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| Photo by Lena Perkins, Key West |
Brooks Whitney Phillips is the author of the new young adult novel The Grove. She is a former columnist and writer for the Chicago Tribune, and she lives in Key West, Florida, and in Saugatuck, Michigan.
Q: What inspired you to write The Grove, and how did you create your characters Pip and Sissy? How would you describe the dynamic between the two?
A: The Grove originated from a prompt given at a writing group hosted by the Key West Library. I no longer remember the prompt, but I found myself writing about two teenage sisters running from something terrifying through a lush, tropical setting. None of that original writing remains, but the two sisters and the setting did, and that seed became The Grove.
Regarding the characters, I was drawn to the idea of two sisters bound by the isolation of their circumstance, and what happens when the person you rely on and love the most betrays you. When the person you thought you knew best, you don’t really know at all.
I was also interested in exploring the power of beauty to seduce people into making bad decisions, and what happens to lives without choice—when you are trapped because of race, class, gender, finance, pregnancy. And the allure of forbidden love.
But mostly, I wanted to explore the evolution of Pip as she discovers her own self-worth, finally emerging from behind the shadow of her older sister to shine.
Q: The novel is set in Florida in the 1960s--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: Setting, sense of place, is always so important in my writing! Like its own character. Florida has been a part of my life forever, and the book’s setting certainly inspired by my own childhood experiences.
Visiting my grandparents at Bayou Hammock on the island of Long Boat Key, where they settled in the early ’30s and my father was born and raised.
The sand roads, deeply shadowed by the dense, tropical foliage all around. The roadside stands, more shanty than building, where we were allowed to choose a souvenir at the end of our trip. Learning to fish with bamboo rods and a plastic red and white bobber off the crooked wooden dock.
The way my grandparents’ 1964 lima-bean green Buick LeSabre always smelled faintly of mildew. Of climbing the orange trees in their backyard grove and filling a canvas tote with fruit that I would offer to the neighbor in exchange for a handful of butterscotch candies.
I’ve always loved historical fiction—being transported to a different time—and 1961 seemed like an interesting period in terms of the country being on the brink of change, yet still trapped in the past regarding segregation and society’s attitudes toward women—especially in rural Central Florida.
Q: The School Library Journal review of the novel says, “Phillips’s writing is vivid and thoughtful as she tackles the bonds of sisterhood and first love, poverty, and socioeconomic bigotry, producing fully formed characters and leaving no question of motivation or actions in their wake.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love that description! What a thrilling review to receive. One of my favorite comments is when reviewers say that I handle tough subjects “thoughtfully.” Because there are a bunch of tough subjects.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve completely flipped from an impoverished family on an orange grove to an extremely, powerful, wealthy family in an elite resort town. It’s set in the summer of 1991 and explores date rape, which was a completely new and foreign concept—that women could be raped by someone they knew, as opposed to a stranger. It also explores the power of money to crush.
I’d been toying with this concept, but couldn’t really figure out why? What’s the point? Then I started researching 1991 and came upon a Time magazine cover, June 3, 1991, with the headline Date Rape, and I knew I had my story. What an appalling story to read! And it wasn’t even that long ago.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Sure! That I live in Key West, Florida and love looking at the ocean more than swimming in it, I have a serious Gummi Bear addiction, dream of owning a wildflower farm with a free-roaming black sheep named Poppyseed, and think all meals are better when served with fries.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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