Carla Jean Whitley

Fiction

The darkness of small-town North Carolina

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Jess Hall will never forget what he saw while peering into the church that day. Sheriff Clem Barfield is determined to find out exactly what happened inside those walls. And when all is said and done, town midwife Adelaide Lyle finally feels like the church is again a place of sanctuary.

Strange goings-on at River Road Church of Christ in Signs Following have been taking place ever since mysterious Pastor Carson Chambliss arrived in rural Marshall, North Carolina. It was one thing when parishioners covered the church windows in newspaper, then began speaking in tongues and handling serpents. But Addie had had enough when a copperhead struck a 79-year-old church member. After the snake was put away, the service went on and church members dumped the body in the woman’s front yard to avoid drawing attention to the congregation. Addie declared the church no place for children and began leading the congregation’s youngest members in Sunday school lessons beside the river, where they were safe.

Or so it seems, until the day a church man comes for one of her charges. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Christopher “Stump” Hall is brought in for healing. The child has been mute since birth, and his mother is a loyal church member. But when the healing goes terribly wrong, the entire town is thrown into a tailspin.

In his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, Wiley Cash ably blends the intertwining stories of Jess, Addie and Clem to gradually reveal what happened to Stump in the church that Sunday. In the process, Cash proves capable of handling dialect and multiple narrators while creating distinctive voices and fully developed characters.

Jess has always been fiercely protective of Stump, and Cash offers insight into a child made more adult by being responsible for his older brother. Addie has served as midwife for most of the town, and as a result can trace each character’s path to the present. Though Clem, as sheriff, plays the role of good guy, his struggles with right, wrong and anger make him a believable character. Cash, himself from western North Carolina, never stoops to typecasting his characters, instead exploring how their pasts have led them to the present. The result is a compelling, fast-paced story that draws the reader into the lives of Marshall’s residents.

 

RELATED CONTENT
Read an interview with Wiley Cash for A Land More Kind Than Home.

Jess Hall will never forget what he saw while peering into the church that day. Sheriff Clem Barfield is determined to find out exactly what happened inside those walls. And when all is said and done, town midwife Adelaide Lyle finally feels like the church…

FictionDebut Fiction

Facing life after loss

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

It isn’t surprising that Ella Beene’s husband, Joe Capozzi, dies within the first 10 pages of The Underside of Joy. After all, the jacket copy reveals that this story is about the personal struggles and family challenges Ella faces after her husband’s death. But the juxtaposition of Seré Prince Halverson’s descriptions of pure, unadulterated joy, and the reader’s knowledge that Ella’s joy has an expiration date, is breathtaking.

In the opening pages, Ella says, “For three years, I did backflips in the deep end of happiness. The joy was palpable and often loud. Other times it softened—Zach’s milky breath on my neck, or Annie’s hair entwined in my fingers as I braided it, or Joe’s humming some old Crowded House song in the shower while I brushed my teeth.”

Debut novelist Halverson paints a picture of Ella’s everyday life, married to Joe and raising her stepchildren, Annie and Zach, in a coastal Northern California town. Ella was still fresh out of her first marriage when she met Joe. The couple fell for each other hard and fast, and were married within a year. He, too, was divorced; Joe’s first wife, Paige, had left him and the kids months earlier, with hardly a word since. Ella is the only mother they have ever known. Until, of course, Paige shows up at Joe’s funeral and begins the fight to regain custody of her children.

The first third of The Underside of Joy is rich with detail, recounting Ella’s move from joy to mourning to struggles with Paige and the faltering family business Joe left behind. Though the plot at first moves slowly, Halverson’s prose is captivating. In fact, it’s once the plot quickens that the book hits occasional weak points, where plot takes precedence over previously enchanting descriptions. But as she mines the family secrets her characters hold close and how those affect their relationships with one another, Halverson proves she’s a wordsmith and a storyteller to keep an eye on.

It isn’t surprising that Ella Beene’s husband, Joe Capozzi, dies within the first 10 pages of The Underside of Joy. After all, the jacket copy reveals that this story is about the personal struggles and family challenges Ella faces after her husband’s death. But the…

FictionWomen's Fiction

Reunions and reawakenings

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Marisa de los Santos has established herself as a deft chronicler of human emotion. With her first two successful novels, Love Walked In and Belong to Me, she has explored the landscape of a variety of relationships: friendly, romantic, neighborly, maternal. And in her latest novel, de los Santos traverses all of that relational terrain at once.

Pen, Cat and Will were college best friends almost from the moment they met, when Pen discovered Cat seizing in the bathroom between classes, and then called into the hallway for help. Their friendship was so tight that they excluded others from their circle—but it was a closeness that couldn’t last forever. When it was time for Cat to pursue a romantic relationship, and therefore an identity separate from her two best friends, the group’s friendship fell apart.

Pen is still feeling that pain six years later, when she receives a letter from Cat asking that they meet up at an impending college reunion. Pen’s life has changed radically since she last saw her two best friends. She’s given birth to a child out of wedlock, regularly faces her complicated relationship with her daughter’s father and is still reeling from the sudden death of her own father, whom Cat and Will adored. She still thinks of her former friends often, and wonders what they would make of who she’s become.

And so Pen sets off toward that reunion, prepared to meet Cat but surprised instead to see Will, who received a similar letter. As the pair search for Cat, they revisit their lost friendship and their complicated feelings for one another.

Falling Together explores the ways our familial relationships and friendships affect who we are and who we’re becoming. Though the ride through Pen’s relational topography is sometimes bumpy—flashbacks aren’t always clearly differentiated from Pen’s present day—the appeal of de los Santos’ books remains the intimacy with which the reader gets to know each character.

 

RELATED CONTENT

BookPage editor Trisha Ping interviews Marisa de los Santos about Falling Together:

Marisa de los Santos has established herself as a deft chronicler of human emotion. With her first two successful novels, Love Walked In and Belong to Me, she has explored the landscape of a variety of relationships: friendly, romantic, neighborly, maternal. And in her latest…

Fiction

The eyes of the storm

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The Gulf of Mexico is about to birth a storm, and it’s headed straight for Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. But Hurricane Katrina’s approach isn’t the first thing on teenage Esch Batiste’s mind; she’s more concerned about her newly discovered pregnancy and the baby’s father, Manny, who is dating another girl. Her brother Skeetah, on the other hand, is fixated on his pit bull China’s newborn puppies. If they live, the dogs may provide money for the Batiste children, who are living in poverty and fending for themselves as their father drinks to dull the pain of their mother’s death.

There’s an unmistakable contrast between Skeetah’s love for China and the indifference of Manny toward Esch. Manny dotes on his girlfriend but approaches Esch for sex; he pushes her away when she seeks emotional connection. Esch repeatedly draws parallels between her situation and her assigned school reading about the mythological Medea, whose husband Jason betrays her. Manny refuses her, but Esch finds support from her brothers, her father and their friends. “This baby got plenty daddies,” one boy says.

It would be easy for the events of Salvage the Bones to take on a pitying, cloying quality. But Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward’s second novel is a pitch-perfect account of struggle and community in the rural South. No doubt Ward’s own upbringing, in DeLisle, Mississippi, factored into the landscape she paints. The fictional Bois Sauvage is based on Ward’s hometown, where the population is mostly poor, black and uneducated. Ward herself broke out of that cycle with help from her mother’s employer, who paid for her private-school education.

The fictional world Ward creates sings with the speech of uneducated but wise people without stepping into caricature dialect. Though the characters in Salvage the Bones face down Hurricane Katrina, the story isn’t really about the storm. It’s about people facing challenges, and how they band together to overcome adversity.

The Gulf of Mexico is about to birth a storm, and it’s headed straight for Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. But Hurricane Katrina’s approach isn’t the first thing on teenage Esch Batiste’s mind; she’s more concerned about her newly discovered pregnancy and the baby’s father, Manny, who…

Fiction

Speaking with the angels

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter has built a following on the strength of his literary song lyrics, which tackle such subjects as the parallels between science and relationships, the difficulties of love in an apocalyptic age and the beauty of relying on people close to you. With his debut novel, Bright’s Passage, Ritter shows that his range extends well beyond the three-minute pop song. He takes full advantage of the near-limitless bounds of the novel in this post-World War I tale, drawing contrast between a stark landscape filled with people in war scenes and a lush countryside and the lonely man who roams it after the war. 

After veteran Henry Bright delivers his son and watches his wife die in childbirth, he begins a journey across the Appalachian terrain of West Virginia. An angel who followed Henry home from war and now speaks through his horse instructs him to burn his house and leave before his neighbor can follow his tracks.

The reader gains insight into Henry’s life as chapters cut between his past in West Virginia, the war and his race from the neighbor and the burning house, which instigates a wildfire. It quickly becomes evident that Henry isn’t only recovering from seeing friends die in the Great War; he’s also facing family battles and an internal struggle. Ritter allows readers to draw their own conclusions about Henry’s heavenly interaction, and this psychologically engaging tale will keep readers thinking for days after they close the book.

Read an interview with Josh Ritter about Bright's Passage.

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter has built a following on the strength of his literary song lyrics, which tackle such subjects as the parallels between science and relationships, the difficulties of love in an apocalyptic age and the beauty of relying on people close to you. With…

Fiction

A family’s second chance

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Jesse Bennett’s life changes dramatically during the summer she’s 13. It’s a difficult age for anyone. But life becomes especially difficult for Jesse when she returns home one day to find neighbors gathered outside her house in the British city of Hull. Her mother has attempted suicide, and after she returns from a stay in a mental institution, the family moves to the nearby seaside town of Midham.

It’s a chance for her mother to start anew in the fresh country air, and Jesse also seizes the chance to recreate herself. She has always been an outcast at school, but in Midham that changes. While waiting for her father outside the town co-op on a rainy day, Jesse meets Amanda, a beautiful, older and clearly popular girl. When Amanda invites Jesse to stand under her umbrella, Jesse is immediately taken with her. She’s even more excited when she meets Tracey, a girl in her own grade, and realizes that the two are sisters, granting Jesse regular access to Amanda.

Another Life Altogether reveals Jesse’s struggle with the challenges of being a teenager: dealing with her parents—particularly dramatic, given her mother’s mental illness; fitting in at school; and coming to terms with her sexuality. And Jesse is often lost to a fantasy world where she and Amanda are romantically involved—a desire she can’t admit, for fear that such a revelation would cost her the social standing she has worked so hard to achieve.

With the release of Another Life Altogether, author Elaine Beale turns from the murder mystery genre of her first effort (1997’s Murder in the Castro, now out of print) to an exploration of psychological development. Though there’s plenty of action in the novel, it is Beale’s examination of Jesse’s relationship with a cast of quirky family members and classmates that propels the worthy story forward. 

Jesse Bennett’s life changes dramatically during the summer she’s 13. It’s a difficult age for anyone. But life becomes especially difficult for Jesse when she returns home one day to find neighbors gathered outside her house in the British city of Hull. Her mother has…

Fiction

Hornby’s fresh, funny musical tale

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The fictional American singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe achieved critical success in the 1980s with the classic breakup album Juliet. Then, at the height of his career, Tucker canceled a tour and withdrew. In the years since, a small but committed following has sprung up on the Internet, tracking every rumor or tidbit suggesting activity from the reclusive Crowe.

When a stripped-down version of Tucker Crowe’s classic album shows up in the mailbox of leading Croweologist Duncan and his girlfriend Annie, the duo’s relationship is already on the rocks. They’ve remained together for 15 years—more out of habit and proximity than passion, given the lack of options in their bleak, seaside English town. Their polar reactions to the new album, Juliet, Naked, only heighten Duncan and Annie’s differences.

Duncan is the kind of neurotic fan who intimidates others, turning them away from music instead of toward it. Anyone who has obsessed over unreleased material or bootlegs of their favorite band’s shows will identify with him immediately. He knows too much, finding significance in every note his favorite musician plays and every syllable he utters.

That arrogance pushes Annie to the edge. After the couple posts their differing analyses of the album on Duncan’s Tucker Crowe fan site, Annie and Duncan’s paths split—and converge with Tucker Crowe’s—as they set out after their own lives.

Juliet, Naked is classic Nick Hornby, with characters internally debating what is worthwhile as their lives are lived out to a soundtrack. At the same time it’s a fresh story of these curiously interwoven lives and perspectives. Each Hornby venture exhibits his considerable talent, whether through a novel, memoir or collection of essays. But it’s the music-oriented books that often draw a cult following, not unlike that of Juliet, Naked’s Tucker Crowe. And Hornby’s insights into the rabid fan are as acute as ever—not a surprise, given his own obsessive listening.

Carla Jean Whitley attends way too many concerts and regularly interviews musicians in Birmingham, Alabama.

The fictional American singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe achieved critical success in the 1980s with the classic breakup album Juliet. Then, at the height of his career, Tucker canceled a tour and withdrew. In the years since, a small but committed following has sprung up on the…

Fiction

Literature heals amid grief

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Ellie Lerner is devastated when her best friend Lucy is murdered while walking her eight-year-old daughter Sophie to school. Ellie immediately flies from America to London, helps Lucy’s husband plan the funeral and tends to Sophie, her goddaughter who has fallen silent after witnessing her mother’s brutal death.

As she copes with the loss of her best friend, Ellie attaches herself to Sophie, clinging to the child for purpose and meaning in the wake of her best friend’s murder.

Ellie and Sophie find escape in literature, as they read a chapter of The Secret Garden each night before bed. Ellie feels about books the way some do about cooking: sharing them with others is an act of service and love. It’s the act of reading that convinces Sophie to break nearly a week of silence.

But in the process, Ellie neglects her own marriage. There’s already distance between her and Phillip, an emotional remoteness that began when their own child died in utero, and now Ellie adds physical distance to the equation.

Julie Buxbaum crafts a tale filled with the nuance of broken relationships, just as she did in her debut novel The Opposite of Love. And though her first novel was widely acclaimed, Buxbaum’s writing has clearly matured. Her characters possess emotional depth that’s evident from page one, and her storytelling is more streamlined and precise.

While The Opposite of Love danced on the edges of chick lit, After You steps toward literary fiction. It’s a promising move for a young author who sidesteps the sophomore slump.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama.

Ellie Lerner is devastated when her best friend Lucy is murdered while walking her eight-year-old daughter Sophie to school. Ellie immediately flies from America to London, helps Lucy’s husband plan the funeral and tends to Sophie, her goddaughter who has fallen silent after witnessing her…

Fiction

From despair to hope in Rwanda

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Baking Cakes in Kigali begins as a series of vignettes, with author Gaile Parkin introducing characters and plot elements through visits to cake baker Angel Tungaraza’s apartment. The residents of Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, turn to Angel for their celebrations—and sometimes just a weeknight dinner party—and in the process share their lives and hopes with the Tanzanian transplant.

But as more characters enter the fold, their lives and these vignettes intertwine. Angel’s cakes are the route into relationships and people’s lives. She charms her clients with tea and conversation as she learns what occasion each cake will mark. Baking is a way to show you care, even if the cake is for hire.

She meets women with cheating husbands, women longing for love, men who have traveled the continent searching for their families. And Angel brings people in her community together, introducing one friend to another and building community through relationships.

After the premature deaths of her children, Angel has become both mother and grandmother to her grandchildren, and her love extends to others in the neighborhood. She serves as mother of the bride for shopkeeper Leocadie’s wedding, and when sex worker Jeanne d’Arc comes to her to order a cake for her sister’s confirmation, Angel offers the girl her grandchild’s confirmation gown.

Throughout, these interwoven friendships reveal despair turning to hope as people find trust and faith in each other. So much in Kigali is colored by AIDS and genocide. It seems the lives of everyone Angel encounters have been touched by those perils. Angel herself saw her son diagnosed with the virus. But as Angel celebrates weddings, confirmations and life with her clients, Baking Cakes in Kigali reveals a hope and joy not often associated with Rwanda.

Zambia native Parkin’s own experience as a relief worker in Rwanda inform this first novel, creating a complete view of life in this African nation.

Carla Jean Whitley writes and bakes in Birmingham, Alabama.

Baking Cakes in Kigali begins as a series of vignettes, with author Gaile Parkin introducing characters and plot elements through visits to cake baker Angel Tungaraza’s apartment. The residents of Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, turn to Angel for their celebrations—and sometimes just a…

Fiction

When your mind is your enemy

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Harvard psychology professor Dr. Alice Howland is only 50 years old when she begins to experience frequent and unusual memory loss. A BlackBerry forgotten at dinner, a mysterious item on her to-do list and an out-of-town conference she forgot to attend all make Alice wonder what's happening to her.

First-time novelist Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice before the book was picked up by Pocket Books. But the knowledge she has gained from earning a doctorate in neuroscience and serving as an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association, shines throughout this debut, a realistic portrayal of an intelligent, independent woman facing early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

It's painful to witness scene after scene of forgetting, particularly as Alice awaits and then denies her diagnosis. But through those incidents, Alice's plight evokes the reader's sympathy and understanding. Still Alice tracks her mental decline over a two-year period, revealing how early-onset Alzheimer's affects Alice's relationships, career and sense of self. During the disease's rapid progression, she becomes more and more dependent on her husband and three grown children to guide her through each day. Once-mundane tasks become to-do list fodder. Alice makes notes to remind herself to take medication every morning and evening. She's even prone to forget to teach classes.

Alice discovers who she is and what her relationships mean as the disease advances. Memories fall away, but the heart remains. And though the novel is heavy on explanation of the disease's effects, Genova writes in clear language that even the least medically inclined will understand.

Those who have lost a loved one to Alzheimer's will find particular comfort in this sensitive tale. The novel portrays both the patient's and the family's struggle with Alzheimer's disease in a more heart-rending way than medical literature ever could.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama. 

Harvard psychology professor Dr. Alice Howland is only 50 years old when she begins to experience frequent and unusual memory loss. A BlackBerry forgotten at dinner, a mysterious item on her to-do list and an out-of-town conference she forgot to attend all make Alice wonder…

When love has your number

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

“Everything counts.” The opening line of Addition is an appropriate mantra for Grace Vanderburg’s life. Numbers dominate, to the point that the 35-year-old Australian is unable to work. From the time she wakes at precisely 5:55 a.m., Grace’s days are carefully measured. Five minutes to gather herself. Twenty-five paces to the bathroom, followed by 160 strokes of the toothbrush. She selects the day’s outfit from a rotation of 10 shirts and 10 pairs of trousers. Grace even carefully plans the numbers of each grocery purchase. When she mistakenly finds herself at the grocery store cash register with nine bananas instead of 10, Grace rounds out the bunch by plucking a banana from the basket of an attractive man in line behind her.

By measuring the dimensions of her world, Grace forms a place where she feels in control and safe. Creating routines helps her avoid the unexpected. Or, well, she thinks she can avoid it, until she shows up at her preferred cafe at her prescribed time and finds every table occupied. Panic begins to set in—and then the man from the supermarket waves her to his table.

Slowly, Grace’s world shifts. Her life breaks from its prescribed pattern when she agrees to go on a date with Seamus. It’s an acceptable change, Grace tells herself. She can break routine if she wants to—she simply chooses to live by the numbers. But when Grace and Seamus are together, numbers recede to the background. Their relationship changes Grace, challenges Seamus and illustrates how a relationship can bring out both the best and worst in a person.

In her debut novel, Toni Jordan invites readers into Grace’s mental world, making Grace’s thoughts become their own. Jordan paints a sympathetic portrait of a young woman suffering from (and often embracing) obsessive-compulsive disorder, never talking down to her character but offering insight into her thoughts. In the end, readers will be left counting the days until Jordan’s next release.

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and carefully minimizes her contact with numbers in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Everything counts.” The opening line of Addition is an appropriate mantra for Grace Vanderburg’s life.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

American Rust

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Buell, Pennsylvania, is a dying town. Though it was once home to a thriving steel industry, the mills have closed, the workers have been laid off and the remaining residents are just trying to get by.

Or get out, in the case of Isaac English and Billy Poe. The young men missed their chance to leave after high school. Isaac, the smartest boy in town, was expected to follow his sister Lee’s footsteps to a prestigious college. He instead remained in Buell, caring for his disabled father. Poe is left languishing, jobless, after turning down offers to play college football. They seem unlikely friends—the brain and the jock—but in high school the boys were both the best at what they did.

When Isaac decides he can’t take any more, he takes his father’s money and his friend on his way out of town. But an unintentional murder stops the boys and becomes the impetus for all that follows.

In American Rust, debut novelist Philipp Meyer employs the voices of the boys and four others as narrators to reveal the ensuing action. It’s a tactic that has been used by novelists many times before, but it is amazingly effective here. Meyer captures personalities with each depiction; instead of merely stating that Isaac was the smartest kid in his grade, Meyer reveals Isaac’s intelligence in the distinction between his words and Poe’s. Poe’s rambling, run-on sentences capture the energy with which he must have played high school football. When the reality of the murder sets in, Isaac’s narration becomes less coherent, dissolving into a frantic internal monologue.

As the story unfolds, layers are revealed. These are unraveling lives in a town that’s long since unraveled as steel mills closed and industry left the valley. Meyer’s tale reminds us there’s so much more below the surface of what we see—more to the smart kid, the jock, the parents who raised them, the good cop and the little steel town.

 

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama, a steel town that has adapted to include new industries.

 

Buell, Pennsylvania, is a dying town. Though it was once home to a thriving steel industry, the mills have closed, the workers have been laid off and the remaining residents are just trying to get by.

Or get out, in the case of Isaac English…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Leila Meacham

Interview by Carla Jean Whitley

Although it’s been eagerly anticipated as a debut, the epic novel Roses isn’t the first outing for author Leila Meacham. In the mid-1980s, Meacham wrote and published a handful of romance novels. But it wasn’t a process she enjoyed much. At the time, she was teaching English, and the solitary process of writing took her away from preparing lesson plans, learning about new techniques and enjoying hobbies like gardening.

“I guess the difference is the years. I had other things I wanted to do,” Meacham says from her San Antonio home during a recent telephone interview. “I just didn’t want to spend the time cooped up.”

But after retiring, Meacham ran through her list of retirement goals. She and her husband traveled. Thirteen years into retirement, at age 65, she was left with a question: Now what?

The answer was Roses.

“One day I was in bed, drinking my cup of coffee, and I just thought to myself, ‘I’ve got so much to offer somebody somewhere or something. I just don’t know what to do with the rest of my life,’” Meacham recalls. “I will defend this to my dying day: A voice in my head said, ‘You will get down Roses and you will finish Roses.’ I like to believe that’s a divine inspiration.”

Meacham had begun the novel in 1985, when a bad case of pneumonia forced her to temporarily resign from teaching. As years passed, the typewritten pages of the novel were stored in a box in a closet, almost abandoned as Meacham and her husband moved from one house to another. “My husband said, ‘Oh, go ahead and take it. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’ ” Six years ago, his suspicions proved accurate as Meacham pulled the box off the shelf and resumed writing.

The novel traces nearly 70 years in the history of the Toliver family, owners of a cotton plantation in a fictional Texas town. When patriarch Vernon Toliver dies, he entrusts the land to his daughter, Mary, because he knows she will love and care for it. His wife and son are outraged.

That decision and the stubborn love that motivated it determine the course of Mary Toliver’s life. She’s unwilling to compromise anything that would negatively affect her beloved Somerset plantation, whether it means sacrificing her fair complexion to work in the field or the man she loves because he won’t settle for second place in her heart. The decisions Mary makes, and the lies that accompany them, alter the history of the Toliver clan and its relationships with the town’s other founding families, the department store-owning DuMonts and timber magnates the Warwicks.

Through a series of flashbacks—first Mary Toliver’s, then Percy Warwick’s and finally Mary’s great-niece Rachel’s—Meacham reveals just how much Mary lost by dedicating her life to the land, and why she has sold the land in her determination to save Rachel from the same fate.

It’s only appropriate that this 600-page epic took Meacham five years to write. The narrative sprawls across geography as much as time, stretching from the fictional Texas burg of Howbutker to Lubbock, Dallas and points between. (“The two together—cotton and timber—you don’t find that in the same state” anywhere but Texas, Meacham says.)

The five years Meacham devoted to the story were filled with as many interruptions as the book has plot twists. “But I persevered because I felt like I promised God I would complete this book,” she says. “Just as sure as I’m talking to you, I was assured from the get-go, you write the book and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Now the 71-year-old Meacham is not only anticipating book signings to support the book, she’s also hard at work on another epic novel, this time with a more modern focus. So what happened to the woman who so disliked the solitary nature of writing?

“I didn’t like the confinement, the frustration of trying to get your thoughts on paper,” Meacham recalls. “Oddly enough, I’m happiest when I’m writing now. And I’m all by myself and anything in the world can come out on the page.”

“What this has done for me has made me aware that I can write. Now, I don’t know if you’ll agree with me. But I feel that I can write. I can tell a story.”

 

Carla Jean Whitley reads, writes and lives near three generations of her family in Birmingham, Alabama.

Although it’s been eagerly anticipated as a debut, the epic novel Roses isn’t the first outing for author Leila Meacham. In the mid-1980s, Meacham wrote and published a handful of romance novels. But it wasn’t a process she enjoyed much. At the time, she was…

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