Debut novelist Mary Glickman's Home in the Morning revels in a very particular structure--intimate interweaving of character and story, an accomplished non-linear unraveling of the plot--that provides the book's distinct charisma. Spanning the Civil Rights era through the late 1990s, Home in the Morning deals in the personal politics of its time, of its place, and of love itself. We asked the author to provide some background to her writing of the novel, which has met with early and enthusiastic accolades from readers, and she kindly obliged. In fact, as she explains below, Glickman remains so enraptured with the book's characters that it sounds as if its cast may have a future in a literary franchise of sorts. Read on…
Kindle Daily Post: What ultimately inspired you to undertake writing this novel? Did you have personal experiences that helped you convey the social intricacies between North and South?
Mary Glickman: I fell in love with the South when we lived there during a sabbatical year. It was a revelation to me. Somehow, the beautiful rhythms of Southern speech invaded my brain. The South's natural beauty, so evocative, so haunting, its colorful turns of phrase, its archetypes of characters, unique and powerful, its social graces ginned me up. Next, I found a theme. What better way to illustrate the persistent disconnect between North and South than to take a look at the civil rights era through the experience of a Southern Jew who marries a Yankee Jew at that time? The journey of the Southern Jew in America, I'd discovered, was strikingly different from that of the Northern Jew. When Yankee Jews as civil rights workers and Southern Jews as members of a society in turmoil--wondering when the violence bubbling up under demands for change and justice might turn on them--came together during the civil rights era, things got interesting. All of these influences inspired me to write a civil rights-era novel about Jews and African-Americans, their friendships, their histories, their passions, both of love and of anger.
KDP: Some fiction writers claim that the story writes or tells itself, and that as they write, the characters reveal themselves to the author. Did you have this experience? Which characters or parts of the book revealed themselves, and which required your more intentional guidance?
MG: You know, it always irritates me when I hear that stories write themselves or characters reveal themselves to an author, taking over a story. I think when people say they do, they're confusing inspiration with hallucination. There are moments in any creative experience when one is charging downriver with the currents of imagination, and it may feel like something else has taken over and directed you but--let's be honest--there's always this old man at the helm of the ship--steering, critiquing, badgering--that is in reality--guess who--the author trying to maintain control of his or her voice. The work is only successful when the old man is.
KDP: Home in the Morning is not told chronologically, and some of the most important scenes that convey the characters' motivations are often delayed in the telling. How did you go about choosing how much to reveal and when?
MG: Wish I knew! It'd make the efforts I'm expending in polishing my work-in-progress--very-soon to-be-finished, I hope--that much easier. There's a lot of writing that's instinctive after one's been at it a while. You don't think so much; you just do. The best advice I ever received about writing and the only advice I ever dispense with confidence is: Listen to the voice. The voice never lies. One has a sense of one's plot, and one has a sense of how to create suspense. The voice will tell you if you're realizing those intimations of intellect or not. How many times do writers sit back and say: "I know something's wrong with that passage; I just don't know why"? Well, it doesn't matter why. If the voice is telling you it's wrong, it's wrong. Listen to the voice and you'll know how to pace the writing, the suspense, the tension, the emotion. The voice is everything.
KDP: Which character's voice was the most rewarding, challenging, or effortless to write?
MG: I suppose Jackson's character was the easiest, as if anything's easy. He starts out the novel so he's closest in a way to my heart. His mother, Missy Fine Sassaport, is a close second, and third would be Katherine Marie. I had more trouble with Stella, his wife, and Li'l Bokay/Mombasa, Katherine Marie's husband. I think it was because they both were such dominant personalities, leading such extraordinary lives, that they scared me. How to keep them from stealing the stage? I really enjoyed writing Bubba Ray. And Daddy. Characters with such unique flaws are fun. Mickey Moe was close to my heart, which is why I've chosen him as a protagonist for my work-in-progress. I just couldn't be finished with him. He reminds me of a type of man that's hard to find these days. And that's a sad thing.
KDP: What do you hope readers take away from reading Home in the Morning?
MG: I would hope they understand and appreciate the South better, if they're from the North. In the current political climate, one hears a lot of criticism of the South that has little basis in reality and that hurts. Remember what Flannery O'Connor said: "Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." I'd hope the reader might also recall or come to understand the Southern Jewish Experience in the context of the civil rights era, to understand the era generally in a fresh manner in which many Southerners, black and white, were neither uniformly heroes, victims, nor villains, but often people of goodwill who were trying to make sense and justice out of a world steeped in a commitment to history but nevertheless a world that changed from one breath to the next. I'd like them to agree that the South is stronger, more glorious for having made a difficult but grand transition from Old South to New.
KDP: This being your first novel, do you anticipate that others will follow?
MG: Please, God, yes! Resoundingly: Yes! I have another nearly finished using the civil rights era and the great flood of 1927 as platforms to tell two unusual love stories based in part on characters with lesser roles in Home in the Morning. After that, I'd like to write a story focused on three of the women in both novels and bring the era of feminism into focus. After that--well, I don't like to plan that far ahead. It may interfere with the flow of new ideas! But writing is what I do. During the difficult years of rejection and discouragement, I confess there were times when I thought: Well! I'll show them! I'll stop writing then! Do something else! (As if anyone cared.) Ha! A few months would go by and there I'd be pecking away at my keyboard, enchanted by the next story, the next character. They say that one is what one does. Well, for good or ill, I'm a writer. I can't stop even when I try.
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Mary Glickman's Home in the Morning is now available as a standard Kindle edition and Kindle edition with Audio/Video for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch devices.
