The Sunday Salon: Easter Finery

When I was small, Easter meant a pretty new dress, sometimes even the proverbial bonnet (although I never much cared for wearing hats, and still don't). Easter always meant shiny black patent leather shoes, Mary Jane style, which, though delightful to look at, caused much pain to my fat little foot that bulged out over the top of the T strap in the podiatrist's version of a muffin top. In those days, Easter meant baskets with chocolate bunnies I could never bring myself to eat because I was afraid of "hurting" them if I bit the ears off.

But the best part of my Easter basket was always the book.

Yes, only I would care more about the book in the basket than the candy  - although I did make short shrift of the jelly beans hidden in the folds of that plastic Easter grass.

But it was the book that was the most rewarding.

I got my first copy of Little Women in an Easter basket.

For a few years there were Laura Ingalls Wilder books in the Easter basket.

Once I found A Wrinkle in Time tucked in amongst some gold chocolate coins, and I became lifelong "friends" with its author, Madeleine L'Engle.

Neither of my parents were children's literature aficionados.  Neither of them had read any of these books themselves. Yet somehow they knew I needed to read them, needed the exposure to different worlds through the eyes of the March sisters, the Ingalls family, and Charles and Meg Wallace.

My childhood Easter observance probably involved a dinner of country ham, scalloped potatoes and homemade southern-style biscuits (my Kentucky grandmother lived with us in those days, and she and my mother made a formidable combination in the kitchen). But the best part was when dinner was over and I could retreat to one of the big wing chairs in the living room corner and tuck into the pages of my new book.

I've been meandering through Facebook pages today, enjoying the photos and posts that allow a sneak peek at my friends Easter traditions, their family celebrations, their church services. I've spent the day in my "comfy" clothes, certainly not bothering with fancy dresses, bonnets, or uncomfortable shoes. I finished one of the books I was reading, and lolled around on the sofa with another.

Sometimes I worry that I live a little bit too vicariously through the pages of books, including the Facebook "pages" we've come to take for granted as a way of connecting with friends and family scattered across different time zones. But books have always been the way I treat myself, no matter what the holiday, and though I may have outgrown the other bits of Easter finery I'll never outgrow my love of stories and the written word.

Write on Wednesday: Relishing the Research

During my schooldays, my most favorite assignment was to write a report. The subject matter was of  no consequence, and the longer the page requirement the better. But the best part about report writing was the research.

In those days, research meant going to the library - the internet wasn't even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye (unless he was a very precocious teenager and I sincerely doubt that.) Yes, although I loved the writing part of the assignment, the going-to-the-library, looking-stuff-up in books and magazines was the penultimate treat.

Nowadays I read a lot of historical fiction, and I've become a fan of biographical fiction - fictional treatments of historical figures. The best of these books bring real people to life in a fascinating way, and as I read them, I marvel at the way the authors take what must be months of research and bring it to life through imagined situations and dialogue.

That is some research, I think, after finishing books like  Hemingway's Girl, The Aviator's Wife, and A Good Hard Look. It's clear that the authors must relish research as much as I once did, but the enormous amount required to complete a novel project of that nature is daunting to say the least.

I started wondering how they went about it. So I did some research.

Ericka Robuck (Hemingway's Girl) was inspired to write her novel by a visit to Hemingway's home in Key West, Florida.  "I spend about 4 months researching my subject without writing a word," Robuck wrote, "and then ideally I start writing without allowing myself to get side-tracked. I visited the house and Key West several times for setting research, and read numerous biographies and all of Hemingway’s work, and spent time at the JFK Museum in Boston at the Hemingway Archive. Ninety percent of his photographs, journals, letters, and manuscripts are there, and provide an excellent resource for getting to know and understand Hemingway."  (Robuck's new bio-fic novel, Call Me Zelda, about Zelda Fitzgerald, releases in May.)

Melanie Benjamin (The Aviator's Wife) confesses that she does her  research in a very "unscientific" way. "I look at a life, I read enough about it to give me a good solid foundation. Then I pick and choose the details that will make a compelling novel - knowing that I will be leaving out, or not fully exploring, many of the stories that make up a remarkable life. I allow myself to ask the what ifs. I look at a life, even one that's as documented as Anne's (Morrow Lindbergh) and I see the hidden corners, the locked closets; I wonder what she didn't tell us. I never take anything on face value; I'm always seeing things that others don't, even in the most mundane, every day objects.  I have learned that too much research can stifle my creativity, so it's always a balance for me; I need to learn the basic facts, get a sense of the time and place, but if I lose myself too much in the research I find I can't imagine the things I need to, in order to write a compelling novel with fascinating characters. My imagination is my greatest strength as a novelist - not my ability to research! For me, I don't spend too much time worrying about physical details; it's the emotional journey that fascinates me."

Ann Napolitano's novel, A Good Hard Look, features writer Flannery O'Connor as a main character among a cast of other strong characters. Napolitano admits she was "fearful that I would portray her (O'Connor) inaccurately. To conquer that fear, I read everything I could get my hands on. I re-read Flannery's stories, her essays and two novels; I read the one existing biography on her, and several critical essays about her work; I flew to Atlanta, rented a car and drove to Milledgeville. I visited Andalusia, her farm (which is now a museum) and walked all over town. I was only there for about thirty hours, but that visit was crucial. Milledgeville had to be real to me, so I could make it real for the reader. Sitting on Flannery's front porch, and smelling the air there - I don't think I could have re-created her world without spending that time in her space."

I don't know whether I have what it takes to complete the kind of research necessary to write an entire book of historical fiction, but it was fun reading about how the professionals do it.

How about you? Do you enjoy research? Do you employ much research in your writing?

The Sunday Salon: Patchwork

My reading over the past few days has been something of a crazy quilt -a bit of this, another bit of that. After reading a book with the scope and style of The Orchardist, it's difficult for me to settle into something else. One of the things I'm really enjoying about my new local library are the daily bins of used books. Their trade paperbacks are only 50 cents, and I've already picked up several things to add to my library. Earlier this week I found a copy of Dakota, A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris. This was one of the first creative nonfiction books I ever read, (back in the mid-1990's) and it helped me fall in love with the genre. So I was happy to grab it up, especially at that price.

So I've been poking around in it this week, and today I opened to these words:

If there's anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people's stories, listening to them and cherishing them.

This quote, from Mary Pellauer, a feminist author and scholar, heads a chapter entitled The Holy Use of Gossip, in which Norris writes about the role of  gossip which seems pervasive in small town life. "Gossip done well," she contends, "strengthens communal bonds."

Norris' definition of gossip is different than the way most of us have come to think of it - the whispered rumors of a marriage on the rocks or a husband's out-of-control drinking, even the titillating headlines on celebrity magazines we peek at while on line at the checkout counter. The word "gossip" actually derives from the words that mean God and sibling, and originally meant "akin to God." In fact, a "gossip" was used to describe someone who acted as a sponsor at a person's baptism, someone who "helped give a name" to another. Antecedents of the word are "gospel," "godspell," and "sabha" (a village community). Gossip then (if used correctly) can be a way of sharing our human story, of giving a name to the things that define us. And these stories, by Pellauer's definition, can be called part of the wisdom and study of God's precepts in the real world.

Notice also that Pellauer talks about not only listening to people's stories, but cherishing them. I talk a lot about the importance of story - our individual stories, and our collective story as a nation, a gender, a vocational group. I read memoir upon memoir as a way of hearing all kinds of stories, and cherish each one for the impression it leaves in my mind and heart.

But I think cherishing one another's stories has a real life application as well, beyond the effect of words on a page. Norris talks about this so well in Dakota, how the folks in her small town of Lemmon, South Dakota, express their solidarity through gossip or shared story. The plight of a young family with a seriously ill child spreads quickly - but so does the response of people bringing food, sitting with the other children in the family, gathering in prayer circles. The stories of the town drunk who either undergoes a miraculous conversion OR loses everything are equally morally instructive. "Gossip - or Story - is theology translated into experience."

In the patchwork of stories that make up the crazy quilt of our lives, there is something almost sacred about the tales we share with one another and take into our hearts.

A Perfect Day

I love it when someone asks me to describe my perfect day - Even though I'm pretty sure my answer might disappoint them. You see, my perfect days are so perfectly simple and uncomplicated and...well, boring...that it seems almost silly to fantasize about them.

Perfect days for me are a lot like yesterday, and the day before that. I've been lucky enough to have a string of nearly perfect days going on here this week.

So because Angie asked, and described her own idea of the perfect day so perfectly, I'll tell you mine.

I come awake to the sound of Chopin on my radio, come down the stairway and turn on the kitchen lights (the undercabinet ones that make such a nice warm glow). While the coffee brews, I empty the dishwasher, and then take my cup to couch were I snuggle in the corner and read in perfect silence for an hour. Pretty soon, I hear the husband and fur babies stirring upstairs. I take coffee up for Jim, throw on some clothes and take the pups outside for their morning ablutions.

Then it's a brisk 30 minutes of exercise for me, followed by breakfast (Great Harvest bakery honey whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a banana). Then it's the looooong dog walk, made better if I can cajole my husband into joining us, after which I hit the desk and write for a couple of hours. Then it's lunch - maybe with a friend, maybe all on my own at the sunny kitchen counter, while I check in with social media.

For the afternoon, since we're talking about perfect days here, I would insert something that's technically impossible. My perfect perfect day would include spending the afternoon with my grandson, watching him roll his cars across the floor, pushing him on the park swing, reading him stories.

Yes, that would make it all perfect.

But since I can't have that, I'll settle for second best in the real world of imaginary perfection.

An afternoon playing music somewhere with my friends. Love doing that.

By late afternoon I'm back in my kitchen, preparing something for dinner while soft music plays on the stereo. When Jim gets home, we plate up the food and settle in to watch a program on our DVR while we eat. After clean up, we might take a walk if weather permits, or if not I might settle in my reading chair for a while with a warm puppy beside me. Usually we'll catch another hour of TV before I head upstairs for a long soak in the garden tub.

See? I told you it was boring.

But after 57 years on the planet, I don't apologize for boring. What might seem mundane on the surface is really comforting and peaceful. And I like that.

In fact, I find it perfect.

TLC Book Tour: The Orchardist

The Orchardist is such a rare and beautiful specimen of a book, I barely know where to begin in my praise of it. Should I write about the sweeping breadth of the Washington landscape that becomes as important as another character?

Should I tell you of the achingly beautiful prose that describes every event in the most perfectly chosen details?

Should I warn you that there are moments so painful your breath will catch, so haunting your eyes will not close in sleep?

Perhaps I should write of Talmadge, the quiet and introspective Orchardist for whom the book is named, and the way he cares with such deep intensity for his land, his product, and the people he loves. The way he sees so clearly into the soul of everything and everyone - except perhaps himself.

Or maybe you'd like to know about Jane and Della, two frightened young girls, heavy with child, who appear at the outskirts of Talmdige's orchard, fleeing an unspeakable evil,  and work their way bit by bit into his heart, stirring within him every ounce of protectiveness he can muster.

And I must not forget Angelene, Jane's daughter, whom Talmadge raises and instills with a feminine version of his unique quiet intelligence and intensity.

The Orchardist is stunning, almost Biblical in the epic span of its story about determination and loneliness and loyalty and hope. It takes the reader into a far-away place - the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century - a time when a man's land governed his life and his choices, when people worked hard from dawn until dark because their very living depended on it. A time when distractions were less, and simple pleasures enjoyed more.

But still there was darkness...there was evil and loss and destruction. Talmadge is no stranger to it, even before Jane and Della with their heavy baby-laden bellies, arrive. His father has died in a mining accident, his mother has died a few years later, leaving he and his younger sister- neither of them barely more than children -alone to run the orchard. And then his sister Elspeth disappeared one day, goes out to gather herbs and never returns. Talmadge is nearly crushed by this loss. Forty years later, it fuels his obsession with Jane and Della, and his desire to protect them from the evil they have fled.

Readers and writers alike will savor The Orchardist, for its story, its characters, its maturity of style and prose. A novel eight years in the writing, begun when its young author was only 24 years old, The Orchardist is an amazing tour de force and should become part of the canon of modern American literature.

Link to the author's website and Facebook page.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the privilege of reading this book.