Sarah Creech is the author of the new novel The Whole Way Home. She also has written the novel Season of the Dragonflies. She teaches English and creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, and she lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Q: Why did you decide to set your new novel in the world of
country music, and how did you come up with your character Jo?
A: I chose Nashville for a few reasons: I’ve had the
pleasure of meeting some great musicians like Margo Price, Chance McCoy of Old
Crow Medicine Show, J.P. Harris and the Tough Choices, Dale Watson, Jack White
(this list goes on and on), and at one point or another in their musical careers,
they’ve made Nashville their home.
This musical city full of so much diverse talent captured my
imagination and I knew I wanted to explore it. Also, I chose this world because
it has such a rich narrative tradition and blends so many different styles that
define America, from Appalachian folk songs to African American spirituals, yet
the genre itself has been largely overlooked by scholars.
My female protagonist, Jo Lover, was born from deep reading
about women’s roles in the history of country music. Her background and her
present circumstances are curated from the history I encountered. Her
transformation from a world of poverty to a world of fame is a familiar one.
(Dolly, Loretta, and Elvis too).
I was drawn to the experience of women in male-dominated
fields and what kind of persona a woman must present to navigate those power
dynamics.
I’m fascinated too by the way we present ourselves to the
world and the great gulf there can be between that presentation and our
interiority. The on stage and off the stage experience felt like the right
setting to explore this distance.
Q: What kind of research did you need to do to write the
book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I completed a tremendous amount of research before and
during the writing process for The Whole Way Home. My research began with
scholarship—I’m deeply indebted to the scholar Bill C. Malone for devoting his
entire career to the history of country music.
The genre’s association with the South and its cultural ills
like racism, misogyny, and poverty has created a barrier around the genre as a
topic worthy of serious inquiry, and the genre continues to be associated with
a hillbilly status first created in the early 20th century.
After I created a foundation of knowledge through
scholarship, I went into the field and met with musicians and spent time in
Nashville. What surprised me was the amount of diversity and creativity in the
underground/small venue music scene in Nashville compared to the kind of music
you find in the top 40 country music charts.
I saw this deep disconnect from the artists living there and
the kind of music that represents the place itself in the mainstream culture
and I knew I wanted to explore that chasm in The Whole Way Home.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started
writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had no idea how the novel would end when I started
writing—so far, I’ve never known the endings of the novels or short stories I
write. Part of the fun is discovering how it ends, just like a reader.
I re-wrote the novel eight times. A couple times I started
from scratch. It was a tough writing process, but my two main characters Jo and
J.D. were withholding from me in the early drafts.
Jo Lover has a very traumatic past and when I first started
writing I wasn’t sure exactly what that experience entailed. I had to write and
re-write to discover the real Jo and J.D. I cut so much writing along the way. I
lopped off entire plots lines, corporations, and characters, but with each
revision, the novel deepened. Painful, but worth it.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?
A: I’m always a little embarrassed to tell people the original
titles I have for my manuscripts. This novel was originally titled "The Crooked
Road" after the historical music trail in southwest Virginia.
However, HBO has a show in development with the same title,
and my team at William Morrow asked for a different title. Cue the misery: I
agonized over the title for the book—pages and pages of freewriting and
associative thinking about the theme only to turn up with terrible titles in
the end.
My dear friend who is a Victorian scholar read the novel
around this time and spotted the line “the whole way home” in one of the later J.D.
chapters. She said, “Well, what about this?” And immediately I knew it was the
right title to capture the theme and scope of the novel. Luckily, the William
Morrow team thought so too.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now I’m working on short fiction and I’m in a heavy
research stage for book number three. I can’t reveal anymore, lest it puff away
like smoke.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I love dark chocolate and I love readers who care so much
about books that they read smart blogs by other avid readers. Keep it going!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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