchings, racism, and segregation. Through a personal story told from the point of view of the Logan family of Mississippi, perhaps readers of all ages can grasp what life was like before the Civil Rights Movement and how that Movement helped change the nation, and to understand why we cannot allow racism to overshadow us again.

From slavery to the presidency, this is what the epilogue in All the Days Past, All the Days to Come symbolizes, and the bus is a symbol of that journey. That Cassie is on that bus–the bus, a negative symbol through much of her life–to President Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration is one of the greatest triumphs for Cassie, her generation, and all African Americans.

Much has changed and much has not. I believe everyone needs to know the history.

The series has granted you many awards since its beginning more than 40 years ago. Has this taken you surprise?

As I said previously, since I was enthralled by the stories, it did not surprise me that
others would be as well. What surprised me was that I could tell the stories well enough that people around the world would respond as I did.

Of course, it was wonderful to win the Coretta Scott King award for four of my books. When The Road to Memphis won the award, I was actually on the dais (platform) with Mrs. Rosa Parks and was able to talk with her. My greatest regret is when I was unable to attend the ceremony to accept the award for The Land and I missed the chance to receive the award from Mrs. King herself.

What would you like to say to young people of all races today about the hope for cooperation (despite the frequent division) in this country? Are you hopeful for the progress that has been made; or do you believe racial equality will ever become the norm in America?

There have always been racial divisions in the United States; however, through the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, hard-fought-for legislation, integrated education, and one-on-one communication among all people, Americans have a much better understanding of each other today than 50 years ago, 100 years ago, all the years past in the United States.

Through continued education, economic opportunities for all, the important one-on-one relationships, there is hope that in time we as Americans can be accepting of each other. At that point, perhaps racial equality will be the norm.

Signed first editions are available for pre-order at Lemuria’s online store. The book’s publication date is Tuesday, January 7.

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.

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