Elizabeth A. Tucker is the author of the new novel The Pale Flesh of Wood. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Bangalore Review and Ponder Review. She lives in California.
Q: What inspired you to write The Pale Flesh of Wood, and how did you create the various members of the Hawkins family?
A: The initial inspiration was a prompt given by one of my creative writing professors at San Francisco State University. The prompt being, “I don’t remember why I remember this but…”
With that exercise, I recalled a long-ago memory of being asked by my grandmother to sit outside on the back porch because she thought I was a tad too dirty to be inside. My grandmother was an utterly delightful woman, but she was quite formal and her house extremely tidy.
I remembered she glanced at my knees when she suggested that take my lunch and sit outside. I recall being slightly hurt, but more than that—intrigued. Dirty? What did she mean? So, as I sat on the porch with my peanut-butter and honey sandwich, I looked at my knees which [were] dry and had that white film.
I remember licking my finger, swiping my knee, and voila, the white film vanished. Thrilled, I got up to tell her the good news, “I wasn’t dirty, I just had dry chapped skin.” I can’t honestly remember anything after that.
Fast forward to many decades later when I sat down to write a novel during NaNoWriMo (the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge) and had no preconceived notions what to write about.
On day one I decided to riff off that memory—to have my protagonist being told to take her lunch outside, because the grandmother character told her she was too dirty. As my character, Lyla, sat on the porch, I began to draw out the Hawkins’ family backyard: the fence-line, the lawn, the patio furniture, the hills beyond.
But what caught my eye as I created this fictional landscape was an enormous oak tree standing just beyond the gray, sun-beaten fence. I had Lyla sit there and stare at the tree, and as I developed the scene, I wondered why was she staring at the tree? What was she looking at exactly? What happened out there? The rest is history.
As for the development of the main characters, I started with Caroline Hawkins, who shares some physical traits of my own grandmother—both are tall, have gorgeous snow-white hair, brilliant blue eyes, terribly good posture, and elegant in their overall demeanor.
Like Caroline, my grandmother valued good manners, tailored clothing, and appearances. But that is about it in terms of shared qualities; my grandmother was a delightful woman, filled with joy and a terrifically sunny disposition, someone who I often describe as always looking through “a pair of rose colored lenses.”
So, with the more formidable, uncompromising Caroline I dug deeper, mining into what made her so rigid and terse. Writing the chapter "Magnetic Rotations" helped me explore her childhood experiences that affected her trajectory to adulthood and how she relates to the outside world.
After that, I don’t honestly remember how I created the other main characters. My best guess is that I first worked from Caroline to Lyla, exploring and what would it be like be the granddaughter of a woman who is both revered and to some degree feared by the Hawkins’ family.
I then probably worked back up the family tree again to Charles (Lyla’s father and Caroline’s son) and the diving into the complexities of a someone who had a history with mental illness which was complicated by serving overseas during the war. My best guess is that I wanted Charles to be a foil to his mother—for him to be both fun-loving, less controlled, and a risk taker.
As for Louise, I wanted her and Charles to be deeply in love and for her to balance out Charles’ more erratic side. And for her to be another foil of Caroline.
As for the enormous oak tree rooted at the center of this book, there are many California Coastal Oak trees that populate the landscape where this story takes place.
In my mind’s eye, it was fairly easy to draw the tree, the shape of its canopy, where it sat on a slope, how its thick muscular arms reached out far and wide, the solid V at its neck. At first and well into the revisionary process, I had thought I was just drawing a general ubiquitous tree in the Northern California coastal hills.
Funny thing though—after I finished the book, my photographer friend went scouting for a similar tree for a potential cover photograph, and it was surprisingly how hard it was to find a representational tree out there in the real world.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: This is a fantastic question. From the very first sentence to being accepted for publication with She Writes Press and even into the initial cover design phase, the working title was Fault Lines.
The book has a deliberate geology/seismology thematic core built into its DNA as a way to examine and underscore how the characters were processing notions of fault over Charles’ suicide.
That said, rooted firmly at the center of the narrative is this enormous 300-year-old oak tree that has been a witness to this family’s story. As such, the publisher circled back and strongly suggested the title to be tree-centric and I was given about 10 replacement titles.
Of those, The Pale Flesh of Wood resonated the best, given who the tree represents to the deceased and who it represents to the protagonist, not to mention it is far more poetic and evocative of literary fiction than the working title.
Q: The novel is set in Northern California--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: The fault-prone landscape, the ruggedness and beauty of the California terrain is extremely important to not just this book, but throughout many aspects of my writing.
I often find I am drawn to writing about earthquakes and their impact on landscapes—whether we are talking psychologically or literally—and how these convulsions of the earth disrupt the status quo, how one learns to live after the ground unexpectedly shifts beneath their feet.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: In this day of increased awareness and attention to mental illness, isolation, and personal struggles, I hope this book in some way adds in some beneficial way to the conversation.
Honest communication seems to be one key avenue to helping those understand and deal with depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, etc., in order to get the help someone may need and deserves, to share honest emotions with loved ones without a sense of shame or judgment, and for loved ones to listen with generosity.
For too long, conversations surrounding mental health have been hidden or tucked away in a drawer of shame, which often leads to further isolation and debilitation.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on my second novel, Traveling in Sees, an attempt at a modern-day fairy tale about a boy orphaned by an earthquake who is forced to travel long distances, navigating both harsh environments and predators alike in order to find his way towards the safety of a new home and a number etched on this inside of his thigh.
During his journey, the boy relies on tools of advice offered by his deceased parents and grandmother, and his traveling companion and best friend, a stuffed rabbit.
It is an investigation into adolescence and that often difficult, inelegant time as one tries find themselves, shape their identities in and amongst society and friends, and that inevitable but scary process of detethering from their parents’ vision and values.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I would love to join any of your readers’ book clubs to discuss reactions and readerly responses to The Pale Flesh of Wood and/or facilitate craft talks at writing workshops (whether that is in-person or via Zoom).
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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