Behind the Scenes with Donna Everhart--Part I

Congratulations to Darlene who won the seven audio book giveaway last week.

*************

As promised two weeks ago, Donna Everhart generously agreed to give us a glimpse into how she developed THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET. (If you haven't had a chance to read my review, I hope you will now. This interview will make a lot more sense if you do!) I find it fascinating to see how authors come up with their stories and I bet many of you do too. 

QUESTION #1

CAROL: How did you decide on the main idea for the story? Was it hearing about the flood of 1940 in Silva, NC?  

DONNA: I was nervous about coming up with an idea for my second book after my debut, THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE was so well-received.  It's hard to follow up a story like that, one that's gritty, graphic, and delivers such a gut punch. 

One thing I did know; I wanted to write something very different, and I wanted to set the story in the North Carolina mountains, first, because I love the region, second, because it has so much history.  I've stood at many a lookout on a bright day with the sun shining, staring at the peaks and valleys, watching the shadow of clouds passing over the hillsides, enjoying the beauty of the scenery, yet, I have also felt a sense of the mysterious, and an appreciation for the rugged hardiness of those who came and made a life for themselves in the area.

Back in the late 90s, my husband and I hiked to a preserved, historic cabin in Doughton Park, called the Caudill Cabin.  It's maintained by descendants of the Caudill's and North Carolina's Parks and Recreation system.  The hike, which totaled fifteen miles, was strenuous, but worth it.  Getting to see something built in the early 1900s and that was still standing, was extraordinary.  This cabin, as the signage says, is one of the only remaining structures left standing from the 1916 Basin Cove flood. It housed a total of eight people, two parents, and six children. The number of inhabitants originally was thought to have been sixteen, but someone at some point (maybe a member of the Caudill family) corrected that.  The interior of the cabin couldn't have been more than about 150 square feet, and it was mind boggling to think about it sheltering eight individuals. 

Caudill Cabin, Hikers of Iredell Club

I am fascinated by this sort of thing, a piece of history right before my very eyes, and I have always had this tendency to want to let my mind wander about, thinking about the people who lived in it, how they managed to survive, picturing what their lives must have been like.  On top of that, there was the flood that forced this family to move.  I did some research on flooding in the western part of North Carolina and learned there had not only been the 1916 flood, which the Caudills were part of, but one in 1940, which was just as devastating. I began to think, "what if a family tried to make it after this sort of devastation happened?"  I had to believe there were some who did, and then I began to think, "exactly how would that work? If they had nothing?"

Pictures from Donna's hike with her husband. Look carefully at the picture on the lower right
 and you can see Donna peeking out from the cabin doorway.

The combination of my love for this part of my home state, the interesting hike to a cabin that depicted the reality of the lifestyle, and the floods all provided the inspiration. That was a LOT of material to work with, and after I settled on the 1940 event as the timeframe I wanted to write about, I began writing. 

Near Marshall, NC 1944

QUESTION #2

CAROL: Why (and perhaps how) did you decide to make Laci autistic? 

DONNA: The why likely comes from the fact I like to work in areas where I have little knowledge, to explore differences in order to better understand them. A lot of progress has been made with regard to autism, but just like those who first began to diagnose it in the 1800s, who knows where the research will be fifty years from now.  The term "idiot" was used in earlier time frames for those who appeared to have strange behaviors, and seemed incapable of learning in the same way as the rest of society.  I researched about autistic savants, those who have an uncanny ability for mathematics, music, or memory.  We likely all think about the movie RAIN MAN when we think of an autistic savant.   

According to the Autism Research Institute, "The reason why some autistic individuals have savant abilities is not known... Dr. Rimland speculates that these individuals have incredible concentration abilities and can focus their complete attention to a specific area of interest. Admittedly, researchers in psychology feel that we will never truly understand memory and cognition until we understand the autistic savant."

How I decided is the desire to include what might offer a different twist, to explore a uniqueness in a very different setting from today, to consider unusual situations a family might encounter with others, and their perspectives. I began to think what if there was a young girl in 1940 in a remote area, with extraordinary musical talents, who'd been diagnosed as an "idiot savant."  What would this mean to the family dynamic, and in particular, how would it impact a younger sibling?  

Laci by Cyndi Hoelzle
This picture is a part of Trio.

QUESTION #3

CAROL: Why and how did you decide to include a traveling carnival? 

DONNA: Although I haven't been to our state fair in about twenty years, I do remember how captivated I was as a child when my parents would take me and I'd see all of those mysterious colorful banners and the carnies screaming about "Freaks!" and "Come see them all!" There was this air of suspense, and intrigue as I passed by the tents.  My parents never allowed my brother or I to go see the Man With The Alligator Skin, or, "The Two-Headed Goat," for instance, but I sure wanted to. People who were being exploited back then, like the bearded woman, (androgen excess, or hypertrichosis) can today be explained away by a medical reason, but there is this wish as a kid to believe in the bizarre, the inexplicable, when it comes to the "attractions" that were and are so typical of those traveling shows or carnivals. Because of Laci's situation, it seemed like this would make for an interesting dynamic to the story, to have them experience something they'd never experienced before, yet to have it sort of backfire when one of their own is used for that exploitation.

Aside from that, it was also the fact this family had been through so much post-flood, and I needed some way to give them a break, a reprieve.  Because they performed in some sort of musical capacity from the beginning, I felt it could work as a natural progression for the story.  I actually thought about having them stick to what Wallis Ann feared - go around the countryside "begging."  However, this was just coming into the post-Depression era, and while I knew people of the mountains would gladly give what they had, they wouldn't have much to spare.  In reality, the Stampers wouldn't be able to do this for long and get anywhere.  I could see early on if I wrote it like that, I was setting them up for more failure and when would the starvation, hardships ever end?  How would I turn the story so they stood the chance to not only survive, but to recover what they'd lost?  

                             Clogging Video by David Hoffman, shot in 1964

Come back next week for Part II when Donna shares some aspects of her research.

GIVEAWAY

If you are interested in winning the audio book of THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET (courtesy Tantor Audio) please leave me your name and email address, particularly if you are new to my blog. I'll draw a winner on June 28.

DONNA'S NEXT BOOK! 

THE FORGIVING KIND, will go on sale, January 29th, 2019, with an official publication date of February 5th, 2019. That story is also a southern fiction coming of age novel, and is about a

twelve year old young girl called Sonny Creech, who lives with her family in Jones County NC, on a cotton farm. Sonny has the special gift of water divination, a talent she shares with her father.  After a tragic accident claims his life, she and her family become entangled with a reclusive neighbor named Frank Fowler who offers to finance that year's cotton crop. It's set in 1955.

The Road to Bittersweet: An Audio Book Review and Giveaway

When I read in the Tantor Audio new release list that The Road To Bittersweet was set in North Carolina in the forties, I knew this was a book for me. This was my first book by Donna Everhart, but I suspect it won't be my last. Today's post is a review of the book that is based on the Flood of 1940 in Silva, NC. On June 18th and 25th I am posting a two-part interview with Donna that provides the backstory for this dramatic novel that both young adults and adults will enjoy. (Note: Since I reviewed this as an audio book, quotes might not be exact. I did my best to capture the words as I listened.)

Review

The book opens with Wallis Ann Stamper, the protagonist, turning fourteen and telling a birthing story. Not her own story, like the reader might expect, but rather the story of her older sister, Laci, "whose name alone conjures a frail and delicate bein'." Wallis Ann repeats what she's heard her mother tell: how when the granny woman delivered Laci she "come out the color of a ripened blueberry." Although Laci survived that difficult birth, she doesn't fit in with the harsh way of life in Western North Carolina, but "exists as a whisper you barely hear" or a "shadow on a partly cloudy day."

Granny women
From Donna Everhart's Pinterest board

Mute from birth but gifted musically, the local doctor diagnoses Laci as an idiot savant; Laci hears a tune once and then plays it perfectly on the one thing that matters the most--her fiddle. (Today she would be diagnosed autistic savant.) Wallis Ann is given the responsibility of taking care of her sister; as a result Laci, tags along behind her older sister wherever Wallis Anne goes. Since the author spends so much time in the opening scenes showing Laci through Wallis Ann's eyes, the reader knows that Laci will be an important secondary character.

Wallis Ann's family including her little brother Seth, lives besides Stampers Creek. On the night of Wallis Ann's birthday, a monstrous storm hits their cabin. As the creek rises, Wallis Ann sees her father's face get tight, "smoothing out the normal crinkles and curves." With Laci clinging to her fiddle, they pack the truck cab "tight as ticks" and try to escape the rising waters. The fear in Wallis Ann's mouth "tastes like bitterness."

The creek, fed from the roaring waters of the Tuckaseigee River, becomes their enemy rather than a stream by which Wallis Ann and Laci had rested; Laci sitting on the Wishing Rock playing her fiddle, Wallis Ann thinking. In excruciating, tension-filled detail, the author shows as each family member is swept off the roof of the truck. "The muddy wall of water is like a charging, angry bull." As Wallis Ann fights the current, she sees dead animals and people floating downstream and wonders if it's selfish that she doesn't want her family to go under. 

Flood of 1940

"As spent as a nickel in a dime store," Wallis Ann finds refuge by climbing a tree where she stays for several days. When it's finally safe to come down, she is exhausted, weak, and starving. She's worried about her family but "I refused to cry over what I didn't know." 

On the road trying to get back to Stamper's Creek, Wallis Anne is met by Joe Calhoun and his son; Joe's wife was crushed by a pine tree that fell on their house. Wallis Ann smells his grief and misery, even as they lift the tree and rescue his little daughter. 

Flood of 1940

When Wallis Ann returns to the property, there aren't even two chairs left from their home. The oak that her great-grandpa had planted as a sapling had fallen down. Nothing was left but the stone foundation which her father had built twenty years ago. "A part of my history had been taken away."

Like Cricket in Jo Hackl's debut middle-grade novel, Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe," Wallis Ann listened to her father's stories about survival and is able to build a fire, boil water, and with the gifts of food from Joe, can sustain herself. When her family comes back together again they're convinced they've seen the worst--but unfortunately, that's not the case. 

Flood of 1940

I risk giving away too many spoilers but Wallis Ann watches Laci become more unstable without her lost fiddle; her parents desperation trying to survive increasingly colder weather without shelter, food, or warm clothing; disease and death. As Wallis Anne observes, "All of us was collapsing like the barn."

Their "salvation" comes in an unlikely place. They leave Stamper's Creek to find work and shelter, and end up on the road singing in churches for enough food and gas money to keep them going. Wallis Ann meets Clayton, a high dive act in a carnival. When Clayton finds out the Stampers are a musical family, he convinces them to join the carnival--a further blow to Mama's pride. 

This new period in Wallis Ann's life is rich with symbolism. After they perform she observes, "People stared at us like we were a side show of freaks rather than regular people." The carnival is full of freaks but when the carnival owner puts a sign up that advertises Laci as  "The Mountain Mute," Wallis Ann's father finally draws the line.  Wallis Ann and her mother are haunted by the question of who is normal and who are the freaks.

Circus Freaks were not unknown in the past. 

Laci's beauty and musical abilities attracts attention--even from Clayton who Wallis Ann crushes on--and she experiences annoyance over her sister's constant attachment. "How will anybody notice me with Laci beside me all the time?" And, "I'll never be able to separate from her and go after my own wishes."

Wallis Ann witnesses Laci and Clayton's love and her jealousy drives her to a response that she deeply regrets. This deep point of view shows how a well-developed secondary character can impact the protagonist and how motivations drive actions. "I wanted someone else to hurt as much as me."  When the couple disappears after Wallis Ann betrays them, she is consumed with guilt; she and her parents are overcome with grief. "Afterwards, we moved about the camp site like we was strangers. Like we’d each gone up a different mountain and stationed ourselves far apart." 

After much trouble and sorrow, The Road to Bittersweet  has a satisfying ending. When the family returns home, Joe Calhoun's wise words help Wallis Anne find a way out from under her paralyzing guilt that "tugs at her soul like the Tuckaseigee." 

Amy Melissa Bentley, the narrator, does an excellent job portraying both male and female voices. The perfect Appalachian North Carolina dialect lends authenticity to this period novel. Here's the snippet which opens the book.

The Caudill log cabin which inspired Donna's depiction of
the Stamper family's cabin.
Photo courtesy Iredell County Hiker's Club

GIVEAWAY

Please leave me your name and email address if you would like to enter the giveaway for this audio CD. A winner will be chosen on June 28, following the two-part interview with Donna. Leave comments on each of those blog posts and I'll add your name for additional chances to win. 

Kathy Wiechman: Behind the Scenes of EMPTY PLACES

As promised in last week's blog, Kathy Wiechman agreed to answer a few questions about her inspiration for EMPTY PLACES. 

CAROL: I believe you used some family history to create this story. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

KATHY: EMPTY PLACES is not a family history, but events in family history served as inspiration for aspects of it. The fiction came first. It was only after I had created Adabel and her situation of being raised by her sister, Raynelle, that I happened to think about the fact that my husband's sister was also his mother figure. Thinking about his sister Mary helped me to flesh out Raynelle's character more.

I had also created a missing Mama, and throughout the story, it's a mystery why Mama is gone. My original idea for why she left wasn't working, so again I borrowed from my husband's family for inspiration. His mother (Helen) died when he was 13 days old. His parents had lived in Cincinnati until several years before, when at least three members of his mother's family died from tuberculosis. She feared she would die, too, so she convinced her husband to move their family of five children to the safer climate of New Mexico. Helen gave birth to two more children there, and died in a small town hospital, where medical care was much more primitive than it had been in Cincinnati. Perhaps in Cincinnati, she would have survived. Mama was not really inspired by Helen, because she died before I was born, and my husband has no memory of her. But I did borrow from her death and her fear of tuberculosis.

Both Mary and Helen are gone now, and I hope they would have liked the roles they played in helping me shape this story.

CAROL: My understanding is that within the publishing industry dialect is not looked upon too highly. Yet EMPTY PLACES is full of dialect which gives authenticity and life to your characters and setting. Can you share your thoughts about using the Appalachian dialect?

Coal miners carrying 3-tiered lunch pails to hold food and water. Carbide lamps
are mounted to soft headgear which offered no protection.

 Lynch, Ky Photo from the Benham and Lynch Collection,
Southeast Community and Technical College Appalachian Archive

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909

KATHY: I wrote EMPTY PLACES in dialect, even though I know many editors don't like books in dialect. I used Polly's West Virginia dialect in LIKE A RIVER, and "got away with it," so I figured it was worth a shot. I can't imagine trying to tell Adabel's story without it, at least not in first person. I ran the dialect past many people after I wrote the first few chapters and was given a thumbs up from them all. I mention most of them in my Acknowledgements. The Kirkus Review mentions it as an "interesting choice" I made, but says it works "surprisingly well." The glowing review from School Library Journal doesn't address the issue, which is the way I like it. I feel if I make a big deal of it, it will call attention to it unfavorably. If and when someone attacks the book for it, I will decide whether to respond. 

CAROL: I thought the dialect helped me hear the voices of the characters in my head. Was it hard for you to translate what you heard into words? You have some “invented spelling”  Was that part difficult for you to do? 

KATHY: I received a lot of great advice with the dialect. Author Jan Cheripko said he uses slang for his characters and spells it phonetically. I did that in a number of places, deciding for myself how to spell the words. But I made the decision not to drop g's, as in workin' for working. I felt the number of apostrophes added by doing that could make reading it more difficult. When I read from it aloud, I drop those g's, and hope the rest of the dialect would make a reader drop them, too. It's impossible to get the whole twang clear, but I tried to come close. I didn't want to offend anyone by my use of dialect, so when I had written the first six chapters, I sent them to a Southern lady I know and asked for her opinion. She didn't feel it would offend anyone and made a few suggestions on other ways I could use it. I didn't take all her suggestions, because I felt some of them would confuse or slow down a reader.

Black Mountain Mine #30, Harlan County, Ky
http://kycoal.homestead.com/kycoalmines.html

CAROL: Why the coal mines in Kentucky? I remember you saying that you visited Kentucky a lot with your kids—was that part of what drew you to this story?

KATHY: What drew me to that part of Kentucky was meeting a couple who had grown up in Harlan County. They talked about company stores, company scrip, and kin who had died of Black Lung. Everything I write begins with a "spark" that makes me want to tell the story. In most of my writing, the spark was an event (the Sultana disaster, a coal mine explosion, a flood). With EMPTY PLACES, the spark was a place. I just had to set a story in Harlan County.

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlPhoto from the Benham and Lynch Collection,
Southeast Community and Technical College Appalachian Archive

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.htmlhttp://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/coal/article44121909.html#storylink=cpy

CAROL: Any comments on the state of historical fiction for young readers? I’m wondering the reactions you’ve received from reviews, teachers, or media specialists. 

KATHY: I know of several teachers who assign or read aloud LIKE A RIVER in their classrooms. And I will speak on using historical fiction in the classroom at a Children's Literature Conference in November. I think Common Core might have led to historical fiction being more readily accepted in recent years, and while Common Core seems to be on its way out, perhaps this is one good thing to come from it. The Grateful American Book Prize was developed for the purpose of getting young readers more interested in American history, and it might help more quality fiction to be written and published.

CAROL: What’s next?

KATHY: My current project is a novel about the 1937 Flood in the Ohio River Valley. It's based on my father's family's experiences during that flood.

                                      

As mentioned last week, I am giving away the ARC of EMPTY PLACES. Please leave me a comment with your contact information and I'll add it to the list I started last week. A winner will be drawn on April 21. 

For another chance to win one of Kathy's books and for a different inside view of Kathy's writing process, see Clara Gillow Clark's blog.