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Author Q & A with Elliot Ackerman

On September 30, 2018

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 30)

National Book Award finalist Elliot Ackerman shows his grit as both a tested warrior and intrepid wordsmith with his new release Waiting for Eden, a fiercely moving novel about how the wounds of war linger beyond life itself.

It was five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that earned the former U.S. Marine the Silver Star, Purple Heart, Bronze Star for Valor and the distinction of White House Fellow–and it would be his novel Dark at the Crossing that secured his finalist spot for the National Book Award in 2017. His also authored the acclaimed novel Green on Blue.

Other writings and articles by Ackerman have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine, as well as The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Travel Writing.
Ackerman divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

Elliot Ackerman

How do you align your remarkable military career with your accomplishments as a writer?

People who don’t know me often say they’re surprised that I would have gone from the Marines into the arts. However, people who knew me growing up often say it surprised them that I went into the Marines instead of the arts. Those who aren’t familiar with the military often view it as a monolith. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the most talented writers, playwrights, and artists I know spent time in the service. That’s true today and it’s been true in the past.

The tone, the structure and the plot of Waiting for Eden are all striking in their uniqueness. The story itself is brutal, yet gentle–and obviously influenced by your own years in the military. How did you form the idea for this emotional and unexpected tale?

If you spend any time at war, you get acquainted with loss. That was a big part of my war experience. I learned about losing people that I loved when I was young; I was 24 when my first friend was killed in combat. Obviously, those who fight in a war aren’t the only ones who are acquainted with loss. A parent, a sibling, a friend– who among us isn’t touch by similar loss?

I wanted to tell a story about the wars, but also one that transcended the wars and dealt with issues that are universal, which is why so much of the book occurs at home. Grief was a theme that interested me. We often think of grief as a transitory state. We suffer a loss, then we grieve, and then through our grief we’re able to move on. But what if you can’t move on? At its core that’s what this novel is about.

Eden Malcom, the main character, is a victim of a tragic explosion during a deployment in Iraq. He is left with terrible injuries that leave him badly burned and clinging–for three long years–to life. His wife Mary spends those years by his side every day in a San Antonio burn center. His best friend, the book’s narrator, is actually dead but can see, hear, and understand Eden’s thoughts and feelings. This would probably be a good place to ask you to explain the title of the book.

The opening lines of the book are, “I want you to understand Mary and what she did. But I don’t know if you will. You’ve got to wonder if in the end you’d make the same choice, circumstances being similar, or even the same, God help you.”

When you meet Mary and the unnamed narrator at the beginning of the book, they have been waiting for three years for Eden to succumb to his wounds. They have no hope that he might recover; his injuries are too severe. Mary lives at the hospital, having sent her young daughter to live with her mother, and Eden’s best friend remains in a quasi-purgatory, hovering over the narrative as he tells us Eden’s story. So with Mary at the hospital and his best friend watching on the other side of life, these two have kept faith with Eden.

But what they are really doing is grieving, because grief is a type of faith; contained within it is the belief that eventually our spirits will heal. I’m not sure the healing always happens. When it doesn’t, we are left with something other than grief. We are left waiting. Hence the title of the novel.

Tell me about Eden’s phobia of–and ongoing battle with–cockroaches.

Like Eden, cockroaches are virtually indestructible. They’re one of the few species of animals that would survive a nuclear holocaust. They’re impervious to radiation and most diseases. Few creatures can withstand quite as much punishment as a cockroach. So Eden has this in common with them. But he also has a phobia of them, and this phobia predates his horrific injuries. It’s as though he knows what he is going to become, and it terrifies him, causing his phobia to act on a subconscious level. Here he is thinking of the cockroaches he imagines are lingering in the crevices of his hospital room, “He knew they’d crawl over him before he could even get a look and he did the only thing he could: he waited.”

In what ways did John Milton’s Paradise Lost influence this book–and the name of the main character?

The idea of original sin, which is present in Paradise Lost, certainly influenced this book. More than anything else, this is a book about a marriage and the sins that occur within a marriage and the way that they project out through our lives. The idea of an Eden, or paradise, goes hand-in-hand with the idea of original sin. Eden is the place before the sin, the place we are trying to get back to. This too is what they’re waiting for.

The devotion Mary shows for her husband is fierce and steadfast, and is one that would be difficult, if not impossible, for many spouses. What drives Mary’s strength and determined commitment to her suffering and slowly dying husband?

There’s a saying I’ve always like–it does come from my Marine days, and it was spoken about the Marines on Iwo Jima. You’ve probably heard it: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” You would be surprised what people are capable of when placed into extraordinary situations. Mary’s situation is most certainly extraordinary. The extent of her husband’s wounds, and the choice she is asked to make, none of this is everyday stuff. However, I don’t think that her devotion, which I would certainly characterize as fierce and steadfast, is quite as extraordinary as many of us might think. Mary rises to the occasion as so many of us are often called upon to do.

Through Waiting for Eden, what did you wish to tell readers about war?

I don’t consider Waiting for Eden to be a book about war; it is a book about grief and one that I hope will resonate for those of us who’ve ever struggled to let go of a person we’ve loved. What I prize about fiction is that it isn’t trying to tell us anything. When I wrote this book, I felt something as I put down this story on the page. If you, as the reader, feel any fraction of what I felt for these characters then the transfer of that emotion is the goal; it is what I hope you would take away from this book, as opposed to my telling you anything about a certain subject.

In the final pages of the book, Eden is pleading for the end of his life to finally come, and his wife makes a surprise decision that also affects his best friend, the narrator. Can you tell us (without spoiling the end) what they are all really waiting for?

I don’t want to spoil the end, so I’ll simply say that there is a common love that three of them share. Through that love they hope to be made whole, to return–at least in some small way–to their lives before the original sin.

Do you have your next book project already in the works yet?

My next book, Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning will be out in May 2019. It is a piece of nonfiction which deals with my time in both Iraq and Afghanistan, expatriate life in Turkey, and my coverage of the Syrian Civil War. I am also finishing a novel set in Istanbul, where I used to live, and it is scheduled for release the year after that.

Elliot Ackerman will be at Lemuria on Monday, October 22, at 5:00 to sign and read from Waiting for Eden, which has been selected one of our November 2018 selections for Lemuria’s First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A (Southern Splendor)

By Guest Author

On September 26, 2018

In Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 23)

A shared interest in preserving a part of the South’s complex history, as expressed through its grand plantation homes of the antebellum years, has led three Southern historians to author their own definitive examination of many of these notable properties–with an eye toward explaining exactly why saving these “fragile relics of history” still matters today.

It took Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore and Michael W. Kitchens–the authors of Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South–nearly five years to merge and expand their collective research into this joint volume, published by University Press of Mississippi. The book explores nearly 50 restored or preserved homes built pre-Civil War.

Matrana, a physician at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, is an active preservationist and historian and has authored Lost Plantation: The Rise and Fall of Seven Oaks and Lost Plantations of the South, both by UPM.

Lattimore, a resident of Rutherfordton, N.C., is a high school teacher who has written more than 25 books, including Southern Plantations: The South’s Grandest Homes. He was honored with North Carolina’s Order of the Longleaf Pine, one of the state’s most prestigious recognitions, in 2013.

An Athens, Ga., attorney and historic preservationist, Kitchens has authored Ghosts of Grandeur: Georgia’s Lost Antebellum Homes and Plantations. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Non-Fiction in 2013.

The book includes nearly 300-plus photos and dozens of firsthand narratives and interviews surrounding properties that have been restored as part of the historic preservation movement led by the South since the 19th century. Today, they say, only a small percentage of the South’s antebellum structures survive.

As co-authors of Southern Splendor, you all live in three different Southern states–how did you all get together to collaborate on this book–and have you worked together on previous books or other projects?

Robin S. Lattimore

Lattimore: We had all three written and published other books on antebellum houses in the past. We became friends first, because our paths often crossed when doing research, and then collaborators on this shared project because we respected each other’s work. Being from three different areas of the South actually served to provide greater depth of knowledge and experience to this project. The most gratifying part of making the decisions on which houses to feature in the book was being able to highlight some lesser-known properties alongside iconic treasures.

What is the goal of this book?

Lattimore: Our greatest hope for this book is to draw attention to the significant work done through the years by individuals, families, non-profit organizations, corporations, and others in restoring and preserving the South’s antebellum homes, many of which had once been in dire straits. The South’s antebellum architecture is being lost at an alarming rate due to neglect, fire, and increased residential, commercial, and industrial development. Ultimately, we hope that this book increases awareness of what we stand to lose if more historic homes are not preserved.

In Southern Splendor, you acknowledge that the South’s plantation homes represent a culture and lifestyle that was “made possible by an economic system that required the forced labor of enslaved people.” In what ways does your book examine that reality of Southern history?

Lattimore: As cultural historians, we are aware that plantation houses are at the epicenter of a complex web of human relationships that have shaped the social, economic, and political heritage of the South for generations. This project allowed us an opportunity to explore and celebrate the contributions made by African-Americans to the architectural heritage of the South, not just as laborers helping to construct grand plantation houses, but also the artistry and craftsmanship that people of color contributed to create these architectural masterpieces.

The book showcases antebellum residences in your home states of Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina, as well as half a dozen other states, including Mississippi. How were the homes from Mississippi chosen?

Marc R. Matrana

Matrana: We wanted this book to be a real celebration of preservation to showcase the fact that even the most destitute property can be saved from the brink of destruction if people care about it and decide to dedicate resources and efforts towards a project. We tried to find properties that had a strong preservation story behind them, like Beauvoir in Biloxi, which was almost destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That historic home has since been meticulously restored to its former glory and the grounds, presidential library, and other facilities are better than ever. Or like Waverly (near West Point), a unique plantation home that was fully restored by the Snow family.

How did you become interested in this enormous task of preserving and restoring Southern antebellum homes?

Michael W. Kitchens

Kitchens: The path to becoming more than passively interested in preserving the South’s antebellum architectural treasures is somewhat different for everyone. However, I think I can speak for all three authors of this book by saying that our respective interests first arose when we visited some of these homes years ago. Visits turned into quests to read as much information about the homes as we could find. Reading turned into research; then research turned into a desire to share what we learned about the homes and histories with others by writing about them. All the while, each of us has become involved in activities and organizations whose purpose is to preserve the South’s historic structures. We hope that our efforts to record the histories of some of these homes may inspire others to take up the cause to preserve what we have left.

Could you briefly describe the main architectural styles of these homes? What inspired their designs?

Kitchens: The predominant architectural style in the South before 1861 was the Greek Revival style. Entire volumes are dedicated to explaining why this particular style was so loved in the South between 1820 and 1860. Many believe that Southerners saw themselves as being philosophically true to the Greek’s democratic ideas and chose the style to reflect that self-identification. However, an equally plausible explanation may be that the Greek Revival style was the prevailing style in Europe, particularly in England, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when explorers were discovering Greek ruins across the Mediterranean. In the 1850s, the Italianate style became increasingly popular with Southerners as it allowed for asymmetrical designs which departed from the strict symmetry of Greek Revival designs.

Finally, Gothic Revival designs found their way into many corners of the South, harkening back to some of Europe’s great public and private architectural treasures from the Renaissance. The casual observer would be astonished to discover the wide variety of sizes and styles of antebellum architecture utilized in the South before 1860. It was far more diversified than just what we see in fictional film mansions such as Twelve Oaks or Tara.

A great deal of detail about these homes is included in “Southern Splendor”. How long did this project take, including the research?

Matrana: The book was a natural progression from the authors’ previous books, including my “Lost Plantations of the South”, Kitchens’ “Ghosts of Grandeur”, and many works by Robin Lattimore, including “Southern Plantations” published by Shire. We have each been separately researching Southern plantations for decades, each amassing large collections of materials, references, photos, etc. We started talking together about a collective project about five years ago and pitched the idea to Craig Gill at the University Press of Mississippi in the summer of 2014. We’ve been working on putting the book together ever since.

Tell me about the stunning photography in the book. How many photos are included?

Kitchens: The authors worked hard to select for this volume photographs which would not only illustrate the homes but evoke for the reader the raw beauty and majesty of these structures. There are over 270 color photographs and nearly 60 black and white photographs in Southern Splendor. It was our hope to illustrate how close some of these historic dwellings came to being lost forever. Many have already been lost to everything but memory. Some of the black and white photographs simply illustrate how a home looked decades ago. A few of these images date from the 1860s, and many of the black and white photographs were taken from the Historic American Buildings Survey which recorded the homes in photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s.

But perhaps the most stunning photographs are color images showing the homes in their current state of restored splendor. Many of these photographs come from the authors’ private collections. Some photographs were donated for use in this book by the current owner of the house or museum. Still other images were provided by professional photographers retained by the authors to capture for the readers of this volume the most artful and stunning images possible. It is our hope that the readers enjoy these images and are inspired to visit and support the preservation of these and other historic structures.

The book states that many more of these historic homes are losing their battles with deterioration and decay than are possible to restore. In your estimation, what are the numbers, approximately–and why does saving these homes matter to us now?

Matrana: At the height of plantation culture, prior to the Civil War, there were almost 50,000 plantations in the South. Not all were associated with a grand mansion, but most were family estates. Today, only a few thousand plantation homes survive, and each year dozens are lost to fires, neglect, intentional demolition, etc. Hundreds of these homes are at risk today. Some sit in woods or fields rotting away, waiting for someone to rescue them from demolition by neglect.

Collectively, these structures represent our past–the good and the bad. The buildings were often constructed by slaves and provide real tangible evidence of slavery, a piece of our history which we surely must not forget. They provide a physical link to the past, which can never be restored once it is lost. As we’ve shown in Southern Splendor, restoring such homes can be an economic boom for local economies while simultaneously providing balanced education to the public about our shared history.

Marc R. Matrana and Robin S. Lattimore will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, October 2, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Southern Splendor.

William Boyle’s ‘Gravesend’ dazzles with depth of characters

By Guest Author

On September 24, 2018

In Mystery

By John M. Floyd. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 9)

When failed actress Allesandra Biagini returns from Los Angeles to her Brooklyn neighborhood following the death of her mother, she finds that nothing much has changed in the past eleven years: it’s still a place she both loves and hates. And that’s a feeling shared by most of the people she knows.

Gravesend is a glum, gritty, depressing place on the wrong side of the Brooklyn tracks—but it’s also an old, close-knit neighborhood with a small-town feel, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone else’s business.

What the gossips don’t know is that Conway D’Innocenzio, one of Allesandra’s former classmates and the stock boy at the local Rite Aid, is planning a murder. Sixteen years ago, troublemaker Ray Boy Calabrese was convicted of the hate-crime killing of Conway’s brother, and now that Ray Boy’s been released from prison, Conway intends to get even.

The problem is, he finds that he can’t bring himself to do the deed, even after years of nursing the grudge, and it’s this cowardly failure to act—along with the fact that the regretful Ray Boy no longer seems to be a threat to anyone—that forms the basis of the plot.

Other players include Eugene Calabrese, a troubled fifteen-year-old who idolizes his Uncle Ray Boy and fancies himself a gangster; sweet but reclusive Stephanie Dirello, who has always admired Allesandra and secretly longs for Conway; and bartender Amy Falconetti, a Flushing native and Allesandra’s love interest, who also appears in Boyle’s recent novel The Lonely Witness. There’s even a local mob boss, Enzio Natale, and his deadly henchmen.

Nothing about any of these people is predictable, and it’s a testament to Boyle’s talent that by the end of the novel most of their lives intersect in a way that’s both perfect and unexpected.

William Boyle’s writing has been compared to that of Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and Dennis Lehane, and for good reason. Similarities include a mastery of setting, pitch-perfect dialogue, and detailed, suspenseful plotting.

Gravesend has all of these, but its biggest strength probably lies in the depth of its characters and the fact that there is so much conflict at every turn, and on many levels: dead-end jobs, discrimination, dysfunctional families, broken dreams, and of course the ever-present street crime and violence. And the neighborhood itself plays a huge part in the story.

In one paragraph we’re given a look at it through the eyes of Allesandra, on her way home: “She strained to see down to the avenue. Old ladies with shopping carts. Chinese men blowing on hot coffee in doorways. Others with plastic bags, talking on cell phones, texting, looking down. The sidewalks were wet where storeowners had hosed them down. Garbage flitted around, paper bags and rotten fruit, and she swore she could smell it all the way up in the train.”

In this novel Boyle has given us the best of all literary worlds: complex characters, a gripping story, and an elegance of language not often found in crime fiction. In addition, it’s a story that portrays Italian-Americans in a way that seems far more real and believable than what we’re accustomed to seeing on the page and the screen—probably because Boyle is himself a product of the neighborhood where the book is set, and knows it so well.

At its core, Gravesend is a realistic and compulsively readable story of mean streets, neighborhood bars, wanna-be gangsters, former schoolmates, revenge killers, Italian and Russian mobsters, and working-class people struggling to survive.

It’s a powerful novel, one that the reader will remember long after it’s finished.

John M. Floyd is an Edgar Award nominee and the author of the upcoming book The Barrens. He and his wife Carolyn live in Brandon.

William Boyle will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 26, at 5:00 to sign and read from Gravesend.

Author Q & A with Stephen Markley

By Guest Author

On September 17, 2018

In Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 16)

Described as both a murder mystery and a social critique, Stephen Markley’s Ohio speaks with revelatory discernment about the direction a new, post 9/11 generation of Americans faces.

Set in the fictional small town of New Canaan, Ohio, Markley’s moving debut novel conveys the angst of a region in decline–thanks to the realities of an economic recession, the tragedy of opioids, and the calamities of war in Afghanistan and Iraq–as witnessed by four former high school classmates. When the friends, all in their 20s, gather in their hometown one fateful summer night in 2013, the evening ends in a shocking culmination that no one expected.

Each of Markley’s main characters brings along a mission for this evening, as they collectively struggle with private secrets and regrets–including alcoholism, drug abuse, lost ambitions, relationships gone astray, and personal doubts.

Through Ohio, Markley addresses forgotten pockets of the nation’s “rust belt” that inherited the disillusionment of racial hostility, environmental uneasiness, foreclosures, and political standoff.

Stephen Markley

A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Markley is a screenwriter, journalist, and the author of two previous books: Publish This Book: The Unbelievable True Story of How I Wrote, Sold, and Published This Very Book and Tales of Iceland, a humorous “memoir and travelogue of an American experience in Iceland.” He lives in Los Angeles.

Ohio is a complicated and gripping tale. It’s an ambitious novel that took you five years to write. How did you do this?

Ha. Sometimes I’m not even sure. I think I always had this raucous, ambitious novel in mind, and I had the components of something really interesting, but it was a long process of figuring out how those components worked together. I certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to my agent, Susan Golomb, and my editor, Cary Goldstein, as well as a number of other readers who gave me the feedback that helped me craft the final version.

You were a teenager yourself when the events of 9/11 shocked America. How did it affect you and your own friends personally?

That’s hard to say because it didn’t really in the moment. We lived far away from New York City and the Pentagon, and while what happened was certainly spectacular in terms of the images and the shock, the most important legacy of 9/11 for my generation was the widespread failure of our political institutions in the aftermath.

Decisions were made and policies were put into place that will be with all of us for the rest of our lives, and here I’m not just talking about two disastrous wars that have grown into a permanent global counter-insurgency operation, but the domestic consequences of surveillance, xenophobia, and a national security-industrial complex that bends policy to its whims and which as citizens have almost zero democratic control over.

Ohio, your first novel, came about after your studies at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Tell me how your Iowa studies paid off in your efforts to become a novelist ,which you have described as your “only ambition.”

I arrived at Iowa after floundering for several years as an utterly unsuccessful freelance writer, so just the relief of paycheck, health insurance, and the basic stability of housing was enough to give me this burst of creative energy. On top of that, the teachers I worked with and my peers were just so consistently brilliant, hilarious, interesting, and inspiring that even if I’d produced nothing in those years, I would still view them as some of the best of my life.

Have you been surprised by the acclaim the book has garned, especially since this is your first novel? It has even been described as “generation defining.”

I know this is annoying to say, but I’m trying to ignore all of that as best I can and just enjoy Simon & Schuster footing the bill to send me around the country on a book tour, which I’m using as an excuse to see almost everyone I’ve ever loved or cared about.

As for the generation thing, I tend to think my generation of writers will be defined by the huge range of diversity in voices and storytelling styles that comes from the rather recent institutional realization that human beings other than straight white guys also have fascinating stories to tell.

Your writing style is unique, and it reads like you are talking to exactly one person (the reader) face-to-face. Tell me about how the signature form has developed.

Oh, that’s as much a mystery to me as anyone. I think all writers are just amalgamations of every influence they’ve ever claimed and, even more so, all the ones they can’t remember. You have to keep in mind, even though this is my debut novel, I’ve been working at this writing thing since I was probably 5 years old. At age 34, I feel like it took a lifetime to get this thing out there.

Since the town of New Canaan is patterned at least loosely from your own hometown, did you experience the same thoughts and feelings as your characters? Was there the same sense of despair? Are things there better now?

That’s complicated because New Canaan is not really my hometown, which has its own stories and politics and oddities and troubles and brave, wonderful people.

But it was the sensation of growing up there that I wanted to get across. Tim O’Brien talked a lot about this in (his book) The Things They Carried–sometimes to get at the truth, you have to make up a story.

With this powerful debut novel under your belt, do you think you may take a more upbeat approach on your next book–or do you have another book planned yet?

I’m always working on two or three things at once, but I’m feeling a little precious about those projects right now. I’m probably not quite ready to say them out loud in case they vanish.

Author Q & A with Drew Williams

By Guest Author

On September 10, 2018

In Science Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 9)

Although The Stars Now Unclaimed is his debut novel, Birmingham’s Drew Williams makes a distinction about his new sci-fi book: “It’s my first novel to be published,” he said. “It’s nowhere near my first novel to be written.”

He explains why this difference matters, if only to himself.

“I remember hearing in a TED Talk a while back–and I’m not going to go look for it, so apologies to the speaker if I get this wrong–that it takes 10,000 hours of practice at anything before you can become truly ‘proficient’ at it; I’ve been chipping away at my 10,000 hours since I was a teenager, and believe me: readers can debate now whether I’ve reached ‘proficiency’ with The Stars Not Unclaimed,’ but the stuff I wrote back then was nowhere near it!”

Fortunately for Williams, The Stars Now Unclaimed is claiming a lot of attention among sci-fi and other readers–which works out well, as Stars is only the beginning of the series he has already planned for his newly minted characters.

Described as “a massive, galaxy-spanning tale of war, betrayal, friendship, and the kind commitment people make to a better future even at the cost of their own lives,” this future world is packed with strong characters, intense battles, and just enough trepidation to capture the attention of readers of all ages who love thrillers in any form.

The series is, as they say, another story–or actually, quite a few more stories. Boldly titled The Universe After, the collection will introduce its second volume A Chain Across the Dawn in May.

Tell me about yourself. The bio on the book flap is pretty bare bones–you got a job at a bookseller because you applied on a day when someone had just quit! You don’t like Moby-Dick. We want more! Tell us about Drew Williams.

Let’s see. I grew up right here in Birmingham–Birmingham, where we stare across the border at Atlanta and think “that could have been us, you know, if we’d really wanted it to be”–so I’ve been a native of the Deep South all my life; there’s just something about it, you know? Sure, the heat might be bad, and the humidity might be worse, and sure, in Birmingham specifically you have to reckon with a pretty terrible cultural legacy of institutional racism and basically being the villain in every story Yankees tell about the South, but there’s something about the people down here–just nicer, I think. More interested in what’s going on around them than wherever they think they’re supposed to be next.

Drew Williams

As far as my education goes, I left that part of the book flap because I didn’t want some kid to try and emulate it. The reason I needed that bookseller job was I’d dropped out of high school a few months before, so my education pretty much was the bookstore! Everything I know–and I don’t just mean about being a writer–I learned from books of history or psychology or from well-researched novels. It means I can hold forth exhaustively on a weirdly broad range of subjects–but there are also some really basic things that I can completely blank on.

I assume you have always been a science fiction fan. What sparked your interest in the genre? Who is your favorite sci-fi writer?

I literally do not remember seeing Star Wars for the first time; I do not remember–spoiler alert for, you know, a nearly 40-year-old film–ever watching The Empire Strikes Back and not knowing Darth Vader was Luke’s father.

The same goes for novels: I come from a family of, well, nerds, so both my father and mother read to my brother and me extensively when we were children, and they didn’t stop at kids’ books. One of my very first memories is my mother reading To Kill a Mockingbird to me–omitting some of the more graphic details of the nature of the central crime, most likely–whereas my father was more prone to just read to us whatever he had lying around at the time, whether that was Clive Cussler, Dave Duncan–look him up kids; a great many of his earlier works are out of print, but as far as I’m concerned he’s one of the preeminent fantasy authors of our time–or Arthur C. Clarke. Dune was the first “big deal” sci-fi novel I read myself, and I followed it up with a hopscotch path though Heinlein, David Feintuch–another unjustly overlooked sci-fi great–and even Kurt Vonnegut.

What prompted you to make the main character female? Did you find that to be more of a challenge?

That’s one of those things, honestly, that just happened: I sat down to write this novel, and there she was–I never had a single doubt in my mind that she was supposed to be anything other than female. I do think there’s something more interesting about the central relationship in the novel being more about a sort of pseudo-maternal connection than the parental one that might have arisen if I had made the lead male, that there’s a certain assumed vulnerability, a sense of not just protection but fostering of emotional growth that might not have been there otherwise, but honestly, that’s just me back-filling: I can’t claim to have don that on purpose.

As far as writing a female lead being a challenge goes: I think a great deal of how a person writes–consciously or otherwise–is defined by what we consume, in terms of narrative, whether that’s books, films, video games, whatever. And again, going back to my parents: I was never told to make a distinction as a child between “boy books” and “girl books”–I read both The Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley High. They were all just books, they were all just stories.

That’s a habit I’ve carried into adulthood–whether a book has a male lead or a female lead makes no difference whatsoever in my interest in the novel–and I think having read a great deal of literature with female leads makes it easier to write something with one.

Explain more about the “pulse” in The Stars Now Unclaimed, what it actually was, and how it chose which planets to send back in time.

Getting into some of those answers would be getting into spoiler territory for later books, but I’ll do my best!

Basically, the pulse in an unexplained cosmic event that swept through the universe about 100 years before the novel is set. With no apparent sense of purpose, it set about affecting almost every planet in the galaxy, affecting each on a slightly different scale.

So you might have one world where no technology more complex than steam-power can operate–a world stuck, permanently, in the Industrial Revolution–and another still fully capable of making spaceships and advanced artificial intelligence and jet-packs.

The reasons for that concept, honestly, were structural rather than metaphorical: I wanted a very broad canvas to play with, one where I could have wild spaceship battles in one scene, and forgotten, almost post-apocalyptic city-scapes to wander through in the next.

Your book includes a lot of battle scenes. Did you, like many others, find yourself intrigued with the action of the Star Wars space battles?

Star Wars is absolutely–no question, No. 1 with a bullet, full stop–the single most influential work of art in my life. I learned so much from those films, not just about narrative and storytelling, but in terms of who I am, and I think the appeal of Star Wars can be boiled down into a single concept that comes from Star Wars: even when things are wildly different, people are just people.

Those films have always succeeded in marrying eye-popping-ly beautiful imagery, alien and exotic and imaginative, with deep-seated human desires and conflicts.

I think the action sequences do the same thing. Yes, they might involve laser swords or giant walking tanks or an ancient monster that’s nothing more than a mouth buried in the sand, but they’re still about a man, trying to rescue a friend; about soldiers, trying to do their best to fight a desperate rear-guard action so their fight can go on; about a son, trying to find the man his father once was inside of the monster he’s become.

I very much tried to do the same thing in The Stars Now Unclaimed, to root the action, no matter how outlandish or insane, in who the character were.

Star Wars and other “space operas” seem to illustrate how good eventually overcomes evil. Is there a deeper meaning, or message, to your novel?

Two answers come to mind with that: the first is the theme of The Stars Now Unclaimed itself, which I think can be summarized with the concept that “even grief can be turned into good ends.” The second–which is slightly more germane to your question–is how I would summarize the theme of the entire series, which is “so long as parents try not to pass their won sins on to their children, the world can become a better place.” So long as we continually struggled to raise our children into people better than us–and to give them a world better than that which we inherited–there is no doubt in my mind that good will overcome evil, because evil is a thing that thrives where empathy has failed. Even if we don’t always succeed in that goal, it’s the trying that matters, I think.

Now that you are a published author, you’ll always be asked about what project you have coming out next. Can you tell us?

Book two, of course! I don’t think I can tell you much more than that, or my editor will skin my alive, but I will say characters are meant to grow, and change, otherwise there’s on point in writing a sequel.

Drew Williams will be at Lemuria today on Monday, September 10, at 5:00 to sign and read from The Stars Now Unclaimed.

Author Q & A with Lisa Patton

By Guest Author

On September 3, 2018

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

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

Sorority recruitment (that still translates as “rush” at most Southern universities) can be a pivotal time for freshmen college women, but is probably approached with more reverence, tradition, and passion at Ole Miss than perhaps any other campus–anywhere.

And that’s where bestselling author Lisa Patton, a Memphis native, current Nashville resident and graduate of the University of Alabama, chose to set her newest novel, Rush.

Written with amazing attention to detail and as much humor as heart, Rush takes readers behind the doors of the of the school’s fictional Alpha Delta Beta house, where the newest pledge class fights for civil justice for their house staff despite opposition from the sisterhood’s scheming house corp president. Along the way, a handful of diverse characters slowly reveal their own secrets, fears, and hopes as their lives are linked together.

Lisa Patton

Before her writing career, Patton worked as a manager and show promoter for the historic Orpheum Theatre in Memphis and as part of the promotion teams for radio and TV stations in the Bluff City. She later worked on album and video projects with Grammy Award-winning musician Michael McDonald.

It was a three-year stint as an innkeeper in Vermont that inspired her first novel, Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’Easter, which was followed by Yankee Doodle Dixie (both featured on the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Bestseller List); and Southern as a Second Language.

The mother of two sons, Patton and her husband now live in Nashville.

Rush–an eye-opening inside story about life in an Ole Miss sorority house–is so full of spot-on details about the young women who go through recruitment, or “rush,” and the houses they call their campus homes, that it’s hard to believe you weren’t a student at Ole Miss yourself. Why did you choose to write about Greek life at the University of Mississippi, and not the school you attended–the University of Alabama?

I went back and forth about which campus was best for the setting. Both universities are historical and breathtakingly gorgeous, but I ultimately chose Ole Miss because the town of Oxford provided a more colorful backdrop to the story. Many Ole Miss graduates hail from Memphis, and as a native Memphian I love including my hometown in my novels.

During my writing process, Eli Manning received the Walter Payton Humanitarian of the Year Award. I’d read that he and his wife, Abby, are well known philanthropists, and I though they would be perfect bit characters for the story. In truth, through, Rush could have been told on any Southern campus. Ole Miss won because it’s a darn good place to be! And quintessentially Southern.

Researching this book must have been fun! How did you find out about so many details of the secrets of sorority life at Ole Miss–like the name of the popular dorm, the schedules for rush week, the size of the sororities, etc.?

Goodness knows I tried. I spoke with several Ole Miss current students and recent graduates. I interviewed Ole Miss alumnae, Ole Miss housemothers, and a former Ole Miss housekeeper. The research was the best apart about writing Rush. I got to know many strong, wonderful women. Through our many phone calls and texts, I came to love and admire each of them and now call them my friends. In the last three years, I’ve spent a great deal of time on the Ole Miss campus. I honestly think of myself as half Rebel!

Your characters are plentiful, and very well developed–and many have secrets they’re trying hard to overcome. How were you able to create so many characters with their own stories to tell, and then weave them into the plot so well?

I was determined to give my characters complexity. So I gave thought to my own life and the lives of other vulnerable women I know, and analyzed what makes us real. We all have flaws, both moral and psychological, whether we want to admit them or not. So, after creating my characters, I talked with each one of them and asked for complete honesty. I took notes, as if I was their therapist, and learned all about their secrets! That might sound crazy, but it’s true.

Weaving them together was the easy part. Making the decision to finish the book was another story all together. When you take a stand for something you believe in with all your heart, resistance throws every fiery dart in its arsenal your way. I almost quite before Rush was born.

There are a lot of heartaches and problems facing the main characters–and keeping up with them is made much easier by how you structured the narration, which changes with each chapter, giving readers multiple first-person accounts of what rush and sorority life are like, filtered through each person’s point of view. Is this a writing technique you’ve used with your other books?

I’ve never written a book with multiple points of view before, but I felt it was a necessity for Rush. I wanted to give my readers an in-depth peek into sorority life, whether they were Greek or not. Cali is my 18-year-old freshman from small-town life–Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Memphis-born Wilda is an Ole Miss alum and mother to Ellie, who is rushing and living in Martin Dormitory. And Miss Pearl is the housekeeper of the fictional Alpha Delta Beta sorority house and second mom/counselor to the sorority sisters. When the story opens, they don’t know one another, but all that changes quickly.

At the center of the story is “Miss Pearl,” who practically runs the sorority house, and has for 25 years, but her chances of being promoted to house director are threatened by the racist attitudes of another character. Why this dominant topic, and why now?

I’m that child of the 60s and 70s. That little Southern girl who was bathed in motherly love by a woman who worked as a long-term housekeeper and cook for my family. Then I left for college and received a similar love from the women who worked in my sorority house. When I went back for a visit 38 years later, I noticed that much was still the same with regard to the house staff.

Some of the workers, men and women, spend decades of their lvies in these positions. It never once crossed my mind to inquire about their pay, their benefits, or their opportunity for promotion. When I discussed it with my sorority sisters, they agreed that it was an unfortunate oversight. We, as sorority women, are strong leaders. We are philanthropic and compassionate. WE strive to make things right. I’m hoping readers will get to know my characters, learn about their lives and understand their worlds better. My prayer is that Rush opens the door to discussion and is ultimately, perhaps, a vehicle for change.

What was your own sorority experience like at the University of Alabama?

It was one of the best times of my life. I made friendships that have lasted for decades and will last until I take my final breath. Whenever I look back on our college days, when we were all together, I get teary. Not only was it fun, maybe too fun at times, but it helped cement the values I’d learned in childhood and carry them with me through adulthood. I learned the importance of philanthropy, service, and leadership, and that’s only the beginning.

You began your career as a music producer and eventually became a full-time writer. Tell me about how that came about–and how you believe your writing has progressed through the years.

Because of my deep love for music, I was always attracted to jobs in the music industry. For many years, I worked for Michael McDonald of Doobie Brothers fame. He was the one who encouraged me to finish my first book and I, fortunately, took his advice. I wrote by the seat of my pants for the first three novels, but for Rush, I made a detailed outline. I also studied books on the craft of writing.

Do you have another writing project in the works now?

I do, thank you for asking! It’s a story about two teachers. Set in Memphis, it’s told in current day and looks back to the 1930s. Few people alive today remember a time when teachers couldn’t be married. It’s actually the first book I wanted to write but knew I needed more experience. I’m finally ready.

Lisa Patton will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 5, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Rush.

‘A Spy in Canaan’ is a deep slice of civil rights era surveillance

By Guest Author

On August 28, 2018

In African-American, Civil Rights

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 26)

If you know of someone who still harbors any doubt that the FBI spied on leaders of the civil rights movement, just hand over a copy of investigative reporter Marc Perrusquia’s book A Spy in Canaan.

As a reporter for The Commercial Appeal, Perrusquia caught wind of a tantalizing story: that one of Memphis’ most well-known and respected Beale Street residents who had rubbed shoulders with the highest leaders of the movement was for nearly 20 years an FBI informant.

In Spy, subtitled “How The FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement,” Perrusquia offers exhaustive research, including the FBI’s own secret informant files, to detail the government’s surveillance.

As Perrusquia chronicles, to most Beale Street residents, Ernest Withers was the local photographer who took photos of wedding engagements, family portraits, school and military achievements.

To leaders of the civil rights movement, Withers was equally embedded. Carrying press credentials for prominent black-oriented newspapers and magazines, he was a fixture who was there in the very beginning.

He sneaked a photo in the courtroom during the trial of Emmett Till. He covered integration riots in Little Rock and Ole Miss. He covered the assassination of Medgar Evers, whom he considered a friend. He was such a fixture that he counted among his photos candid scenes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—and was so well regarded, he was allowed into the autopsy room to take death photos after King’s assassination.

Although little heralded in his life, Withers could arguably be called one of the great photographers of the 20th century, Perrusquia reports. He shot as many as one million photos over 60 years documenting black life in the South.

Yet, as Perrusquia conclusively details, Withers also led a double life, working for the FBI for cash, funneling photos of civil rights leaders and suspected “agitators” from 1958 to 1976. He passed on tips, car tag numbers, juicy gossip, funneling a flood of rumors, facts and falsehoods that could (and did) ruin people’s lives.

Perrusquia chronicles Withers’ activities in painstaking, deep detail, revealing a disturbing portrait of a quintessential mole in the movement.

Spy is a monumental work of investigative journalism, drawing not only from his newspaper reporting, but also with fresh facts that add a troubling perspective to the headlines of today, raising questions about the depth, longevity and resilience of the government’s focus on watching its citizens.

Not only does Perrusquia describe the FBI surveillance of the period, but examines the federal and local police programs in place that operated beyond the law, including:

COINTELPRO — A federal domestic spying program that surveilled citizens and often employed dirty tricks and misinformation to discredit citizens the FBI deemed suspect.
DETCOM — The nation’s secret program to identify and round up dissidents or people identified with suspected organizations in the event of an emergency.

It’s frightening that even with the enormous amount of data the FBI obtained just from Withers and those working with him at the time, that’s only a slice of the surveillance of U.S. citizens then and, most certainly with digital methods, now.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Marc Perrusquia will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Photography and Culture” panel at 2:45 p.m. at the Galloway Foundery.

Author Q & A with Margaret Bradham Thornton

By Guest Author

On August 27, 2018

In Fiction

Margaret Bradham Thornton’s sophomore novel takes the age-old choice between clinging to the familiarity of solitude versus daring to reach for love at the risk of a broken heart and examines it at a deeper level in A Theory of Love–a romantic story that is both unique and familiar at its core.

The chance meeting of British journalist Helen Gibbs and French-American financier Christopher Delavaux on a Mexican beach leads to a relationship and a marriage that would become threatened by ambition and time apart–and ultimately, a difficult choice that must be made for

their future together.

Thornton is the author of the novel Charleston and the editor of Notebooks, a 10-year writing project that saw her compiling and editing the extensive collection of the personal journals of Tennessee Williams. For her efforts on this project, which she said “represented an important record, both emotional and creative, of one of America’s most important writers,” she received the Bronze ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in autobiography/memoir and the C. Hugh Holman Prize for the best volume of Southern literary scholarship published in 2006, given by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Margaret Bradham Thornton

A native of Charleston, she is a graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in English. Now a Florida resident, Thornton is no stranger to Mississippi.

“In my early teens, I came to Jackson and played the Southern Tennis Championships,” she said.

“At various times over the past 15 summers, I have been back to Jackson for tournaments with my three sons–one of whom is a published novelist–who play or have played competitive tennis. I have just returned from Dublin where my daughter competed in the much-loved Dublin Horse Show where the Irish combine their love of horses with their love of books. One of the jumps in the Grand Prix Competition was a five-and-a-half-foot wall of books. I am very happy to report that my daughter cleared it!”

A Theory of Love offers a depth beyond the plot of most “love stories.” It was the busyness of life–the travel, the time pressure, the distance–that defined the relationship of main characters Helen and Christopher, and it requires a bit of thought on the reader’s part to imagine oneself in their shoes–his side and her side. What was your inspiration for this unique book?

Broadly speaking, Tennessee Williams and, more specifically, a memoir of a circus performer.

Tennessee Williams wrote about longing, rarely about love. For example, in The Glass Menagerie, Laura waits for gentlemen callers who never come; in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche waits on a decaying plantation for a man to rescue her; and in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Maggie tells Brick that if she thought he would never make love to her again, she would go into the kitchen and get the biggest knife and stick it straight through her heart. Having spent 10 years working on Tennessee Williams, I wanted to move past longing into the territory of love.

Five years ago, I came across a 19th century memoir of a circus performer, Ins and Outs of Circus Life or Forty-Two Years Travel of John H. Glenroy, Bareback Rider, through United States, Canada, South America and Cuba. John H. Glenroy was an orphan, who at age 7 joined the circus. When he retired, he dictated his memoir. Far from telling a life of adventure, he gave a flat, unemotional accounting of all the places he had performed along with the names of all the performers in each circus.

Memory had clearly been a companion to him. And it made me curious: if you’d had love withheld from you as a child, who would you be as an adult? What could be expected of you? Despite living two centuries apart, the circus performer became the inspiration for one of my main characters, and I thought a circus would be a good metaphor for the world of finance. I settled on short chapters with changing locations to give a sense of speed and dislocation.

Please explain the “entanglement theory” and how it expresses this love story.

Simply put, in theoretical physics, two particles that have been close can be separated by millions of miles or even light years and still remain connected. What happens to one, instantaneously happens to the other. Entangled particles transcend space. I thought this was an intriguing concept to explore as a metaphor for love. I think it certainly applies to maternal or paternal love. The question I wanted to ask in this novel was does it hold for romantic love.

What was it that attracted Christopher and Helen to each other in the beginning?

Initially, they are both intrigued by each other’s independence. Christopher notices Helen getting out of a taxi, and he is curious to know why she has come alone to Bermeja. He is further intrigued by her sense of purpose and bemused by his inability to “derail” her from her work. Her article on words reveals her interest in other cultures and a certain fearlessness about crossing borders, exploring new terrain, both literally and metaphorically, and this aspect of her certainly appeals to him.

Helen is curious to know more about Christopher who is staying in a remote place by himself–she is, after all, a journalist. Her choice of words shows that she is drawn to illusive concepts that have both intensity and peace and these words could be used to describe aspects of Christopher. Christopher’s ability to embody his favorite word, sprezzatura, to make whatever he does look as if it is without effort or thought–especially when he is flirting with her–appeals to Helen and keeps her off balance at the beginning of their relationship.

I was struck by the fact that Christopher, like Helen, had a favorite word! Do you have a favorite word?

I didn’t until I wrote this book, but I would go with neverness, partly because of how I first learned about it; partly because it is an orphaned word and I have been thinking about orphans; and partly because it is beautiful. My eldest son, a writer, sent me an excerpt from a Paris Review interview with Jorge Luis Borges who described this word, invented by Bishop Wilkins in the 17th century, as “a beautiful word, a word that’s a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness, and despair.” He said he could not understand why “the poets left it lying about and never used it.”

Despite the constant travel to romantic and exotic places, there is a very “everyday” feeling about this book, as we get glimpses of the “ordinary” about Helen and Christopher, despite the pace of their lives. That is somewhat of a luxury among novelists, who may present frequent moments of “drama” to move the plot along . . . . but this story doesn’t feel rushed. Explain how you approached the pace of this book, as it pertains to their relationship.

This book was an explanation of the question, “What does it mean to love someone?”, and for that question, plot did not have a strong place. Novels that helped me understand how to think about structuring this story include Kate Chopin’s The Awakening; Elizabeth Bowen’s The House in Paris; Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky; and James Salter’s Light Years and Solo Faces.

In The Awakening, there is that powerful scene between Edna and Robert when he waits with her one evening. They are both deeply attracted to one another, but neither can act upon their passion, and he waits with her for her husband to return. I thought it was an extraordinary scene–all the more so because so little is said. I knew I wanted to write that kind of scene in my novel at the end when Helen is sitting on a swing in Bermeja.

Your writing style is very fluid, and it makes me wonder how, as a Charleston native, you were influenced by favorite writers. Who did (and do) you admire as writers?

I don’t have favorites, but I do have mileposts.

Growing up in Charleston, books, for me, were passports. Initially I bypassed Southern writers, as I felt I knew a lot about the South and wanted to learn about other parts of the world. I’m happy to say, since then, I’ve reversed direction and put my arms around many of the great Southern writers–Faulkner, Welty, O’Connor, Percy, Williams, Capote, McCarthy, the list goes on.

In college, I read all of Henry James and was struck by the subtlety of his language and structure of his novels. I was also impressed how Virginia Woolf inventively used form to serve her meaning.

Another milepost was when I read Edisto by Padgett Powell when it was first published. The narrator, Simons Manigault, says, “We drove half that night, up Highway 17, watching all the flintzy old motels with names like And-Gene Motel.” I had passed the And-Gene Motel which was halfway between Charleston and the Edisto River hundreds of times, and I remember thinking–you can do that in a novel?

While working on Tennessee Williams, I indirectly discovered the kind of reader I wanted to be. Williams tried to write a play on Vincent van Gogh and one of the books he read was Letters to an Artist: From Vincent van Gogh to Anton Ridder van Rappard 1881-1885. Van Gogh collected the prints published by two London newspapers, and in his letters to van Rappard, he generously praised the work of many of the artists. For example, he wrote, “Pinwell draws two women in black in a dark room in the simplest possible composition in which he has put a serious sentiment that I can only compare to the full song of the nightingale on a spring night.”

In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote, “Reading books is like looking at paintings: without doubting, without hesitating, with self-assurance, one must find beautiful that which is beautiful.” That sentiment struck me: as a writer, it felt like the right way to read. So, in that spirit, I try to read as broadly as possible.

Are plans in the works for another novel? If so, can you share something about it with us?

I have been thinking about the idea of beauty and evil. In my research on foundlings for A Theory of Love, I visited the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, and there I learned that an early benefactor had donated a large collection of great paintings to the orphans because he felt that everyone should grow up with beauty. In Book Nine of Paradise Lost, Satan is so struck by the beauty and grace of Eve that he is temporarily disarmed of hatred and envy and revenge.

I am in the early stages of a novel that considers whether or not there is a relationship between evil and beauty, and if so, what is it.

If I’ve learned anything from Tennessee Williams, it is to write about what intrigues or perplexes or moves you–or in his words–to write “a picture of your own heart” and to convince yourself it is easy to do. “Don’t maul, don’t suffer, don’t groan–till the first draft is finished. Then Calvary–but not till then. Doubt–and be lost–until the first draft is finished.”

Author Q & A with Jack E. Davis

By Guest Author

On August 16, 2018

In Nature, Southern Culture, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Thursday print edition (August 16)

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jack E. Davis, author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, will be among the more than 160 official panelists who will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival Saturday, where he is scheduled for two thought-provoking events.

Davis will sign copies of The Gulf on the Mississippi Capitol lawn at 9:45 a.m., followed by an appearance in the American History panel at 10:45 a.m. in the C-SPAN Room (the Old Supreme Court room) in the Capitol building.

At 2:45 p.m. he will participate in an informal, in-depth discussion with Dr. Melissa Pringle, senior principal scientist and vice president of Allen Engineering and Science in Jackson. Afterward, he will host a Q & A session with Festival goers. The dialogue will be held in State Capitol Room 202, and those interested are asked to arrive 30 minutes early. Details are available at msbookfestival.com.

Davis said he wrote The Gulf because he was interested in restoring what he calls “an American sea,” to the conventional historical narrative of America.

“Look at any general history of the U.S.,” he said, “and you are not likely to find the Gulf in the index, and, at the most, mentioned in passing in the text.”

He wants his readers to realize that the Gulf of Mexico is important to every American, not just “Gulfsiders.”

“All Americans . . . have a historical and ecological connection to the Gulf, and I sought to reclaim the Gulf’s true identity, which I believed had been lost to the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “I wanted people to know that the Gulf is more than an oil sump or hurricane alley – that it is an ecologically vibrant place with a rich, interesting, and informative history, meaning it speaks to who we are as a people.”

The author’s fascination with the Gulf began at age 10, when he spent much of his childhood along the Gulf Coast towns of Fort Walton Beach and the Tampa Bay area of Florida. After undergraduate school in Florida, he completed a doctoral program in history at Brandeis University, near Boston.

It was research opportunities for his dissertation at Brandeis that brought him to Jackson in the early ‘90s – a two-year stint that resulted in his first book, Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez Since 1930, which won the Charles S. Sydnor Prize from the Southern Historical Association for the best book in Southern history in 2001.

Davis said he came to realize “that I needed to write the dissertation in Mississippi to capture the sense of place that I wanted to convey,” adding that he “also met a lot of nice people in Jackson,” some of whom would become close friends.

He later pursued studies in environmental history, realizing it had become his “true passion.” Today he teaches classes in American environmental history at the University of Florida, including courses like The History of Water, The History of Sustainability, and History by Nature.

Among other books by Davis are An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, (a biography of Douglas which won the gold medal in nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards); and Only in Mississippi: A Guide for the Adventurous Traveler, which he co-wrote with his friend Lorraine Redd.

In the process, Davis acknowledges, he learned things about the Magnolia State that have stayed with him.

“I’ve said more than once that Mississippians are the nicest people I’ve ever met,” Davis said. “One of things I love about Mississippians is that they are always looking for some type of connection to you. ‘Where are you from and who’s your people?’ they’d often ask, and, more often than not, (they would) find a connection.”

Below, he shares a bit of inside information about the writing of his Pulitzer Prize-winning eighth book.

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea is an exhaustive history of the Gulf of Mexico and its enormous impact on the human species – throughout the United States and beyond. How did you develop your strong interest in this topic?

Jack E. Davis

Having grown up on the Gulf coast, spending a lot of time in and on it, I developed an intimate relationship with the Gulf. Whenever I was away from it, when I was in the Navy after high school, enrolled in graduate school, living in Birmingham, where I taught at UAB for six years, I missed it. I missed it not being a short drive from me, its smell, and its weather, not to mention its sunsets.

After finishing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas book, which is really a dual biography of a person and a place (the Everglades), I thought about writing another biography of a place. Given my background, the Gulf was a natural fit, and when I explored the topic I learned no one had written a comprehensive history of it. I spent five to six years researching and writing the book.

How has your Pulitzer win impacted your life?

It has taken over my life for now. I didn’t expect that. Didn’t know what to expect. Every day I’m fielding requests to speak or to write something. I have two dozen talks on my calendar for the fall, and 2019 is filling up. Receiving the prize is a great honor. I never in my wildest dreams thought the book could win – even after it received the Kirkus Prize in November and was chosen as a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award – or that I would ever be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

People ask what it feels like to win a Pulitzer, and I say it feels like someone else’s life. But as I see it, the recognition is not for the author but the work, as Faulkner once said. In this case, it is also recognition for the sea itself. It has been heartening to see positive attention for a change come to this wonderful body of water, attention turned toward the Gulf for something other than a horrific hurricane or oil spill.

Considering the depth of this book, what prompted you to take on such a substantial project?

My last book was 200 pages longer than this one, so writing this book felt something like downsizing. That said, I was initially daunted by how to organize and compose a book about a sea. I knew I wanted the natural environment, not human events, to guide the story, the biography, of the Gulf. I wanted to show nature as an agent in the course of human history, as it indeed is but as it is not regarded by most historians.

To bring nature to the forefront, I organized the chapters around natural characteristics of the Gulf – birds, fish, estuaries, beaches, barrier islands, weather, oil – and integrated nature writing with historical narrative, saving human stories to shape the narrative and illuminate the relationship between civilization and nature.

Your mention Mississippi often in The Gulf, describing many historical events (hurricanes, man-made interventions to its shoreline, seaside development, tourism, etc.), and devoting an entire chapter to the creative drive and devotion to nature that defined the life of artist Walter Anderson. As a Gulf state, how are we doing environmentally and in respect to conservation efforts? How do we compare to other Gulf states?

Mississippi is pretty representative of the other Gulf states. They’ve all engaged with the environment in both wise and unwise ways. All the states have squandered the biological wealth of the great estuarine environment that the Gulf is, mainly by destroying it needlessly, sometimes unwittingly but other times knowingly.

Places like Ocean Springs have been smart about controlling growth, and Jackson County has been thoughtful about protecting its coastal wetlands and the Pascagoula River.

We have to attribute these measures to a lot of people who understand the connection between a healthy natural environment and a healthy human population. They are the heroes in this book, thousands of volunteers and underpaid staff of nonprofit or government organizations, and they are in every Gulf state, and we who enjoy the Gulf and its waters and wildlife owe them much.

In the book, you say it’s common to cry “natural disaster” after weather events “carry away beaches” and destroy property, and you explain the role of “human behavior” in such occurrences. Can nature and local economies in Gulf cities work together successfully?

Absolutely. In the 1970s, most of the bays and bayous and sounds around the Gulf were edging toward ecological collapse from unrelenting pollution, mainly industrial and wastewater discharges, and careless engineering projects. But we’ve since cleaned up those bodies of water, brought them back to be thriving places again.

Tampa Bay was a mess when I was growing up. It is clean and full of life now, hosting bird species I never saw growing up, and the economy around the bay is as robust as ever. Two decades ago downtown Pensacola was a desolate place, but after the water utility removed its broken-down worthless wastewater treatment plant out of the area, downtown quickly came alive. It’s booming, a major draw for locals and tourists. I end the book telling the story of Cedar Key, Fla., and what the people there have done to coexist successfully, to its economic benefit, with the estuarine waters surrounding it.

Your skill as a writer is breathtaking, as you weave history and ecology with the wisdom and reflection of great writers and artists while examining the past and future of the Gulf, an inimitable force of nature. Explain how you’ve developed your unique and powerful style of writing.

I read good writing and pay attention to the composition of paragraphs and the construction of sentences and the selection of descriptive words, and how the author tells a compelling story. I study the writing as I read. In my own writing, I am as interested in getting the words right as I am in getting the history right. I’m a slow writer, a plodder, and I revise, revise, revise.

Writing the opening paragraphs of the book, the last words I wrote for the book, took a month of false starts and endless revisions. As important as anything, I have a writing partner, Cynthia Barnett, author of the superb book Rain: A Natural and Cultural History. She reads in draft everything I write, and I read everything she writes, and we trust and listen to each other.

As I tell my students, identifying your intended audience at the outset is essential, and once you do, imagine them beside you as you write, asking yourself constantly, “Will they understand what I am saying here, will I bore them with the way I am speaking to them, or will my writing keep them engaged?”

Please tell me about your next book you are working on now.

My next book is titled Bird of Paradox: How the Bald Eagle Saved the Soul of America. It is a cultural and natural history of the bald eagle, which lives exclusively in North America, that looks at the historical relationship between people and the bird, from pre-European native cultures to modern American society.

I am interested in how this bird came back from near population collapse in the lower 48 states in the 1960s and in how the American rendezvous with it serves as an allegory of the American relationship with the natural world. That includes how our country originally planted its national identity in the continent’s rarefied natural endowments, then lost its connection to that identity, but now, as the eagle thrives again, it might regain it.

Mississippi Book Festival to feature bookselling panel

By Guest Author

On August 14, 2018

In Lemuria Culture, Mississippi Book Festival

By Valerie Walley. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 12)

The fourth annual Mississippi Book Festival will be held Saturday, August 18. At 9:30 a.m. the festival will feature a panel with booksellers in renowned bookstores that have ties to Mississippi. John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books, here in Jackson, conceived the panel.

Openings and expansions of independent bookstores are on the rise after a couple of decades of big box and online expansion, and we’re now experiencing their renaissance. It’s no secret that a lot of their success is coming from their community involvement. Real estate developers are courting these businesses because they understand how important it is to have people connecting in a retail space. A bookstore is a natural attraction.

At the heart of our book festival is the book. The bookstore is where the books come to life and reach the market, where they are built and fed by buzz, publicity, marketing. Where they go to succeed or not. Independent bookstores are where many books are championed and made into bestsellers by the booksellers’ connections with the publishers in developing the marketing and their outreach to their customers through word of mouth, hand-selling, shelf-talkers (written bookseller recommendations), and author events.

Our panel will explore the allure of this profession, what it’s like to own/operate/manage these unique businesses, how they are intrinsically involved with their communities, an aspect that can’t be achieved by chains and online. We’ll discuss how important books have changed lives, current books that should be discovered, new books to look forward to reading and owning this fall that will influence readers and our society.

We’ll also have some fun anecdotes to share–author stories, customer service encounters, how one can become easily addicted to this business and never leave. We’ll also discuss the future of retail, the future of bookstores, and celebrate the importance of books in our world.

The panelists (with a cumulative experience of over 100 years) are Karen Hayes, Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN; Tim Huggins, Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA; Cody Morrison, Square Books, Oxford, MS; and Bob White, Sundog Books in Seaside, FL. Valerie Walley, formerly a bookseller at Lemuria Bookstore, will moderate the panel.

Valerie Walley serves on the board and author committee of the Mississippi Book Festival and lives in Ridgeland.

Author: Guest Author (Page 14 of 28)

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Mississippi Book Festival to feature bookselling panel

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