Target Audience

Genre and Labels

                I first encountered Betty Smith’s  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a teenager, when my mother wanted to share her own experiences growing up in depression-era Chicago. In those days, I read only to know the story of young Francie Nolan, her dates and trials and clever dishonest trick to get an education. And I wondered, “why would my mother recommend a book full of lies, scandals, and even a bit of sex?” I was distracted by all the other characters—the people who Francie watched go to parties, get drunk, tell lies, die, and get married—in what seemed to me to be their old age.
                Rereading as an adult, I find that the book has aged well, though I still wonder if it really is juvenile fiction. Even though it has a juvenile protagonist, it is as much the story of Francie’s mother, her aunt, her father, Flossie Gaddis, and even the two Miss Tynmores. Perhaps it is Miss Lizzie Tynmore who utters the universal truth that underlies the story:

The spare Tynmore spinsters lay in their hard, virginal bed. They groped for each other’s hands. 
“Did you hear it, Sister?” asked Miss Maggie. 
“Her time has come,” answered Miss Lizzie. 
“That’s why I didn’t marry Harvey-long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of that. So afraid.” 
“I don’t know,” Miss Lizzie said. “Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be … safe.” She waited until the next scream died away. “At least she knows she’s living.”

Juvenile and young adult fiction, if it is richly written, grows in richness as the reader grows older. A book that appeals to both adolescents and adults is a worthy goal.

Timeless Truths

Timeless Truths

I return to Alan Paton’s beautifully written Cry, the Beloved Country every few years for the love and hope that prevail in the end. I know of idealistic young reformers such as Arthur Jarvis, lawyers who take cases “pro deo,” as did Mr. Carmichael, and individuals like Mrs. Litheby, who, when thanked for her kindness, answers, “Why else do we live?” She is my all-time favorite and life-changing literary hero.

Still, I find it discouraging that this story, written nearly 75 years ago as contemporary social commentary, is so timely—that racial tensions, crime, poverty, lack of opportunity, and abuse of the land are not healed. The fact that specific locations and incidents are anchored in pre-apartheid 1940’s South Africa makes the tale all the more poignant. Consider what came AFTER this story. Is Cry, the Beloved Country history, fiction, or a cautionary tale? Its themes and characters are timeless.

Consider Paton’s well-intentioned voices crying over what to do about crime. Perhaps the solution is education, but “who would pay for that?” and “don’t you think that more schooling simply means cleverer criminals?” What about providing opportunities for employment? Recreation centers? Juvenile training centers rather than prisons? “In my neighborhood?” Ultimately, Paton’s characters find the problems are too complicated to solve. They conclude, “it’s too hot to argue. Get your racquet, my dear. They’re calling us.”

 In an interview for a Books Between podcast #18, reviewer Paul Goat Allen placed a profound message—what he termed “existential enlightenment”—at the top of “the genre fiction book reviewer’s hierarchy of needs.” So yes, readability, character development, and clever plot twists are important. But ultimately, great books reveal great and timeless truths. I have to start writing a readable story, and keep working until the message is profound.

Power in a simple Plot

Power in a Simple Plot Structure

After reading a lot of intricate, twisting plots, it was a refreshing treat for me to open Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate, and discover a simple plot that announced its conclusion from the very beginning. The book’s Prelude suggests that a rich woman, in a clean, white room with starched linens, is about to adopt a baby. In Chapter One, an old woman in a nursing home grabs the wrist of a young visitor and seems to recognize her. She searches my face, stretches upward. “Fern?” she whispers.

We read the alternating stories of Rill and Avery knowing from the start that their lives are intertwined and destined to converge. Rill Foss describes her struggle to rescue herself and her siblings, kidnapped from their family riverboat to be separated and sold as orphans, while Avery Stafford searches through her grandmother’s mysterious past and grapples with her family’s expectations for her own future. Yet both characters are trying to do the same thing—to find a life anchored in family love. The question is not so much what will happen, but rather how both characters will develop and find peace in the process.

Despite all its apparent simplicity, Wingate’s book is carefully structured. Rill’s determination and selfless efforts to keep her family alive and together could stand alone as a captivating story, and Avery’s personal journey into her own future could make a satisfying romance. The careful juxtaposition of the two stories enriches them both and shows that even the simplest plot deserves attention to detail, control of timing and information, planning, and character development. There is enough tension that I lost a night’s sleep in the middle of a suspenseful scene, and enough love that I kept reading to the happy ending.

Tags author, title, Tennessee Children’s Home Scandal, plot structure

Old Stories Made new

Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly

                I just finished reading Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly, and I am commenting to anyone who will listen, that with all my years of reading Holocaust novels, I somehow never read anything about the Ravensbrück medical experiments, the young women who were their victims, or the dedicated and courageous Caroline Ferriday who helped restore their bodies and souls. 

                As a teenager, I read the Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. My own teenaged children read Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry and The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, and now The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Last year I was sobbing over The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, and this summer I re-read Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Just last month, I squirmed a little bit out of my normal “type,” reading The Paris Architect, by Charles Belfoure. Goodreads has well over one hundred great books on its list of the “Best Holocaust Novels.”  

                Which brings me to this week’s observation. With new characters, a new audience, or a new angle, even the most often-told stories can be written again, with new insights or, as in the case of Lilac Girls, new information from interviews with survivors of the experience.

                Journals and family memories join previously-published works as inspiration for new looks at old stories. And Internet resources are making available previously unpublished memoirs and searchable public records and newspapers accounts.

                Rather than say, “It’s already been written,” I can dig in to the past and discovery a new story. just waiting to be told.

Tags: authors, plot, Holocaust novels, Ravensbrück, Goodreads.

A Title that Absolutely Hits Its Mark

One of my young readers suggested that my own story-in-the-works reminded him of The Bitter Side of Sweet, by Tara Sullivan. I’d be grateful to write a story as well-researched, well-paced, and compellingly presented—a story so real that it begs to be digested and then used to promote change.

I’d also like to have a title that so perfectly introduces a book. There is nothing as sweetly satisfying as a chocolate confection, yet the raw cocoa powder is usually horribly bitter—even intolerable without sugar added to it. And so it is with the production and harvesting of cacao. This book describes the intolerable treatment of children enslaved on a cacao plantation: children living as slaves and forced to harvest and process the raw beans. Children who are nearly starved, savagely abused, and locked away from any chance of escape. The children’s story is the bitter side of sweet chocolate.

The children’s heroic and selfless determination to escape together represented the sweet side of bitter in this novel. I’d recommend to it mature children and adults alike.

I appreciated the author’s instructive epilogue about chocolate production and fair trade chocolate, her exposition that much of the world’s chocolate comes from cacao produced by enslaved children, and her concern that cacao farmers have a margin of profit so small that they barely make enough money to eat.

The perfect fit between title and book not only makes the book easy to recall, but it also helps focus the reader’s attention on the central premise of the book. It’s a witness to the value of a well-chosen title.

The Power of Place

In a stroke of serendipity, I happened upon Victoria Hislop’s The Thread just as I am planning a short trip to Greece. And though I won’t be visiting Thessaloniki, Hislop created such a powerful sense of place, that I will look for scenes from The Thread in every port and steep hillside I visit.

Hislop’s protagonist is a seamstress, and the minor characters work as tailors and fabric merchants, but the real thread that holds this story together is the city itself. Its bustling port is the source of wealth and connection with the outside world, its stately seaside mansions isolate the rich, the shops that line the slopes employ those skilled in tailoring and needlework, and the steep cobblestone paths open upon a rich multi-cultural community where difference is less important than friendship and family among the working class.

In my own story, Toby leaves the horrors of the plantation for unknown places—first the dangers of the open forest and then the uncertain safety of the dark underground. I have been so focused on writing plot that I may have neglected the power inherent in the places I created. Yet places are potent forces—capable of motivating action, not just a cardboard Potemkin background.

What would Harry Potter be without Hogwarts—or Murder on the Orient Express without the train?  In All the Light We Cannot See, Werner moves through the contrasting worlds of the Children’s Home and the Nazi military training school, while Marie-Laure holds the miniature Saint Malo in her hands.

Place is a powerful player, worth developing and exploiting.

The Power of Minor Characters

Aside

The Power of Minor Characters

Someone mentioned “the nun,” and the whole room sighed, “Oh, I loved the nun.” But no one in my book club knew her name. You too may have forgotten her name, but if you’ve read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, you probably love the Mother Superior, Marie-Therese.  Her quiet wisdom and her daring willingness to save children’s lives not only add warmth and love to the story, but they are also essential elements of the plot.

I went home reflecting on the power of the one minor character. And I started rewriting scenes from my own book-in-process. I started with “Mama,” who, like Mamas the world over, cooked food and scrubbed faces without being a recognizable human being. She was a place holder, a generic nobody. Who was she? And how did her words and decisions affect the other characters and their actions?

What about George? I had created him lazy and self-serving, but he too was a type. How did the other characters react to him, and how could his actions create tension and depth in my plot? And what happened when Charles came home from college—not just in the plot twists that he inspired, but also in the family dynamics and the attitudes of the extended community of characters? Who else was passing through my story like a plastic token on a game board? There was Adah, a character mentioned,  but never present, remembered, or loved. How did her absence affect the other characters?

As a new writer, I have discovered that I now read with a different eye. Each new book is an inspiration—or maybe a cautionary tale. This is a liberating idea. Instead of telling myself that I’m too busy to sit around reading because I have to focus on my writing, I have license to put my feet up and read. Which is, after all, why writers write.

Geoff Ryman: “I think that it’s a good thing for the imagination to do to try to imagine someone else’s life. I see no other way to be moral, . . . Otherwise you end up sympathizing only with yourself” (qtd. in Writing the Other, Shawl and Ward. P. 97).