I agreed to read and review Eden, by Jamie Lisa Forbes. I found the book fascinating and deep (you can read my review here), and I got to ask the author some questions about the book and about the inspiration for her creation.
It’s interesting to look back at the timeframe of the authorship as well as my reading of the book—prior to COVID-19 and the current social unrest in the United States, there seemed to be little reason to believe that leaving secrets buried would become harmful in the present. The strategy has worked so well for us in the past.
But here we are in a time of deep distress over the exhumation of forgotten deeds, and what follows are the responses to my questions from Ms Forbes.
Tell us a little about your book. How do you describe the book to your friends?
The novel is about eighteen-year-old Rowen Hart, down on his luck, when Eden, a child who has also undergone trauma, comes to live with him and his mother. In my eyes, the novel is about how complacency among citizens guarantees the continued endurance of morally compromised societies. I noticed that one of the reviewers called this book a “love story,” and it is that too, but that was not my main focus when I sat down to write this novel.
What led you to write a book like this?
First, I wanted to write about North Carolina. At the time I started this novel, I had already had a successful novel about my home state, Wyoming. In that novel, Unbroken, much of what I relied on in terms of characterization and plot was my upbringing in that state. The rhythms of ranch life, the way people talk and what they talk about it is second nature to me. I was immersed in it.
I knew I would not have the luxury of that background to fall back on if I wrote about North Carolina. But I felt like I owed it to my writing to force myself to take on this challenge. I felt like I needed the growth as a writer.
Second, from roughly 2001 to 2009, I had done a fair amount of traveling across North Carolina as an attorney litigating cases. The difference between the rural areas and the urban centers of the state had been a huge eye-opener to me. I think it’s fair to say if you spend all your time in North Carolina’s cities, you will know almost nothing of what life is like here. I thought about how these rural communities must have looked sixty years ago when they were much more isolated than they are today. And it wasn’t so hard to extrapolate backward in time.
Finally, I wanted to explore how it is that perfectly good people stand by generation after generation and say and do nothing to disrupt institutionalized bias.
How did the characters become “real” to you? Or, was there a time when your writing about your characters brought them alive to you?
I have said this many times and it is true for everything I write: many of my characters escape my initial conception of them. So the best answer to this question is that my characters become more and more alive as I write about them over time. In this novel, that was especially true of Jewell. I hadn’t originally conceived of Jewell as a sympathetic character. Over the course of writing about her, I empathized with her determination to cling to the conventions of a life that was comprehensible to her. And in writing about Rowen over time, I didn’t see him as growing to hate her. Rowen’s affection for Jewell grew over their years of marriage, and that too was a character development I hadn’t anticipated. But it made the two of them real to me.
You made me feel both Rowen and Eden. How did you come up with them as such strongly defined characters?
All the characters for this novel sprung from either my experiences as a traveling attorney litigating in small towns or my experiences as a volunteer child advocate.
Having said that, for Eden, I revisited the life of Crystal Lee Sutton (1940-2009). She was the inspiration for the film Norma Rae. She had turned from working girl to activist for the unionization of textile workers during the 1970s in Roanoke Rapids, which is an impoverished area, even today. What I found moving about her was her fortitude in the face of the backlash she had to have withstood for her activism. Women in these communities are not expected to speak their minds, much less generate controversy, not in the 1950s, the 1960s or the 1970s. Norma Rae alludes to some of that backlash, but I believed it was understated. In my view, Sally Fields got to walk off the set when she was done, unlike Ms. Sutton, who would have had to live day by day with the backstabbing of her community. Having to endure those stressors while remaining committed to her cause was a stunning achievement for a woman with no support outside her community, no money, and no education.
I thought about how Ms Sutton would have looked as a little girl. The spirit that drove her as an adult would have been there from the start. She would have been “wide open,” as the Southern lingo goes, which is not a compliment. Add to that an upbringing in a working poor family and in a community, where to paraphrase my character Claude Lynch, all hope of possibility is stamped out of young women, I began to see Eden clearly.
My vision for Rowen came clearer over time. Early in writing the novel, I returned to the town that is fictional “White Rock” and at the library, I pulled the newspapers from the 1950s. At least once a year, the headline stories featured outstanding young men (not of color) who had either won scholarships to universities or who had won agricultural awards. I channeled Rowen reading those stories and felt his self-pity and resentment that that kind of accolade would not be coming his way. That was the first time I began to feel Rowen.
In my first draft, I spent three days working on the following paragraph on page 30:
“Yes, all right…he was living in a shack, but outside on that front porch, he could see a person coming from a mile off and know, white or colored, who they were and what they wanted. Everything within his range of vision was known, and if he had to be busted poor, he wanted life to stay right like it was where he could see everything coming.”
When I was finally satisfied with that paragraph, I felt like Rowen’s character was anchored for me.
What ties you to this location for your setting? How does it reflect your own understandings of your community?
The fictional “White Rock,” North Carolina is based on a town in the heart of the state where I litigated a case for two years. Over that period, I developed a fondness for the town and the people I met there. I could have picked any of the places that I had visited, but I chose this place because there is nothing exceptional about this town, yet the land surrounding it is spectacular with wide-open farmlands, marshes, and the Cape Fear River.
I live in Greensboro, one the state’s major urban centers. I originally visited Greensboro in 1976. It is incredible to me how fast the state’s urban centers have grown and modernized. But these rural communities, including “White Rock,” have not changed much in that time. They are better connected to the wider world than they were in the period from 1950 to 1980 as roads and major industries have moved in.
I complain non-stop about urban sprawl. I loathe the fact that the growth of the Triad, as our area is called, has decimated gorgeous woodlands and rolling hills, not to mention farmland. But having gone back and forth from Greensboro to North Carolina’s rural towns, I do understand that when an economy flourishes, it produces opportunity, education, possibility, and quite frankly, tolerance and understanding. What catapulted North Carolina out of the Jim Crow era was not an intrinsic change of attitude. After all, schools were still segregated until the late 1970s. It was an economy generated by newcomers (some would say “Yankees”) who appreciated the state’s resources and recognized it as a lovely place to live, which it is.
Similarly, what events or circumstances led you to explore these themes and express them through these characters?
As an attorney, and an advocate in North Carolina, I have been exposed to: domestic violence, child abuse, child neglect, substance abuse, mental health issues that disrupt entire families, racism, homelessness, gender discrimination and discrimination on the basis of national origin. Many of these conditions affect the poor. Many of these conditions affect people with good homes, good jobs, who appear, on the outside to have wonderful lives.
What do you think your strongest message in your book is? That is, what do you hope the readers take away when they close the last chapter?
Reading my reviews, the issue of complacency that I referred to in the first question has resonated both positively and negatively. I did intend that topic to be the main discussion point of the novel. The exercise of writing this novel taught me personally how community, marriage and family exert such force on an individual that it becomes easier to turn away rather than acknowledge the inexcusable.
As to your second question, my response is that horrible events outside of our control happen to those within our sphere. If we were mindful, moment by moment, of the fragility of human life, it would be easier to set aside our feelings of entitlement in favor of reconciliation.
What will you do next with your characters? Is there a sequel?
No, no sequel. After I wrote Unbroken, many of its readers requested a sequel. My sense of that was they loved the characters so much they wanted the story to continue. So I considered it at the time, but to me, the risk of writing a sequel is the risk of telling the same story all over again. Good performers know just when to leave the stage and that is my feeling about completing a novel.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I am very grateful for this opportunity to talk about my novel. With the pandemic, there is no opportunity for readings or face-to-face contact with readers and book clubs. I appreciate these questions and I thank you for the opportunity to respond to them.
I want to thank Ms Forbes for her adaptability to the idiosyncrasies of bloggers and reviewers, and I appreciate her graciousness in her thoughtful replies.
It is a deepening to reread the book in the light of her statements about Eden’s vitality and hope and Rowen’s inability to leave the restrictions that closed in around him until it was—almost!—too late.
Thanks so much for hosting Jamie!