Ginger Eager is the author of the new novel The Nature of Remains. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Bellevue Literary Review and The Georgia Review, and she lives in Georgia.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for
The Nature of Remains, and for your cast of characters?
A:
Around 2005, I went with a friend to look at a farmhouse that was for sale.
This place was remote. We drove through a creek to reach the house. The owner
told us that he had tenants moving out but that they would be gone when we
arrived. He told us the front door would be unlocked and said we should just go
in and look around.
When
we arrived, ours was the only vehicle in the yard, but we knocked at the door anyways.
There
was some stomping and shuffling inside, and then the heat-swollen door was
forced open a few inches. The woman who peered out was in the grips of
something mean. Her skin was trauma aged, and I’m not sure when she’d last
eaten a decent meal.
“My
husband is down at the pond,” she said. “He’ll shoot you if he sees you. He
don’t welcome visitors.”
We
thanked her and left. That afternoon, my friend called the owner, and he
confessed that the home was occupied by squatters. He was unable to get them
out of the house.
The
theory that there should be no homeless because there are enough homes for all
feels morally right to me.
But
what does this look like in practice? What does this look like in a deeply
rural area where the social safety net may be only what your friends and family
are able and willing to provide? A home—only a home—is never enough.
I
kept thinking of that woman, and wondering how she’d ended up in the situation
in which we found her.
When
the housing market crashed around 2007, and people I knew began to lose their
jobs, businesses, and homes, I began to write.
Q:
The novel takes place in a town in Georgia--how important is setting to you in
your work?
A:
I’ve discovered that I cannot write a place unless I know it in my bones. I’ve
been at work on my next novel, and when I first started I planned to set it in the
swamps and marshes of southern Louisiana. I took a research trip and read
several novels set in that area and then I began to write.
I
kept getting stuck on details.
For
instance, I wouldn’t know the bird that a character might see as she walked
along a riverbank in spring. I could go to a bird book and answer that question,
but I couldn’t turn the bird into more than a 2-D image in my imagination. I didn’t
know the bird’s flight pattern, or how it fed, or how it behaved in the company
of other birds.
As
a result, my character couldn’t have more than a cursory experience. Cursory
experiences don’t lead to believable interiority. I was bored by my own work.
I
reworked the plot so that it takes place in south Georgia and this seems to
have worked. I’m from the northern part of the state, the Piedmont, but I have
family in the Coastal Plain. I’ve spent time there as more than a tourist. I know
the swamps and marshes of Georgia in a specific way: swamp iris, anhinga,
hog-nosed snake.
Q:
Why did you choose 1959 and 2009 to set the novel, and did you need to do much
research to write the book?
A:
I worked first with the 2009 plotline. It was important to me that the
recession affect the fate of every
character in the contemporary story. This doesn’t mean that every character is directly
affected. There are so many forces acting upon us of which we have only the
faintest awareness. I wanted the novel to reflect this truth.
So
we have Jonathan, whose job at the concrete plant is directly affected by the
collapse of the housing market, and we have his wife Lexie, whose commitment to
her marriage erodes as Jonathan’s anger and anxiety escalate.
We
have Bird, economically untouched by the recession. But when he decides to sell
his life insurance business and retire, his secretary, Doreen, creates a plan
to steal his business from him rather than face unemployment in a small town
with little work.
I
did a lot of research on the construction materials industry to write the 2009
plotline. My husband is a geologist who works in aggregates, so I had access. I
toured a cement plant and interviewed several people. I read trade magazines.
I
did less research into the insurance industry—a long conversation with a friend
in the business was enough to answer the questions I had.
As
for the 1958-1959 plotline, at first I tried to fit the events into flashbacks.
I
wrote the novel in close third person, which is similar to first person in terms
of the information that a single character can know. There was information I
needed to give the reader about Bird’s teenage years that he wouldn’t be able
to properly convey as his adult self.
I
also needed the reader to see Doreen’s mother, but more sympathetically than
could be done through Doreen’s adult eyes. The events of 1958-9 became their
own plotline.
I
had to do historical research for this storyline. I researched the Civil Rights
movement in southeast Georgia in the late 1950s and the history of the Fulton
Bag and Cotton Mill. I researched the history of the meat packing industry in
Chicago. I researched music and cars and clothes. I looked at the progression
of indoor plumbing in rural Georgia.
There
were so many details that I tried to get right.
The
extended geological metaphor undergirding the novel demanded research too. I
live with a geologist, so I’ve had a couple of decades of impromptu field
lessons at this point, but I still needed to read several papers on crystal
formation.
Q:
What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A:
I hope readers question societal structures as they read the book. I hope they
consider the ways they are bound and the ways they are free. I hope they think
about whom they help to liberate and whom they help to oppress.
I
also hope readers get sucked into the narrative and stay up too late finishing
one more chapter.
Q:
What are you working on now?
A:
I’m working on another novel. It is set along the Altamaha River in coastal
Georgia.
Q:
Anything else we should know?
A:
If you’re curious about The Nature of Remains, you can read the introduction to
the first section on my website: www.gingereager.com.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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