Helen Sheehy is the author of the new novel Just Willa. Her other books include Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography. Also an educator, she lives in Hamden, Connecticut.
Q: What inspired you to write Just Willa, and how did you create your character Willa Hardesty?
A: Just Willa is a novel loosely based on the life of my mother Wilma. She died when I was 36, and I realized that I knew almost nothing about her and that haunted me for years. As I’ve gotten older, I pass a mirror, and sometimes she looks back at me. It’s unnerving.
In 2003, I started researching the world of northwestern Oklahoma that my mother and father lived in and were formed by—the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, farming and ranching, boxing and bootlegging.
At the time the research was just for me. My previous three books were biographies of famous, celebrated women, and I didn’t think readers would care about a nobody farm woman from nowhere Oklahoma.
Around that time, I was asked to give a speech in New Haven, Connecticut about the three biographies I had written. They asked me to include what I was working on. So at the end of the talk, I told them about my idea for a novel.
Afterward, all their questions were about my characters Willa and Jake. It made me realize that even though Just Willa is set in Oklahoma and Kansas, all art is local and immediate and comes from lived life, and that makes Willa and Jake’s story universal.
Q: The book takes place over seven decades--how did you research it, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: The novel is historical fiction, and I used many of the same methods I used in biography. Like walking the ground where my characters walked and lived.
I spent a lot of time in Oklahoma around Freedom and Alva and in southwest Kansas. The original homestead that my grandfather claimed in the land rush belongs to his great-grandson, who raises Angus cattle.
I gathered stories from my brothers and sister and relatives. I listened to the music my characters listened to. I read decades of old newspapers. But I soon learned that all those methods could only take me so far. At some point, I had to let my imagination take over.
So much of the research and writing surprised me. I think what surprised me the most was that even though Just Willa is set in the 20th century, in many ways I was examining a lost world. So different from the time we're living in now.
Also, and this is purely personal, I believed for most of my life that I took after my dad. I was a “daddy’s girl.” And now I know that was a myth I created. I’m actually a lot more like my mother.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: At first the title was Willa, but it wasn’t quite right. A biographer friend suggested adding Just. I knew immediately it was right. Just in the sense of ordinary and nothing special and the opposite, just Willa, meaning no one else, she’s the center.
Q: The writer and director Michael Sucsy said of the book, “It's a powerful reminder that even the women who shape our lives can hold truths we only come to understand with time.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love Michael Sucsy’s perceptive observation. For years, I used to beat myself up that I was so clueless when I was young. Now, of course, I realize that time is a huge, powerful character, a force, really, that shapes our lives.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m revising two other novels that I’ve been working on for years. And I’m planning a trip back to Kansas to launch Just Willa at a wonderful bookstore in Wichita, Watermark Books, at 2 p.m. on April 13. Come join us!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I feel like everything I know I put in the writing. I share Flannery O’Connor's view. I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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