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Familial Fright: ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’ by Shaun Hamill

On September 9, 2019

A Cosmology of Monsters, the debut from Shaun Hamill, has a story so richly compelling on an emotional level and so full of creeping dread that it is more meant to be read, than to be read about. Because of this, I will do my best to refrain from revealing too many details from the plot of the book.

Instead, I will say this: Cosmology opens with two quotes. The first is a quote from Ray Bradbury about the legendary actor Lon Chaney, known for playing The Wolf Man. The second is an excerpt from The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. These quotes are masterfully chosen, simply because they perfectly set the tone of the novel.

The latter quote exemplifies the “fear of the unknown” that made Lovecraft, though a deeply problematic figure in literature, the powerhouse of horror that influenced nearly every writer in the genre to this day. It is the the eerie feeling of not fully understanding what is happening; the helplessness of an observer. Hamill executes this masterfully.

The first quote, however, is far more meaningful. It describes the effect that Lon Chaney had on audiences, not as a monster, but as a man tapping into the monster we fear is within each of us. It puts forward the notion that Lovecraft may have been wrong, that the greatest fear isn’t of the unknown, but rather a fear of oneself. Hamill certainly weaves a tale of Eldritch Horror that fits right in with the tales of Lovecraft, but where the book shines is not with the monsters, but with the people.

The central story of the novel revolves around two generations of the Turner family, and their creation: a scary Halloween attraction that comes to be known as The Wandering Dark. The protagonist, the youngest son of the family, narrates the tale as a chronicle of his history, and the story very much unfolds this way. Yes, there is horror. Yes, there are monsters, but at the heart of all of this is a compelling work of fiction about grief, mental illness, love, hardships, and family. Hamill’s shining achievement is not in creating a new mythos of dread, though he has certainly done that, it is in crafting a new piece of Eldritch Horror that is quite approachable and universal. I’m confident that anyone could read A Cosmology of Monsters and relate to it on some level, and that is truly rare for a book in this genre.

I loved this book. Anyone who has spoken to me knows this. It’s my favorite book of 2019 and possibly of the last few years. If you want to read something truly unique and special, and maybe even get a few scares too, come get a copy.

Shaun Hamill will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 18, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss A Cosmology of Monsters.

Author Q & A with Téa Obreht

By Guest Author

On September 8, 2019

In Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

Téa Obreht

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Q & A with Sarah M. Broom

By Guest Author

On September 1, 2019

In African-American, New Orleans, Southern Culture, Southern History

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

In her debut book The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom presents a powerful memoir of the New Orleans she experienced as a child (growing up in a family of 12 children), and the house that swallowed up the dreams and finances of her resilient mother.

Broom earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and won a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2016. She was a finalist for the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction in 2011, and has been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and The MacDowell Colony.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, and O, The Oprah Magazine, and others.

Today, Broom lives in Harlem.

Sarah M. Broom

The Yellow House is a richly detailed memoir of your life, sharing not just stories of your immediate family but those of at least two preceding generations. Why was it important to you to devote so much detail to previous generations to fully tell this story?

I wanted to provide context, a kind of grounding, to situate the story in a lineage. To begin at the moment of my birth would have been dishonest, and also would have ignored the people who compose me and make me who I am. I was setting up a matriarchal world, establishing the women who preceded me within the City of New Orleans. The story of my mother’s house felt, to me, indistinguishable from the story of my Grandmother Lolo and her many houses.

The neighborhood in which the Yellow House was built was part of New Orleans East, touted in the early 1960s as a “new frontier” and a “Model City” like nothing that had come before it. Describe the idea behind its expected growth, and why it would eventually fail.

New Orleans East was an enormous area of the city, east of the Industrial Canal, a navigation channel opened in 1923. Long before New Orleans East, Inc. arrived, there was a collection of communities within the east including Orangedale Subdivision, where my mother eventually bought the Yellow House. New Orleans East, Inc. began to build out the more easternmost parts of the area, which created a flurry of excitement and news stories. Eventually, the entire area of the city took on the corporate name. The East failed for many reasons–the oil bust, white flight which led to divestment, public policy and city planning choices, and inattention.

Your mother, Ivory Mae Soule Webb, was a 19-year-old widow when she bought the Yellow House in 1961, paying the $3,200 price with life insurance money after her first husband’s death. By 1964, when they moved in, she was remarried to Simon Broom, and they began married life with six children between them. Tell me about your mom’s pride in her home, and how important it was to her to keep everything looking nice, inside and out.

My mother loved to make a beautiful home. She was raised by women who took pride in all the places where she lived. For my mother, owning a house of her own was buying into the American dream. Through home ownership, I suspect she learned quite a bit about the frailty of the American dream, about the critical importance of the solidity of the “ground,” so to speak. (It was) understood through time that her investment might not build wealth for her as it might for someone else.

After several career moves and the devastation of Katrina, you eventually were drawn back to New Orleans. At the end, you state: “The house was the only thing that belonged to all of us.” Ultimately, what did (and does) the Yellow House mean to you and your family?

It is to this day a repository. Witness to our lives. The place our mother paid for, in which she built a world full of joy and surprise and sometimes sadness, but it belonged to her and it still is ours even as a memory.

Lemuria has selected The Yellow House its September 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Small towns, big issues get help from touring author in Susan Cushman’s ‘Friends of the Library’

By Guest Author

On August 26, 2019

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

By Tracy Carr. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 25)

When Adele Covington hits the road for a book tour in some small Mississippi communities, it turns out she’s part author, part fairy godmother. The ten short stories in Susan Cushman’s Friends of the Library deal with big issues in small towns with heart and compassion.

Hosted by each site’s Friends of the Library, a non-profit advocacy group aimed at supporting public libraries through fundraising and promotion, Adele adapts her program to the group and, depending on their interests, discusses either her novel, which deals with a sexually abused graffiti artist, or her memoir, which details her experiences with her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.

If the descriptions of Adele’s books sound a bit familiar, there’s a reason for that: Cushman herself embarked on a book tour of Mississippi libraries, hosted by the Friends, where she discussed her novel, Cherry Bomb, which features a sexually abused graffiti artist, and her memoir, Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Face Alzheimer’s. Friends of the Library is loosely based on Cushman’s real-life series of library programs, but with—presumably—a little more magic.

(By the way, there are 135 Friends of the Library groups in Mississippi. If you’re a library supporter and want to make a difference, join your local chapter!)

At each library, Adele meets someone who catches her eye. She strikes up a conversation, suggests a cup of coffee or lunch, and listens as the person unburdens their problems to her. Adele, who would be a busybody if she didn’t get great results, offers advice, connects people, and fixes their lives. Imagine if Touched by an Angel were set in Mississippi libraries.

Adele’s not fixing minor problems, either. The problems these folks have are serious: homelessness, alcoholism, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, eating disorders, and kidnapping, to name a few. Adele’s quick thinking, easygoing manner, and trustworthiness mean she’s able to offer big solutions to the big issues.

In Oxford, she meets Avery, a part-time library employee and full-time aspiring writer. He’s written a fantasy novel about a dystopian society where newborn babies are taken away from their parents and prominent families get to take their pick. The rest of the children grow up in warehouse orphanages, and later stage an uprising to find their birth parents.

Over coffee at Square Books, Adele listens to how closely Avery’s background and novel intersect and encourages him to enroll in a creative writing workshop, where he forms an immediate connection with a creative writing professor 20 years his senior. I won’t spoil things, but this book is all about happy endings.

The same goes for the homeless man in Eupora, the kidnapped girl in West Point, and the abused wife in Aberdeen: they all, with Adele’s help, find solid solutions to their life-threatening problems.

And that’s a good thing. Cushman doesn’t shy away from real-life issues, and while the way those issues are dealt with might be swift, it also gives us a little hope.

Do some of the problems wrap themselves up a little too neatly? Perhaps, but just as we don’t complain that a TV show’s conflict is resolved tidily at the end of each episode, we shouldn’t be bothered that Adele is always in the right place at the right time with the right words.

We could all use a little more sweetness and magic in our lives, and that’s what Friends of the Library delivers.

Tracy Carr is the Library Services Director at the Mississippi Library Commission in Jackson. She also serves as director of the Mississippi Center for the Book, and is a Mississippi Book Festival advisory board member.

Susan Cushman will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, August 27, at 5:00 to sign and discuss her novel, Friends of the Library.

Author Q & A with Karl Marlantes

By Guest Author

On August 11, 2019

In Fiction, Historical Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karl Marlantes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Q & A with Lisa Howorth

By Guest Author

On August 4, 2019

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

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

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

Lisa Howorth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Q & A with Martin Clark

By Guest Author

On July 28, 2019

In Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 28)

Devoting decades to his life to the rough-and-tumble field of law has been pure inspiration for the fictional stories that have made Martin Clark one of the most awarded and acclaimed legal thriller writers today.

The latest evidence of that claim: The Substitution Order, Clark’s newest novel, crafting a tale that embraces, at times, despair, hope, and unanswered questions about a lawyer who’s hit rock bottom after an unrestrained summer of bad choices leaves him broke and broken-hearted.

Martin is a retired Virginia circuit court judge of 27 years whose previous novels (The Jezebel Remedy, The Legal Limit, Plain Heathen Mischief, and The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living) have garnered awards including a New York Times Notable Book, A Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year, a Bookmark Magazine Book of the Year, a Boston Globe Book of the Year, a winner of the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award in both 2009 and 2016, and many more.

He and his wife Deana, a photographer, live on a Virginia farm with dogs, cats, chickens, and three donkeys.

After graduating from law school 35 years ago and going on to serve as a Virginia circuit court judge for 27 of those years, the law–and writing novels with law-related stories–must have become somewhat second nature for you. Your first book, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, was published in 2000, followed by three others and now The Substitution Order. All have garnered much attention. Has it surprised you that your books were immediately met with such success, which continues today?

Martin Clark

I probably shouldn’t admit this–your version sure makes for a better history–but my books were definitely not “immediately met with success.” Like so many other writers, I collected years and years of rejection letters, until 1999, when Knopf took a chance on The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. To this day, at every gig I do, I read from those rejection letters. Here’s a favorite riff from a 1983 butt-kicking, sent to me by a New York literary agent: “I read five pages and wondered if you’ve ever been scared by a performing flea; read 10 more and developed a severe case of vertigo.” That said, I’ve had an excellent run since then, and I’m very grateful for my good fortune, which is, all things given, pretty darn surprising.

Your works carry a dry sense of humor that is built into the twists of the plots and the personalities of the characters. Have you found that to be one of the most appealing aspects of writing–does it come naturally to you?

Pretty much. Plus, there’s so much sadness and heartbreak in the court system that occasional levity helps all of us get through the days. Eighty percent of my job as a judge was sentencing people for theft, drug charges, and probation violations–a smile or a wry comment or quiet joke often made some weeks just a tiny bit more tolerable.

In The Substitution Order, you place a likeable, down-and-out attorney in the position of combatting scam artists trying to undo his career for good, even as he struggles to win it back by playing by the rules. His journey plays out amidst health issues, relationship foibles, and legal loopholes. How do you go about developing characters and their circumstances, and do you tend to base the substance of your plots on what you’ve seen during years of law and court experience?

I absolutely draw on my time in the courtroom–write what you know, correct? But the characters and the plots are largely fictionalized, given that much of what happens in court is frequently mundane and routine. More to the point, if, as a reader, you invest in a book, you don’t want a legal primer, you want a good ride, some entertainment, some twists and turns, and maybe a very small instruction at the end. And, to be clear, in The Substitution Order, Kevin Moore certainly knows the rules and how to use them, but I wouldn’t say he follows them to the letter.

The end of The Substitution Order was a bittersweet surprise. Is that in sync with your experience of handling legal cases that may not have turned out as you expected?

Thank you for mentioning that. As writers, we hope to tell a realistic, entertaining story, create likeable characters that readers will root for, and then provide a payoff over the last few pages. “Bittersweet surprises” is a great way to put it and exactly what I hope The Substitution Order delivers. As for handling court cases and how I’ve seen them turn out, virtually any lawyer will tell you that you just never know. Plus, as I highlight in the book, sometimes it’s a victory for a litigant when things don’t go totally and completely sideways, and you sneak out with minor wounds and not a full-blown bloodletting.

What have you enjoyed most about creating these stories, and what would you say is your biggest challenge when writing?

My biggest writing challenge these days is finding the stamina and focus to slog through all the technical, picayune final edits. I love writing, but debating commas and preferred spellings and capitalization rules is tedious. Necessary, but tedious.

You can check behind me, and you’ll discover I’ve never said anything like this before–I generally don’t care to praise my own writing–but The Substitution Order is by far the best novel I’ve ever put on paper. On December 30, 2015, I almost died, and it took me about a year to fully recover. I was lucky enough to have a steadfast wife and a godsend, genius surgeon, and now I’m fixed, totally normal. So, truthfully, I enjoyed simply being able to sit down and write this novel, being able to do it. Brushing against ruin tends to make you slightly wiser and a little more thoughtful. As my editor told me about this book: “You’ve always had a great story to tell, but now you actually have something worthwhile to say.”

Martin Clark will be at Lemuria on Thursday, August 15, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss The Substitution Order.

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

By Guest Author

On July 19, 2019

In Fiction

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

The American canon just got a new addition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

A story of love and loss and hope in ‘Haunting Paris’ by Mamta Chaudhry

By Guest Author

On June 24, 2019

In Fiction

By Seetha Srinivasan. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 23)

In the end a lifetime is not enough, the heart yearns for more. Who can reason with desire? The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know.

One day Sylvie will push open that curtained door to come to me, and despite all that I have known, at the sight of her I will finally believe that all losses are restored and sorrows end.

These words of Julien, the spectral protagonist of Mamta Chaudhry’s Haunting Paris, begin and conclude the novel, the crux of which is the story of the Jewish psychologist Julien and his lover, music teacher Sylvie. Haunting Paris is set in 1989 and recounts Sylvie’s search for Julien’s sister Clara’s daughter who vanished in war-time Paris. Clara and another daughter perished in the Holocaust. Julien, wracked with guilt for not being able to save his sister and her family, is convinced that one of his nieces is alive and spent years searching for her. After his death, a chance find of a letter impels Sylvie to continue Julien’s quest.

This is the barest outline of the plot. Like all fine fiction, it is in its unfolding that Haunting Paris captivates.

We witness the romance of the upper-class married Julien and his sensitive lover Sylvie, the lives of his children and his wife Isabelle (who will not give up Julien), Sylvie’s discovery of the letter that allows her to trace the lives of Clara and her daughters, and the fortuitous encounter that brings their story full circle.

Chaudhry narrates with sensitive attention the lives of her main characters and brings the same skill to drawing portraits of her entire cast, among them: the kindly concierge Ana Caravalho, sisters Marie and Mathilde who protect Clara and her daughters only to unwittingly betray them, and Sylvie’s American lodgers Alice and Will with their experiences of life in Paris.

The novel moves easily between its setting during celebrations of the bicentennial of the Revolution and the horrors of war-time Paris and Nazi atrocities. Chaudhry’s ability to sustain this structure even as she risks having a ghostly narrator is impressive.

The city seems almost a character in itself, and Chaudhry’s evocation of Paris is superb. Her ability to render telling details and convey the sights, sounds, and the very texture of life puts the reader at its center. Those who know Paris will revel in this marvelous re-creation; those who do not will finish the novel wishing to visit.

It is primarily through Julien’s eyes that we view Paris and its history. “But when the Bastille fell into their hands, they discovered half-a-dozen prisoners in the fortress, seven to be precise, and the faces of the freed men gaped at their jailer’s severed head, both wearing identical expressions of astonishment at this shift of power from the grasp of kings into the hands of the people.”

On the Eiffel Tower: “I admire the way its sequined lights shine like early stars in the dark, the filigreed ironwork making it seem to float weightlessly, for all its substance, an inspired emblem for the city of light—in both senses of the word—not just luminosity but also lightness, which we prize above all, in wit, in art, in life.”

Haunting Paris, with its complex and intriguing structure, carefully researched historical details woven with adroit and meticulous care into the narrative, deeply sympathetic characters whose story moves between mysteries of past and present showing the myriad ways in which the past never loses its hold, is indeed, as Kirkus noted: “an elegant debut.” It is also an absorbing must-read.

Seetha Srinivasan is the director emerita of the University Press of Mississippi.

Mamta Chaudhry will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, June 26, at 5:00 p.m. in a joint event with Alex Ohlin (author Dual Citizens) to sign and discuss Haunting Paris.

From Massachusetts to Mississippi in Tammy Turner’s ‘Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues’

By Guest Author

On June 17, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Blues, Music

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 19)

In simply stating, “anyplace they give you food through iron bars is going to be good food,” Dick Waterman encapsulates himself. Tammy L. Turner’s Dick Waterman, A Life in Blues demonstrates his belief in getting the most of life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

A member of the Blues Hall of Fame, Waterman managed, booked, and/or photographed essentially the entire Delta Blues revival as well as the electric blues apex of the 60s. Who else could write B.B. King’s biography, introduce unreleased Robert Johnson tracks to Eric Clapton, or receive an apology from Bill Graham? Guided by his level head and committed heart, Dick made many allies and musical history.

As a young stutterer in Massachusetts, Waterman found full expression in the written word. His Boston University journalism degree initially landed him sports and financial assignments near Greenwich Village and Cambridge. Dick bore witness to each areas’ historic folk explosion.

The heady minimalism tangentially included Delta Blues. A dialed-in segment became keenly interested in the solo acoustic blues artists of the 20s and 30s. When it came to light that certain members of the anointed may still be living, the quest was on.

Waterman supplemented his early career by freelancing music features and part-timing with the agency handling the rediscovered Rev. Gary Davis and Jesse Fuller. Based on hearsay, he backed into his life’s work.

During a Boston stint in ‘64, someone heard Bukka White say that Ma Rainey saw Son House at a Memphis movie theater recently. Contemporary of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, Son House stood prominent among the original guard. The notion he was alive created urgency.

Eschewing foresight, Waterman, a computer programmer, a future guitarist of Canned Heat, and the eventual owner of Yazoo Records and Blue Goose Records, all jumped in a Beetle headed for Memphis.

A week roving Memphis and Tunica County produced a phone number. House’s stepdaughter in Detroit explained he’s been living in Rochester, NY for years. They got back in the car.

Upon arrival, they had no problem meeting and field-recording House. But while others in the party felt satisfied, Dick wondered what would become of him. Where’s the recognition? He used those tapes to secure a booking at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

Equipped with this vested mindset, Waterman’s reputation among promoters and artists organically accumulated a staggering list of legendary clients and partners. They included Mississippi John Hurt, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams, Little Walter, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Arthur Big Boy Crudup, J.B. Hutto, and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Although some artists leaned brazen, many proved incredibly vulnerable. Dick deftly advocated for appropriate appearance fees, realistic travel schedules, and overdue royalties for decades.

When these artists traveled to Boston, they stayed at Waterman’s apartment. On one occasion, a friend arrived to visit Son House. He brought a Radcliffe student named Bonnie Raitt. When Buddy Guy and Junior Wells played support on The Rolling Stones’ 1970 European tour, Dick asked Bonnie to join him. She would never register for another semester. Their romantic relationship would evolve to a strictly professional one, and Waterman booked Raitt’s gigs through the mid-80s.

Over the years, talent rosters dwindled, and the music landscape changed. In 1984, Bill Ferris, then Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss, invited his old friend Dick to present his photos at a brown bag lecture. They first met when Bill was in grad school at Penn.

Within two years, Waterman moved to Oxford for a fresh start and a return to his roots. He dabbled in promotion, scored a weekly column with the Oxford Eagle, pulled out his cameras for the first time in 20 years, and began marketing his classic shots. Today, Dick still calls The Velvet Ditch his home.

By interweaving primary source and narrative, Turner recounts Waterman’s incredible achievements and hilarious horror stories and, in every case, exhibiting how his conscientiousness benefited the perpetuation and documentation of American music.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Tammy Tuner will be at Lemuria on Saturday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. to sign copies of Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues.

Tag: Author Event (Page 3 of 15)

Familial Fright: ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’ by Shaun Hamill

Author Q & A with Téa Obreht

Author Q & A with Sarah M. Broom

Small towns, big issues get help from touring author in Susan Cushman’s ‘Friends of the Library’

Author Q & A with Karl Marlantes

Author Q & A with Lisa Howorth

Author Q & A with Martin Clark

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

A story of love and loss and hope in ‘Haunting Paris’ by Mamta Chaudhry

From Massachusetts to Mississippi in Tammy Turner’s ‘Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues’

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