| Book Chat |
Where did the impulse for The Floor of the Sky originate?
I grew up in western Nebraska. Not on a ranch and not in the Sandhills, but in a little town,
not so unlike Elmyra. I haven't lived there for a long time, but my mother does, so I go
back once or twice a year. My people were people of the land. My dad loved the outdoors
and working the earth. By the time I was born, he'd given up farming, and I grew up
hearing stories of hardship mixed in with nostalgia for the independence and beauty of living
on the land. I have devotion to the land rooted in my bones, even though I live the life of a
city person.
When I started writing fiction, I wrote a lot of short stories, many of them based on old
family legends. Some of those stories got published here and there. Eventually, I exhausted
the autobiographical tug, and I wanted to write something about the contemporary world of
rural Midwesterners. Here, I think my insider-outsider status probably gave me a
perspective that fueled the story in a positive way.
What do you mean by that?
Just that I had some distance to combine with my observations. Sometimes that can be
very helpful. I wanted to write a tale that captured the ambiguities of rural life. I didn't want
to fall into sentimental nostalgia (remember "the good ole' days"), nor did I want to suggest
that all the changes sweeping across rural America are progressive and good. Life has been
hard on the rural landscape, and it's still hard. It's hard in a different way. There are new
challenges, and some people are being squeezed out of a way of life they have known and
loved for generations. I don't think we know yet what that will mean for us as a society.
Some years ago I had a conversation with a professor from Oxford while staying in a small
B&B. He talked about country landowners as stewards of a way of life that England did not
want to lose. Of course, the government has to subsidize this way of life, but he believed it
was for the common good. Here, we've taken a different approach, more complicated and
ambiguous. Yes, the government subsidizes to an extent. But we've also paved the way for
corporate agribusiness and giant super-stores on the rural landscape. We haven't decided
yet whether this is positive progress or a necessary evil, but either way we believe it is
inevitable.
How did you decide to make an aging widow the protagonist for your story?
Who knows? Perversity, maybe. I'm of an age when I see myself and others like me
disappearing from public view. When I go to a movie starring a man my age, he's usually
paired with a woman closer to the ages of my daughters. Well. That just makes me crabby.
I find mature women fascinating. I grew up listening to the stories of my mother and her
sisters. My husband's mother was one of seven sisters, and I loved hearing them sit around
the dining room table and spin tales. As a girl, I used to sing at the Women's Club in my
home town. My first librarian—a woman who changed my life—was in her 80's.
Women are the keepers of families and stories. The women I've known are smart, tough,
resilient, subversive, and funny. What more could you ask for in a character?
There are a lot of secrets that get uncovered in your story. What do make of that?
I'm perplexed by secrets. My natural inclination is to get things out in the open. I think we
cause a lot of real damage by hiding from each other. Plus, it takes a lot of energy to
remember what's out and what isn't.
But then again, there's Chekhov to consider. His work revolves around fragile families who
manage to hang on because certain things are not spoken. They aren't secrets, exactly.
Things aren't hidden so much as unnamed, and once they're named, no one can pretend any
longer not to know. And the knowledge destroys the family.
So, Toby and Gertie have secrets. So does George. Some of them fall in that category
Chekhov explores—things everyone knows but can't name—and some are true secrets.
And I was interested to see what would happen if some of them got revealed.
Do you know what's going to happen before you write?
Not at all. If I knew, what would be the point? No, I write to discover. Sometimes I think I
know, but then I get surprised. That's when it's the most consternating and the most fun.
You have a lot of different family relationships in this story. What can you say
about that?
I wrote about what interests me at this point in my life. I wrote about sisters, grandmothers
and grandchildren, a mother and daughter, cousins. Father and children, too—Luther has a
profound presence in the book even though he's long dead when it opens. George, who
isn't blood relation, is part of the family, and I found that interesting, too. What exactly is
his status? There are also adoptive relationships in this book. Maybe I was working at
defining family.
What about Toby's house, the Alhambra on the prairie?
My husband and I stayed at a B&B in South Dakota, Kenny and Lyndy Ireland's Triangle
Ranch, and Lyndy's great-grandmother's house was an Alhambra. I was struck by the
incongruity and surprise of it—this ornate house rising up out of the prairie. I loved the
suggestion that the Midwest and the West are not what the cultural clichés tell us. There are
surprises. During the Depression, people in the plains states used to send away (probably
more Sears catalogues!) for fancy dresses and host bridge parties. They had to find ways
to keep their spirits alive. I'd been thinking about writing this story—something about
women and lost children and changing times and love of land—and when I saw the
Alhambra, it all began to fall in place.
Why did you decide to tell the story through four different characters?
I think it's the playwright in me. When you write a play, the interrelationship of characters
fuels the action. I'm naturally drawn to that mix. I like observing how different people see
things. I like that way of exploring the truth, through relative perspectives. In this story,
each character holds information that the others don't have. The reader has all the
information, as it unfolds, so there's a tension created.
Plus, many people in western Nebraska don't talk much. All that isolation has turned them
out to be reticent, so I needed a practical device for the reader to know these people.
Moving into different points-of-view gave me access to their thoughts.
You have a theology degree. Does that interest play out in this story?
I'm interested in how people make meaning, how they interpret religious symbols and
systems they've inherited, how they cope with loss. I consider all of those issues
theological issues, in a broad sense. I think we make choices that contribute to our own
redemption or result in bitterness, which I think is a kind of hell. That certainly gets played
out with various characters. I hope it's subtle. I'm not interested in writing in service to any
certain ideology. I am interested in characters who are enriched or enslaved by the
ideologies they hold.
So, what's next for you?
My book of related stories will be out in the fall of 2008. That book chronicles three
generations of an extended family over a period of about 50 years.
I'm working on a new novel. I don't want to say too much about it. It's a departure, in
some ways, from all this work set in Nebraska. This one focuses on city people—or at
least, people who've ended up in the city. Now that I think about it, the main characters all
come from someplace else! It's that insider-outsider thing again.
Meanwhile, I continue to teach at the Loft, and I’m teaching this summer at Hamline in the
MFA program. My students inspire me to keep working at this illusive art.
I grew up in western Nebraska. Not on a ranch and not in the Sandhills, but in a little town,
not so unlike Elmyra. I haven't lived there for a long time, but my mother does, so I go
back once or twice a year. My people were people of the land. My dad loved the outdoors
and working the earth. By the time I was born, he'd given up farming, and I grew up
hearing stories of hardship mixed in with nostalgia for the independence and beauty of living
on the land. I have devotion to the land rooted in my bones, even though I live the life of a
city person.
When I started writing fiction, I wrote a lot of short stories, many of them based on old
family legends. Some of those stories got published here and there. Eventually, I exhausted
the autobiographical tug, and I wanted to write something about the contemporary world of
rural Midwesterners. Here, I think my insider-outsider status probably gave me a
perspective that fueled the story in a positive way.
What do you mean by that?
Just that I had some distance to combine with my observations. Sometimes that can be
very helpful. I wanted to write a tale that captured the ambiguities of rural life. I didn't want
to fall into sentimental nostalgia (remember "the good ole' days"), nor did I want to suggest
that all the changes sweeping across rural America are progressive and good. Life has been
hard on the rural landscape, and it's still hard. It's hard in a different way. There are new
challenges, and some people are being squeezed out of a way of life they have known and
loved for generations. I don't think we know yet what that will mean for us as a society.
Some years ago I had a conversation with a professor from Oxford while staying in a small
B&B. He talked about country landowners as stewards of a way of life that England did not
want to lose. Of course, the government has to subsidize this way of life, but he believed it
was for the common good. Here, we've taken a different approach, more complicated and
ambiguous. Yes, the government subsidizes to an extent. But we've also paved the way for
corporate agribusiness and giant super-stores on the rural landscape. We haven't decided
yet whether this is positive progress or a necessary evil, but either way we believe it is
inevitable.
How did you decide to make an aging widow the protagonist for your story?
Who knows? Perversity, maybe. I'm of an age when I see myself and others like me
disappearing from public view. When I go to a movie starring a man my age, he's usually
paired with a woman closer to the ages of my daughters. Well. That just makes me crabby.
I find mature women fascinating. I grew up listening to the stories of my mother and her
sisters. My husband's mother was one of seven sisters, and I loved hearing them sit around
the dining room table and spin tales. As a girl, I used to sing at the Women's Club in my
home town. My first librarian—a woman who changed my life—was in her 80's.
Women are the keepers of families and stories. The women I've known are smart, tough,
resilient, subversive, and funny. What more could you ask for in a character?
There are a lot of secrets that get uncovered in your story. What do make of that?
I'm perplexed by secrets. My natural inclination is to get things out in the open. I think we
cause a lot of real damage by hiding from each other. Plus, it takes a lot of energy to
remember what's out and what isn't.
But then again, there's Chekhov to consider. His work revolves around fragile families who
manage to hang on because certain things are not spoken. They aren't secrets, exactly.
Things aren't hidden so much as unnamed, and once they're named, no one can pretend any
longer not to know. And the knowledge destroys the family.
So, Toby and Gertie have secrets. So does George. Some of them fall in that category
Chekhov explores—things everyone knows but can't name—and some are true secrets.
And I was interested to see what would happen if some of them got revealed.
Do you know what's going to happen before you write?
Not at all. If I knew, what would be the point? No, I write to discover. Sometimes I think I
know, but then I get surprised. That's when it's the most consternating and the most fun.
You have a lot of different family relationships in this story. What can you say
about that?
I wrote about what interests me at this point in my life. I wrote about sisters, grandmothers
and grandchildren, a mother and daughter, cousins. Father and children, too—Luther has a
profound presence in the book even though he's long dead when it opens. George, who
isn't blood relation, is part of the family, and I found that interesting, too. What exactly is
his status? There are also adoptive relationships in this book. Maybe I was working at
defining family.
What about Toby's house, the Alhambra on the prairie?
My husband and I stayed at a B&B in South Dakota, Kenny and Lyndy Ireland's Triangle
Ranch, and Lyndy's great-grandmother's house was an Alhambra. I was struck by the
incongruity and surprise of it—this ornate house rising up out of the prairie. I loved the
suggestion that the Midwest and the West are not what the cultural clichés tell us. There are
surprises. During the Depression, people in the plains states used to send away (probably
more Sears catalogues!) for fancy dresses and host bridge parties. They had to find ways
to keep their spirits alive. I'd been thinking about writing this story—something about
women and lost children and changing times and love of land—and when I saw the
Alhambra, it all began to fall in place.
Why did you decide to tell the story through four different characters?
I think it's the playwright in me. When you write a play, the interrelationship of characters
fuels the action. I'm naturally drawn to that mix. I like observing how different people see
things. I like that way of exploring the truth, through relative perspectives. In this story,
each character holds information that the others don't have. The reader has all the
information, as it unfolds, so there's a tension created.
Plus, many people in western Nebraska don't talk much. All that isolation has turned them
out to be reticent, so I needed a practical device for the reader to know these people.
Moving into different points-of-view gave me access to their thoughts.
You have a theology degree. Does that interest play out in this story?
I'm interested in how people make meaning, how they interpret religious symbols and
systems they've inherited, how they cope with loss. I consider all of those issues
theological issues, in a broad sense. I think we make choices that contribute to our own
redemption or result in bitterness, which I think is a kind of hell. That certainly gets played
out with various characters. I hope it's subtle. I'm not interested in writing in service to any
certain ideology. I am interested in characters who are enriched or enslaved by the
ideologies they hold.
So, what's next for you?
My book of related stories will be out in the fall of 2008. That book chronicles three
generations of an extended family over a period of about 50 years.
I'm working on a new novel. I don't want to say too much about it. It's a departure, in
some ways, from all this work set in Nebraska. This one focuses on city people—or at
least, people who've ended up in the city. Now that I think about it, the main characters all
come from someplace else! It's that insider-outsider thing again.
Meanwhile, I continue to teach at the Loft, and I’m teaching this summer at Hamline in the
MFA program. My students inspire me to keep working at this illusive art.
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