Allan Wolf is the author of the new upper middle grade novel Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom and the new upper middle grade graphic novel The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur. They both focus on an oil-drilling accident in Louisiana in 1980. Wolf lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
Q: What inspired you to write two books about the Lake Peigneur oil-drilling accident of 1980?
A: Why write two books about the same disaster? Historical fiction is essentially fictional storytelling born of historical facts. So, every historical novel I’ve written has required me to do enough research to become an amateur expert on a variety of topics.
To create my fictional tales, I have researched the Titanic sinking, the Donner Party, the Ohio River Valley frontier wars, the Lewis & Clark expedition, Native American history, and on and on. And each one of those projects has required ancillary research.
For example, my book about the Donner Party (The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep) required me to research weather, starvation, the Oregon Trail, the California mission system, and the enslavement of Indigenous People.
I do my best to include the facts in my books’ back matter, but it’s always sort of sad to let all that research go to waste. Why not use that research to move history from the background to the foreground?
The truth about the Lake Peigneur Texaco disaster stands alone as a fascinating tale, yet few people know about it at all. And what little information is available creates as many questions as it answers. Junius Leak has his story. But Lake Peigneur has its own separate story to tell. So, two separate books made sense to me.
Q: How did you create your character Junius Leak?
A: There was a real person named Jimmy Dore, who was fishing with his uncle, Leonce “Speck” Viator, on the lake that day in 1980. Those two real-life people, seen through the lens of my imagination, gave birth to my fictional characters, Junius Leak and his uncle, Leonce “Spot” Vandee.
Jimmy Dore was 21 years old at the time. I reversed the numbers to make Junius Leak 12 years old. The age change was essential for my middle grade audience.
The name Junius Leak came from an actor I knew from North Carolina. I waited about 30 years to use that name in a book. Junius’s personality is little bit autobiography and a little bit embellishment.
Q: What do you think Jose Pimienta’s illustrations add to your graphic novel?
A: Jose Pimienta’s hand in shaping the story is pretty self-evident. It was up to Jose to show the characters’ facial expressions and body language. It was up to Jose to represent the story’s environment and setting in an authentic way.
They had to do a lot of research of their own to get the details correct. The illustrations also show movement and drama through the placement of each visual frame.
I wrote the original manuscript as 60 pages of prose. Then I went back and “story boarded” the whole thing, removing pages and pages of description. It became Jose’s job to transfer my vision from text to illustration.
Transferring this tale from prose to graphic novel has likely widened the age range and reading level of its audience. A lot of fans of the graphic novel format will be exposed to my tale because of the work Jose Pimienta has done. That’s an audience I otherwise wouldn’t have reached.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from both of these books?
A: Both books show how ordinary people can survive (and even thrive) when faced with extraordinary circumstances. I hope my readers feel the action and adventure, but also the humanity. A bit of a shiver in their spines and a bit of empathy in their hearts.
Don’t take the present for granted because everything eventually changes. But that inevitable change needn’t break us. In fact, change can help us to grow and flourish.
Also, my choice to make the lake one of the story’s narrators is not a lark. I want my readers to begin to see that everything around us has a voice and a story if you just listen. Empathy can be extended to more than just other humans. We can have empathy (and respect) for our environment as well.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have a collection of poems coming out, The Gift of the Broken Teacup: Poems of Mindfulness, Meditation, and Me (Candlewick Press). I’m super proud of it. There’s a lot of me in the poems. They are poems that use language to explore your intrinsic sense of self-worth.
As well, I’m working on the early stages of a memoir. It’s the autobiographical story of how I began finding my voice by writing on my bedroom walls when I was 13. I ended up writing on those walls for 47 years! It is a fascinating journey. It may even end up in graphic novel form; only time will tell.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’d like my readers to know what an honor it is to have my words coming to life in your brains and in your hearts as you read my books. I hope if you like Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom or The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur, you’ll be inspired to pick up one of my other historical novels or poetry collections.
Thanks for reading! And metaphors be with you!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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