Q&A with Lynne Hugo

  

 

 

Lynne Hugo is the author of the new novel Under an Indiana Sky. Her many other books include Mothers of Fate. Also a psychotherapist, she lives in Oxford, Ohio.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Under an Indiana Sky, and how did you create your cast of characters?

 

A: As I thought about writing this novel and what issue might speak to many readers, I realized that I really don’t think I know anyone whose life experience hasn’t brought them into contact with someone whose life has been affected by addiction. It may be themselves, or within their nuclear or extended family or if not, within their friendship or acquaintance circle.

 

But, in my experience, everyone knows someone. Everyone is aware of some true story—maybe of alienation and tragedy or one of the good stories of recovery and hope.

 

Addiction can divide families. Some family members see the problem and try to intervene. Often this goes badly. That’s why I created the sisters, Denise and Angela, with Denise—who senses her sister’s problem and reacts with upset and anger as well as worry because she also has a selfish motive.

 

Some family members are simply blind to the issue out of ignorance and being too much on the periphery, more like Brock’s mother, Nora, and probably, his brother, Tom. Even friends like Mercedes. Addicts are often extremely good at hiding the addiction, too, and that’s a complicating factor with Brock.

 

We can’t discount denial—friends and family often see only what they are capable of seeing as well as what others disclose to them. I worked to create characters that depict the various psychological realities of this complex dynamic while also creating a gripping story with sympathetic, relatable characters.

 

Q: In our previous Q&A, you said, “[A]ll my novels have at their heart some social issue that I think is important and multi-sided.” As you mentioned, this novel deals with addiction--how did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I did an enormous amount of research into how drugs are distributed in this country—especially in our suburbs and rural areas where they are far more accessible than I think many realize: distribution chains from the big dealers to medium-size ones to smaller ones and elaborate delivery systems, which all vary.

 

Another area I researched were specific drugs like oxycontin and it is being cut—often now in a deadly way—with fentanyl, and its effect on the body and what a fentanyl death looks like. I also researched cocaine, how it is consumed and how it acts on the body.

 

Research methods included but weren’t limited to interviewing people who have used substances that characters in the novel use. I also used medical sites and sources.

 

What surprised me, honestly, was my overall ignorance on the subject although I’d thought I was reasonably knowledgeable and—again, as I’ve found with previous novels—the generosity of interview subjects and the critical importance of trustworthy research sources.

 

Q: The writer Donna Everhart called the book “an important novel, one of darkness and loss, but also one of courage, unexpected kindness, and hope.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I really love that description and am so grateful to Ms. Everhart for reviewing it that way. I am opposed to “tie it up with a red bow endings” for my novels, and my stories don’t avoid or deny the pain or sorrow that is so much a part of the human experience.

 

Still, while I want readers to see a future for my characters that is more realistic than “happily ever after,” my endings always leave them with hope and doors that readers will see that the characters can open.

 

Q: How does your work as a therapist intersect with your work as a novelist?

 

A: I think my work as a therapist has made me particularly aware of the complexities of emotion and of what people go through—how very difficult life can be.

 

I would never use anything that a patient has shared with me as the basis for a story, which would be a serious ethical violation, but I certainly use the understanding of and empathy I have gained for the human experience. My training in listening skills and years of practice have, I believe, given me a really good ear for writing natural dialogue.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am working on the last chapter (which happens before the first round of revisions—which precedes the second round, and on and on…) of a novel I’ve tentatively titled One Good Thing, which is loosely about patient and potential donor experiences as well as ethics issues for staff in the context of a kidney dialysis and transplant center. (No, I have absolutely zero personal experience with this!—it’s all research-based.)

 

I have only recently learned this about myself for sure: I can’t finish a novel without knowing what the next one will be about.

 

I was having trouble finishing the final chapter of One Good Thing. I thought it was because my mental space is now divided between this new manuscript and Under an Indiana Sky, as launch approaches.

 

But—I’ve suddenly hit upon the topic for the novel after One Good Thing and…suddenly it’s easier. And I realized that this is the way it’s always been. I have to know what is next.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Nothing anyone else should know, but one thing readers might be interested in knowing: my personal answer to the perennial question that I think every novelist is most frequently asked. “Where do you get your ideas?”

 

I often get ideas from something I see as an ongoing problem that’s affecting many lives, to which many readers might relate. I have to be able to see it, though, as a riveting story I can put in the context of flawed but fully human and ultimately sympathetic characters.

 

Sometimes the specific idea comes from something that keeps popping up in the news or newspaper; this was the case with Under An Indiana Sky—a story that happens to be set in rural Indiana, but is not at all specific to Indiana.

 

I kept seeing stories about the opiate crisis—especially as it existed out on the rural, suburban and city streets of our nation and increasingly cut with fentanyl, unknown to buyers. That’s when I thought: there could be a powerful novel here.

 

The story has to come first. The research needs to be the underpinning. Readers don’t pick up a novel looking for information; they pick it up for a story they can’t put down. My fervent hope is that they find just that in Under An Indiana Sky.

 

Thank you so much, Deborah Kalb, for inviting me to answer your good questions!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lynne Hugo.