Tess Callahan is the author of the new novel Dawnland. It's a sequel to her novel April & Oliver. She lives in Cape Cod and northern New Jersey, and is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland.
Q: Why did you decide to write a sequel to your novel April & Oliver?
A: The first thing that came to me about Dawnland was the setting. I began dreaming of the dune cliffs of Cape Cod, the liminal spaces between ocean and land, night and day. I saw the trails winding through pine barrens and the house on the knoll in which the characters gather.
No one was more surprised than I was when into that house walked my old characters, April and Oliver, complete with children and in-laws. I hadn’t seen them in over a decade, and they had an earful to report. Their teenagers added their own lenses, both on their parents and themselves.
Everyone during this weeklong vacation has some destiny to fulfill, their fates intricately bound to one another. The novel April & Oliver was not the end of their story, I realized, but the beginning. I was instructed to get busy.
Q: How do you think your characters have changed from one novel to the next?
A: April and Oliver’s lives evolved in ways that were greatly impacted by the events in the first novel. Because of each other’s influence, the trajectory of their lives changed. Oliver left law school and pursued his musical passion. April forsook her self-sabotaging habits, including physically abusive men.
Both became parents—a gamechanger for anyone. Parenthood stretched and tested them in ways they never imagined and expanded their capacity for love.
Throughout this time, April and Oliver were to each other like the grain of sand, the irritant, that causes a pearl to grow. As Dawnland opens, they have begun to step into their true identities solidly enough for them to finally confront the trauma of their past.
Q: The writer Alan Watt said of the novel, “Emotionally powerful, Dawnland explores questions of betrayal, guilt, and loss, and the high cost we must pay for genuine freedom.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think Alan connected with the book on a deep level. In some respects, all betrayal is self-betrayal.
For Oliver, the cost of freedom is admitting who he is and who he is not, an admission that will have a grave price. For April, freedom means solidifying boundaries and stepping into her sovereignty, a move which likewise will cost her. In fiction as in life, I find the price of authenticity is high.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Oh là là, the changes! I’m not one of those writers who has it all figured out in advance. I write to pursue my questions and make discoveries. I let the characters take the wheel, which is a messy proposition when they are terrible drivers.
But often the dark alley they careen down, the one I would never have dared to take, yields a scene I could not have conjured on my own, one that may even become the cornerstone of the book.
These sharp turns are not limited to the first draft. Even late into the rewrites the characters often show me I got something wrong, including ways in which I failed to let the full consequence of their actions play out.
I tend to protect my characters from worst-case scenarios. They constantly remind me that it is in facing such desperate crossroads that they discover who they are.
How far into the process can these changes occur? After receiving a publishing contract for Dawnland but before beginning the formal editorial process, I entirely changed the last quarter of the novel. Fortunately, my editor liked the changes!
Q: What are you working on now? Will you return to these characters again?
A: I’m nearly finished with a new novel that I had in a drawer for years. I thought it had been dormant, but apparently, to borrow a phrase from Anne Lamott’s classic book on writing, Bird by Bird, it was “composting.”
By the time I took it out, the thing had heated up, fermented, alchemically changed into something new. I am not revising so much as rewriting. Not a single sentence from the old draft has survived.
Having lain quiet for so long, the story is now coming to me like a tidal wave. Readers who like complex characters, high drama, foreign settings, forbidden love, and life-or-death stakes will enjoy the new novel.
Will I return to April and Oliver? For now, my work with them feels complete. But they have surprised me before.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I believe books are co-creations brought to life by the particular mindscape of the reader—their inner “umwelt.” The readers’ memories and sensibilities meet the words on the page to create images and associations wholly their own. In that way, the book is a new creation in the hands of every reader.
I welcome hearing readers’ impressions and questions and am easy to contact through my website: https://tesscallahan.com/.
Other tidbits:
For fellow creatives, I have TEDx talk on Creativity: https://youtu.be/VZbv9c0ruPU?feature=shared
For aspiring writers, I have a website of resources originally designed for my students: http://www.muse-feed.com/
For fellow meditators, I have a meditation podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/heart-haven-meditations/id1628432192
Thank you, Deborah, for featuring Dawnland on Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. I appreciate your questions and am honored to be here!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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