Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night

by Barbara J. Taylor

  Barbara J. Taylor: Growing up I heard this story over and over again from my mother and my grandmother. I was a dramatic kid and I was taken by the whole tragic aspect of it—the fact that it was the day of her baptism, her dress going up in flames, the fact that she sang hymns for three days while she was dying. The little girl was my grandmother's sister Pearl. Yet, as much as that story haunted me, I always wondered about Aunt Janet, Pearl's sister, who was with her in the yard that day. No one blamed Janet, but I imagined witnessing this tragedy had a devastating effect on her life. Janet didn't have the happiest life. She ended up married four times to the same two men. She lost both of her children, one in infancy and one in adulthood. She herself was burned when she lit a cigarette after oiling a machine at work. The burns on her arms healed, but I have to wonder if her heart ever did. Janet is the inspiration for my main character, Violet.

  KJ: We worked together on this book for a long time. You revised without hesitation and without doubt. You and I each went through many hardships in the last seven years. Many writers with fewer obstacles in their paths lose faith in their projects and quit. What made you go on?

  BJT: First of all, my mentor. That's the truth. You never gave up on me. Also, the book was a place to go in the midst of those hardships. It was solace, a safe harbor. I really thought of the work as a love poem to the people who mattered most to me. That was reason enough to continue. And it was something that was mine, a world that I could visit no matter what was happening around me. To be honest, the thought of quitting never entered my mind.

  KJ: Why do you think some writers quit?

  BJT: I don't think some people realize that writing is revision. They write a first draft and are surprised when they find out that's just the beginning. My book took years. Sometimes I worked nonstop, sometimes I walked away from it for a while and worked on something else to gain perspective, but the whole time I kept writing. Also, I think some people get into writing expecting to be the next Stephen King, only to find out even Stephen King works really hard. It's not about publishing, but writing. If you don't know that, you're not going to stick with it for very long.

  KJ: When you were taking a break from this novel, what were you working on?

  BJT: After I wrote the first book I realized these characters had more to say, so I started working on the second book of what I intend to be a trilogy. I have the first draft of Book Two completed, and I'm getting ready for revisions. It's twenty years later, and it's Violet's story again, but now she's a woman. I don't want to give too much away, but the eugenics movement in America plays a vital role in the story. The third book will take place twenty years after that, in the mid 50s, during one of the worst floods in Northeast Pennsylvania. Although this is a trilogy, each book is self-contained and stands alone.

  KJ: Stanley Adamski, a young boy who is forced to go to work as a breaker boy in the local coal mine, is one of the strongest characters in this first novel. But you told me later that Stanley wasn't even supposed to be in the book. What happened?

  BJT: Let me start by saying I don't outline. I have a more organic process. Every night I'd go up to the computer, excited to find out what was going to happen next. One night I knew that Violet was going to have an encounter with Evan Evans, the local bully, but I didn't know that Stanley was going to save her. I didn't even know Stanley existed. Evan pushes Violet into the bushes, and I could see her struggling to get a foothold, and somebody suddenly reached in and helped her to her feet. It was this little, dirty, unpopular, motherless outcast. At first Violet was mortified to be saved by him but in time he grew on her as much as he grew on me. They became best friends and that friendship is probably one of the most redemptive and light-hearted aspects of the book.

  KJ: One of the secondary characters that I find particularly endearing is Doc Rodham. He witnesses every birth and death in this family, and he treats the miners at the Scranton hospital with dignity and respect. Where did you get the idea for this wonderful character?

  BJT: Whenever I heard the story about Aunt Pearl, it was always mentioned that Doc Rodham treated her burns, so it seemed natural to include him in my novel. Long after I'd written the first draft, I was doing research at the Scranton Public Library and discovered that Dr. Thomas Rodham was Hillary Rodham Clinton's great-uncle on her father's side. I was delighted to learn of her connection to such a decent man.

  KAYLIE JONES is the award-winning author of five novels, including Speak Now, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, the memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me, and is the editor of Long Island Noir. She teaches writing at two MFA programs and lives in New York City, and is the curator of the Kaylie Jones Books imprint.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  When I started writing my novel about a coal mining family of Welsh descent, I had three very loose ideas in mind—the death of my great-aunt Pearl, what we in Scranton refer to as the "Billy Sunday Snowstorm," and a chorus of churchwomen.

  Growing up, I heard about the childhood death of Pearl. She was playing with a sparkler on the Fourth of July, the same day as her baptism, and her dress caught fire. It was said that she never complained during the three days she lay dying. Instead, she sang the songs she'd learned in Sunday school while Doc Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton's great-uncle, treated her burns. When Pearl died, people from all over Scranton came to the house to view the body of the little girl who sang hymns. As many times as I heard that story, I always wondered about her sister Janet who was also in the yard that day. By the time I knew her, she was a grandmother, and no one ever mentioned the accident in her presence. Janet didn't have the happiest life, and I wondered what effect Pearl's death had on her. That wondering inspired me to create the character of Violet.

  I wanted to begin my novel with a fictionalized version of Pearl's accident and end sometime around the "Billy Sunday Snowstorm." On March 1, 1914, evangelist Billy Sunday started his seven-week Scranton campaign in a tabernacle built solely for his revival meetings. Snow started falling during his evening sermon, stranding twenty-five hundred people overnight with the very charismatic speaker. If you ask people from my parents' generation about the storm, they all claim to have known someone who was in attendance that night. My grandmother loved to tell how she was born during the "Billy Sunday Snowstorm" while her father was "off being saved." Scrantonians still speak about their connections to Billy Sunday with great pride, and this has always fascinated me.

  The idea for the chorus of churchwomen came out of a playwriting activity in one of my graduate classes. I chose to write about a group of women preparing a funeral dinner in the kitchen of their church. As a child, I loved to be around those women and hear their stories. I still do. I see that church world as a microcosm of who most of us are—flawed, but well-intentioned.

  BARBARA J. TAYLOR was born and raised in Scranton, PA, and teaches English in the Pocono Mountain School District. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. She still resides in the “Electric City,” two blocks away from where she grew up.

  I am donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this novel to the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. My nephew Jimmy was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), also known as brittle bone disease, a genetic disorder that makes bones so fragile they break easily. In the thirty years since his diagnosis, Jimmy has broken over one hundred bones, but he has also finished high school, graduated from college, and currently repairs radar systems for our soldiers overseas. I look at the man he has become, and I marvel at how he faces life with such courage, compassion, and joy.

  The Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation is the only voluntary national health organization dedicated to helping people cope with the problems associated with OI. The OI Foundation needs your help so it can continue its work of improving the lives of people living with fragile bones through information and research to find a cure. You can make a donation to support the work of the OI Foundation at www.oif.org—Barbara J. Taylor
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br />   All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2014 by Barbara J. Taylor

  e-ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-285-8

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-227-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956835

  Kaylie Jones Books

  www.kayliejonesbooks.com

  Akashic Books

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  ABOUT KAYLIE JONES BOOKS

  an Akashic Books imprint

  The increasingly commercial nature of mainstream publishing has made it difficult for literary writers to find a home for their more serious, thought-provoking works. Kaylie Jones Books will create a cooperative of dedicated emerging and established writers who will play an integral part in the publishing process, from reading manuscripts, editing, offering advice, to advertising the upcoming publications. The list of brilliant novels unable to find homes within the mainstream is growing every day.

  It is our hope to publish books that bravely address serious issues—historical or contemporary—relevant to society today. Just because a book addresses serious topics and may include tragic events does not mean that the narrative cannot be amusing, fast-paced, plot-driven, and lyrical all at once. Our flagship publication, Unmentionables by Laurie Loewenstein, is exactly such a novel. The book takes place in 1917 Illinois, on the verge of US involvement in WWI. While the larger topics are race and women’s suffrage, the characters and their courageous stands against oppression and reactionary bigotry could not be more relevant today.

  Kaylie Jones

  New York, NY

  January 2014

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM KAYLIE JONES BOOKS

  Unmentionables, by Laurie Loewenstein

  "Exceptionally readable and highly recommended."—Library Journal (Starred review)

  Unmentionables has been selected by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association as a Midwest Connections pick for January 2014!

  "Engaging first work from a writer of evident ability." —Kirkus Reviews

  "Marian Elliot Adams’ . . . tale is contagiously enthusiastic." —Publishers Weekly

  "Unmentionables starts small and expands to touch Chicago and war-torn France as Laurie Loewenstein weaves multiple points of view together to create a narrative of social change and the stubbornness of the human heart." —Black Heart Magazine

  "A historical, feminist romance in the positive senses of all three terms: a realistic evocation of small-town America circa 1917, including its racial tensions; a tale about standing up for the equitable treatment of women; and a story about two lonely people who overcome obstacles, including their own character defects, to find love together." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  "Unmentionables is a sweeping and memorable story of struggle and suffrage, love and redemption . . . Loewenstein has skillfuly woven a story and a cast of characters that will remain in the memory long after the book’s last page has been turned." —New York Journal of Books

  Marian Elliot Adams, an outspoken advocate for sensible undergarments for women, sweeps onto the Chautauqua stage under a brown canvas tent on a sweltering August night in 1917, and shocks the gathered town of Emporia with her speech: How can women compete with men in the work place and in life if they are confined by their undergarments? The crowd is further appalled when Marian falls off the stage and sprains her ankle, and is forced to remain among them for a week. As the week passes, she throws into turmoil the town's unspoken rules governing social order, women, and Negroes. The recently widowed newspaper editor Deuce Garland, his lapels glittering with fraternal pins, has always been a community booster, his desire to conform rooted in a legacy of shame--his great-grandfather married a black woman, and the town will never let Deuce forget it, especially not his father-in-law, the owner of the newspaper and Deuce's boss. Deuce and his father-in-law are already at odds, since the old man refuses to allow Deuce's stepdaughter, Helen, to go to Chicago to fight for women's suffrage.

  But Marian's arrival shatters Deuce's notions of what is acceptable, versus what is right, and Deuce falls madly in love with the tall activist from New York. During Marian's stay in Emporia, Marian pushes Deuce to become a greater, braver, and more dynamic man than he ever imagined was possible. He takes a stand against his father-in-law by helping Helen escape to Chicago; and he publishes an article exposing the county's oldest farm family as the source of a recent typhoid outbreak, risking his livelihood and reputation. Marian's journey takes her to the frozen mud of France's Picardy region, just beyond the lines, to help destitute villagers as the Great War rages on. Helen, in Chicago, is hired as a streetcar conductor surrounded by bitter men who resent her taking a man's job. Meanwhile, Deuce struggles to make a living and find his place in Emporia's wider community after losing the newspaper.

  Marian is a powerful catalyst that forces nineteenth-century Emporia into the twentieth century; but while she agitates for enlightenment and justice, she has little time to consider her own motives and her extreme loneliness. Marian, in the end, must decide if she has the courage to face small-town life, and be known, or continue to be a stranger always passing through.

  LAURIE LOEWENSTEIN grew up in the flatlands of western Ohio and now resides in Rochester, NY, where Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872.

  Unmentionables is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  Foamers by Justin Kassab

  "While the novel addresses serious themes of life and death, survival and living, romantic love, and friendship, Foamers is an incredibly enjoyable, rousing read." —Loudmouthkid62 (Maura E. Lynch blog)

  "Foamers is a worthy addition to the canon of postapocalyptic fiction, and like the best of such books, at its heart it’s a frontier novel, brutal and exciting, celebrating individualism and self-determination. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.” —Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country

  “When a screwed-up flu vaccine mutates much of of humanity into mindless beasts, ‘Trust your intelligence’ becomes the leitmotif of a group of survivors. Fast-moving, violent, and vividly imagined, Foamers creates a dangerous world made disquietingly believable.”—David Poyer, author of Stepfather Bank and The Cruiser

  "It's as if The Stand had a head-on bus collision with Night of the Living Dead. I want to look away, but I can't stop reading." —John Koloski, author of Bloodblind, book #1 of the Empyres trilogy

  Terminally diagnosed with Huntington’s disease as a child, Kade gave up on living a productive existence. He spent most of his time preparing for the Primal Age, even though he knew the end of the world wouldn’t happen in his shortened lifetime.

  In Kade’s twenties, the United States is being ravaged by the Feline Flu. After the Flu hits pandemic levels, a vaccine is released to the public. Viewed as the last chance to stop the virus, over ninety percent of the population receives the vaccine within a single day.

  The vaccine takes on a life of its own and deprives the recipients of their higher functions, leaving them with only their primal urges. These bloodthirsty monsters become known as foamers because of the red foam that forms around their mouths when they hunt.

  As the world as he knows it descends into the Primal Age, Kade finds that he is not only useful, but is expected to lead other survivors. His group is constantly assaulted by foamers and a warmongering paramilitary unit. In an unrelenting fight for their lives, his group is forced to redefine humanity in a world without law.

  Foamers is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-b
ooks are sold.

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  Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, the Akashic Urban Surreal Series, Infamous Books, Kaylie Jones Books, Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.

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