All Behind the Book essays

Jodi Picoult thought she had created a unique character in her new novel, Lone Wolf—a man who studies wolves by living with them. Then she met Shaun Ellis, who spent a year living with wolves in the Rockies. During a visit to Ellis’ wildlife park, Picoult got up close and personal with these feared animals.

The first thing Shaun taught me was the rankings of a wolf pack. The first wolf you’ll encounter is not the alpha, but a beta—tough, comes rushing up to you, responsible for discipline in the pack. Betas are expendable; they are the thugs in the Mafia family. The alpha will hang back. Wary. The brains of the group, and too valuable to put him or herself in danger—he’s like the king not going into battle. The alpha is the one who tells everyone—including the big tough beta—what to do. An alpha can hear the change in the rhythm of your heart rate from six or seven feet away. An alpha female can terminate her own pregnancy if she feels that it’s not a good time for breeding in the pack. She can keep the other females from coming into season, so that she is the only one breeding. She can create a phantom pregnancy, which puts all the adult wolves on their best behavior, trying to be picked as nanny—and then when everyone’s acting on their best game, she reveals that she isn’t pregnant at all.

Next is the diffuser wolf—the low man on the totem pole, the one who eats last, the one who seemingly is picked on by the other wolves. There’s a tester wolf—the quality control dude. He’s a nervous wolf, always on edge, who makes sure that everyone is doing his job. Then come the numbers wolves, which fill in the pack with strength of size.

One of the things Shaun taught me to do was to howl, so that I could communicate with wolves. Howls are like wolf email. They use them to communicate with other packs, telling them how strong their pack is.

Shaun showed me that there are three types of howls: a rallying howl, which is a vocal beacon to bring back a missing member of the pack; a locating howl, which is like a voice message to give the placement of any pack that’s in the area; and finally, a defensive howl, which is used to protect your territory. With my son and my publicist in tow, Shaun taught us the melody that an alpha, a beta and a numbers wolf would use. I started as the alpha—a deep intermittent tone, howling for five or six seconds and then listening to make decisions based on what I hear. My son’s beta howl was three times longer than mine—it was all about strength, to let those listening know how tough he was. Finally, my publicist, as the numbers wolf, created the illusion that there were many of her, with a howl that circled and pitched between the tones my son and I were using. The most amazing thing happened: The packs all around us began to howl back. It was the coolest feeling to know that we had “sent” out our position, and were getting responses because we were speaking their language.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a review of Lone Wolf.

In Susan Wilson's latest novel, one lost Sheltie helps a couple dealing with a devastating tragedy discover there is more to living than just surviving—and as Mack's owner Justine desperately searches for the dog she loves, she realizes that you don't always have to be lost in order to be found. In a behind-the-book essay, she explains how  The Dog Who Danced originated.

When I set off to write The Dog Who Danced, it began with a completely different set of characters. My heroine was a 20-something television producer of a local morning show attached to a creepy boyfriend. She had very little “juice” in her, and within a few pages she’d failed to develop and, frankly, had even become rather blah. Or, to put a word on it, boring. Of course, I, as her author, didn’t recognize this, at least not on any useful level; I tend to get caught up in the prose, sort of like not seeing those trees for the, well, you know the rest. Fortunately, my editor did. “She’s not gritty enough.” “There’s no reason to like her.”

Who has the most claim on Mack, the person who lost him or the people who found him?

The scales fell from my eyes and within a week, my heroine, renamed and re-imagined, became a character who flew off the pages. Giving Justine Meade life was a thrill ride, because I had to write to her tough side, but also had make her into a believable and compelling character so that readers would get behind her and want her to succeed. A very fine line. I ditched the creepy boyfriend in favor of a creepy truck driver. And my grieving couple, Ed and Alice Parmalee, emerged to tell their story.

Justine Meade becomes separated from her beloved Sheltie when she is abandoned at a rest stop in Ohio while the driver continues on, only belatedly aware that her dog is still in the cab. Her story is her desperate efforts to find her dog, while at the same time fulfilling her commitment to be at her estranged father’s side as he dies. Along the way, Justine has to come to terms with her past and her relationship with her own estranged son.

Mack the Sheltie, who is literally kicked out of the truck on the side of the Mass Pike, finds shelter with Ed and Alice Parmalee, a couple who have lost their only child and now live in an empty marriage in rural Massachusetts. Mack is at the heart of the book and his character, written in the third person (third dog?) allowed me to tell much of the story through his eyes.

Justine is looking for her dog and the Parmalees have found him. The ultimate conflict is who will, in the end, claim him.

When I was a child, I was given a set of Junior Classics. This compendium of 12 hardcover volumes broken down into topics was a wonderful early education. One volume was fairy tales, another contained the retelling of classic myths of the world: Greek, Roman, Norse. But my favorite was always the brown covered Animal Stories. There I read abridged stories from Jack London and Albert Payson Terhune. One of the stories was “Brown Wolf” by Jack London. In it, Madge and Walter Irvine befriend a magnificent half-wild dog. After months of effort, the dog finally becomes settled with the couple, and in all appearances is happy. Then on a walk through the woods, the Irvines encounter a man recently back from the Klondike. Wolf, famously aloof and even hostile with strangers, is clearly overjoyed to see this man, who quickly claims him as his stolen sled dog, Brown.

Who has the rights to this dog? Who has the strongest claim on him: the people who have tamed him into being a housedog or the man who raised him by hand from a pup? In the end, at Madge’s suggestion, they let dog himself choose.

This theme of dog loyalties and the anguish of losing a beloved pet resonated with me then, as now. Hence the ultimate conflict in The Dog Who Danced. Who has the most claim on Mack, the person who lost him or the people who found him? Who is more deserving of him? Who does he love best? No spoiler alert here, I won’t spill the beans. But I will say that it was the hardest plotting I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t know how this story was going to end until about three weeks before I got to the moment. I struggled with it. My loyalties were completely divided among the characters I had come to know so well. King Solomon anyone? I couldn’t find a reasonable and comprehensible solution.

How often have we heard of people splitting up and custody of beloved pets having to be shared, or, given up entirely, or, worst of all, used as punishment? Could a shared custody work with the characters who live on opposite coasts? Is it plausible for Justine to give up her dog after such a dramatic search; or, for the Parmalees to give back the dog that has brought them back together and helped them heal from their devastating loss?

As a dog person who is completely ruled by my family’s current canine incumbent, Bonnie, I can easily project myself into the anguish suffered by Justine and by the Parmalees. As a writer, I can also project myself into the anguish experienced by a dog having to make such a choice. What would Bonnie do? Like Wolf, if put to the test, would she turn her back on someone she loved? Of course, I’m assuming that she loves me best. I’m the one that brought her home, I’m the one who feeds her, grooms her, takes her to the dog park every day regardless of rain, wind, snow, heat of summer; makes her take her pills when she has to and applies the flea killer. The hubby is good for snuggles on the couch and endless rounds of tug o’war but has forgotten to feed her in my absence. Then, without intending it, a test of her loyalties came up.

My husband and I were at the dog park recently and he needed to leave before our complete circuit was done. I marched on, absolutely confident that Bonnie, who believes that a full tour of the park is her God-given right, would keep going with me. She didn’t. She stood in the middle of the path, staring at him leaving and me going in the opposite direction. Her ears were folded back and her obvious distress at our separation would have been cute, if it hadn’t been so sad. I rejoined my husband and we all went home.

I did finally come up with a solution for Justine and my friends the Parmalees that worked. Because I had grown to know Justine well, especially given her false start, I knew exactly what needed to happen. And to find out what that was, you’ll have to read the book.

Susan Wilson is the author of Beauty—a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast which was made into a CBS TV movie—as well as four other novels, including One Good Dog. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard.

When I was a boy and trying desperately to give a wide berth to the latest culinary travesty my Swedish mother had scooped onto my dinner plate—my mother was a well-intentioned cook, but far too interested in conversation to squirrel herself away in the kitchen and become a good one—she occasionally said, “Eat. You of all people should think of the starving Armenians.”

At least once I recall my Armenian father sitting back in his chair after my mother had said that and asking rhetorically, “Why is it that no one ever says, ‘Eat. Think of the starving Bangladeshis?’ Or the starving Cambodians? Honestly, I don’t know of any starving Armenians.”

He was the son of Armenian immigrants and he grew up in the impressive brick monolith his father had built in a suburb of New York City. Even as a child, when I thought of my grandparents’ house, instantly I would think of food: The platters of warm cheese boregs, the filo dough oozing butter. The rice pilaf rich with the aroma of chicken broth. The grape leaves stuffed with vegetables. And, of course, the lamb, marinated and tender. I have been a vegetarian for well over a quarter-century, but I know I would be in danger of backsliding if I were transported back to my Armenian grandmother’s kitchen. I had a sense that the phrase had something to do with genocide, but my family never discussed the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

The expression, I’d learn much later, was most likely coined by Clara Barton. Although the genocide had faded into history for most of the world by the early 1970s, the massacres (and, yes, the starving Armenian orphans) had once been common knowledge among Americans and Europeans. During the genocide, the New York Times published 145 stories about the atrocities. Among the most poignant images for Westerners were the photographs and the stories of the children. The orphans. In 1915, first the men and then the women were killed; as a result, thousands and thousands of orphans were scattered across what is now Syria and Lebanon and Egypt.

"Even as a child, when I thought of my grandparents' house, instantly I would think of food."

Consequently, when I decided that it was time to write a novel about the genocide—what my novel’s narrator calls glibly, “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About”—I found myself focused on children and food. Because of the Proustian madeleines from my own childhood, this seemed a viable entry into a story that might otherwise be one mind-numbing horror after another. The novel moves back and forth in time between an Armenian-American novelist at midlife—a female version of me—and a sweeping love story set against the cataclysm of 1915 in the eastern edges of the Ottoman Empire. It is, in part, the tale of Elizabeth Endicott, a 1922 graduate of Mount Holyoke College who travels to the Syrian desert as part of an American relief mission, and her love affair with Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer who has already lost his young wife and infant daughter.

There is also a lot of my childhood in the book—and a lot of my grandparents’ house. And, yes, there are orphans in the scenes set in 1915, including one of my favorite characters ever: a quiet, watchful, intense little girl named Hatoun.

Was there a real Hatoun? There were tens of thousands of real Hatouns. (The Near East Relief organization cared for more than 100,000 children between 1915 and 1930.) When I visited Lebanon and Armenia earlier this year, trying to ground myself emotionally as the publication of The Sandcastle Girls neared, among the places I went was an orphanage in the Lebanese city of Byblos. The town sits on a hillside above the Mediterranean and is known best for its remarkable Phoenician ruins, including a citadel and an amphitheater at the edge of the cliff. Also there, however, is the Bird’s Nest, the orphanage founded after WWI by Danish missionary Maria Jacobsen. Jacobsen saved no fewer than 3,600 children herself when she converted a villa into an emergency shelter.

And how did the orphanage get its name? One afternoon when she was handing out candy to the children, they surrounded her, calling out “Mama, Mama!” Jacobsen looked at the hungry throng and imagined the orphans were like baby birds and she was their mother.

When a nun at the orphanage told me this story, I thought of Hatoun and I felt a tremor of sadness ripple across my skin. But I thought also of the structure of my novel and experienced a small swell of relief. There it was, once again: Children and food.

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 14 novels, including the bestsellers Midwives, The Night Strangers and Skeletons at the Feast. The Sandcastle Girls was inspired by his own heritage—and reader requests for his take on the Armenians’ tragic history. You can visit him at chrisbohjalian.com, or look for him on Facebook and Twitter.

Trying to pin down the absolute source of any piece of fiction is a fool’s game—and when I think back to the messy four-year process of writing my novel You Came Back, I feel so even more strongly. Its central premise—a grieving father confronted by the assertion that his dead son’s ghost haunts his former house—has been with me in some form or another for more than a decade, dating back to a bad, fragmented half-scene I’d never been able to bring myself to delete from my files. However, I was still figuring out my reasons for wanting to write this book even as I made the last revisions to the manuscript, even as I write this.

The book exists, essentially, because of these facts: In 1999, my first wife, Joellen Thomas, died in Columbus, Ohio, after a five-year fight with bone cancer. At the age of 27, I became a widower. Prior to that time, I had aspired to be a writer; after Joellen’s death I enrolled in the MFA program at Ohio State University in order to see if I really was. There I published a book of grief-stricken short stories, We’re in Trouble. While in school I also met the woman who, in 2005, became my second wife: Stephanie Lauer. In the years since our marriage I have rebuilt a life that, in 1999, seemed broken beyond salvage. I am happy now.

I’m happy. Maybe I can say I wrote my novel because I falter whenever I say this sentence. Not because it’s untrue—I am married to a marvelous woman, and I have a job I love in a city and region I love. I do not want for anything. But it is with utmost respect for my wife and for my job and my place that I say this: My happiness is often upsetting to me, because of the way it came to me. Because it’s a product of my first life being destroyed, and giving way to this one. These two lives—both of which, past and present, I’d have died to protect—will always exist in me, side by side.

"I’m happy." Maybe I can say I wrote my novel because I falter whenever I say this sentence.

My novel’s protagonist, Mark Fife, is not me, but he’s a man who’s also had to live two lives. His first marriage collapsed in the wake of the death of his seven-year-old son. He has rebuilt his life, too, and is on the verge of remarrying. His nightmares are like mine—including one that seems, terribly, to be coming true.

Why did I write about parenthood? Why is my novel’s ghost a child? Because I’m not a memoirist, first of all—I write fiction in order to take my problems and amplify them, change them, give them to a made-up someone else in order to see my own for what they are. Because my wife and I have recently decided not to have children, and this decision is a momentous one; as one early reader noted, I’m probably using this book to say goodbye to a potential son. Because in my mysterious other life, Joellen wanted children, and if she’d lived, we might have had them. Because I’m a child, myself, still, trying to figure out the processes by which I somehow became an adult.

I wrote this book, too, because of faith. I’m an atheist, and have been for all my adult life. Yet all around me—as I found out especially during Joellen’s sickness and death, and as we can surely see now, looking at the political landscape—are people who are sure, fight-to-the-death sure, that this life is not all we have. That there is a god, and a heaven, and souls in our bodies. When I sat down to write about haunting, and why ghosts are so scary for me to consider, I couldn’t help but think of them as representing a crisis of belief. A disruption of the way I—or anyone—might view both life and death.

Grief, after all, is not just a reaction to the loss of a human life. It’s also our reaction to loss of vision. When we marry, when we have children, we commit our futures to the act; we invest our dreams in the bodies of others. When we live through grief, when we survive, we have to rebuild our visions of ourselves and our place in the world. We have to tell ourselves we still matter.

So all these questions and visions became the center of my novel: A lost loved one’s voice in the night, calling us back. Telling us we were wrong—wrong to move forward, wrong to keep living as we lived, wrong in the way we think of God and heaven and hell. Isn’t that a terrifying thought? But: is the voice calling us out of loneliness? Out of love?

If you heard such a voice, could you answer?

If you did, what would you say?

Christopher Coake was named one of the 20 best young American novelists by Granta in 2007. He lives with his wife in Nevada, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada Reno.

RELATED CONTENT
Read our review of You Came Back, the Top Pick in fiction for June 2012.