Echoes of Family

by Barbara Claypole White

  Thank you to Collier Reeves for explaining Girls Rock and Appalachian music to me, and kicking off the idea for Girls In Motion. And thank you to the amazing people who attempted to educate me about the life of a sound engineer (apologies for any erroneous facts about mixing): Mark Simonsen, John Plymale at Overdub Lane Recording, and Meghan Puryear and Chris Wimberley at Nightsound Studios in Carrboro. (I wear my Nightsound T-shirt with pride.) And a wave to Kathleen Basi for explaining the fiddle to someone whose musical talent started and ended with second trumpet in the school band.

  Special thanks to my American psychiatrists “on call,” Dr. Charles Michael Gammon and Dr. Michael Larson. For all things related to the English medical world, gratitude to my brother-in-law Dr. Charles Rose, and a shout-out to Sue Hampson at the Priory Group for helping me visualize five-star residential care.

  Thank you, John Pharo, for introducing me to the world of emancipated minors, and thank you to Ryan Hill and Jan M. Bazemore in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for explaining what that term means.

  I could not have worked out the details of the first car crash without Karen Lee-Roberts, and I’m extraordinarily grateful to Deputy Chief Constable Andrew Cooke and DCI Christopher Sephton of the Merseyside Police for taking the time to explain English police procedure to an author desperately seeking facts that reinforced fiction.

  Much love to family on both sides of the pond, including the Grossberg clan; the Rose family; my mother, Anne Claypole White, who named the village and provided super important details about cream teas and bin collection in rural Bedfordshire (am I forgiven for moving bin collection day to Friday to fit my timeline?); and never forgotten, the best vicar in the world, Rev. Douglas Eric Claypole White (Daddy to me).

  Writing about the Church of England with my outdated memories was a toughie. I could neither have mapped Gabriel’s daily life nor found the man behind the collar without Rev. Jo Spray and Rev. Peter N. Jeffery. And my multitalented sister, Susan Rose—queen of English bone china, churchwarden, and a lay band member.

  Hugs to early readers Priscille Sibley, Laura Drake, and Sheryl Cornett, all of whom convinced me I had a story worth telling, and to WFWA sistas who asked tough questions about Marianne in our Donald Maass workshop. Endless thanks to Elizabeth Brown of Swift Edits, who poked holes in my second draft with such graceful precision and continues to provide commas.

  What can I say to beta reader Leslie Gildersleeve, other than, “I owe you a trip to the beach”? Once again Leslie read, critiqued, brainstormed, and bolstered. My favorite Leslie question during this process: “Is this a night for the good gin?” Then she told me to add a prologue, and because she’s always right, I listened.

  I’m running out of new ways to thank Zachariah Claypole White and Larry Grossberg, but I cannot do this without their emotional support and brilliance as wordsmiths. My creative writing major, Zachariah, answered every text that screamed for help, continued to allow me to steal from his life, left a list of title ideas pinned to the kitchen table, and gave outstanding feedback that included, “You can do better, Mom.” I did.

  My beloved husband, Larry Grossberg, is a professor of international acclaim and has far more important things to do than help me make up stuff. And yet he never says no when I ask if we can brainstorm, and he never sighs when I interrupt his work with, “Please read this—again.” Plus he cooks dinner every night, deals with my technology, and guards my door when I’m on deadline. If I ever write anything worth reading, it’s because he always believed I could.

  Finally transatlantic kisses to the two places that inspired this story: All Saints Turvey and Turvey cemetery. You can take the girl out of the English village and dump her in the North Carolina forest, but you can’t take the village out of the girl.

  The following books were immensely helpful:

  The Bedfordshire Village Book by the Bedfordshire Federation of Women’s Institutes

  How to Read a Church: A Guide to Images, Symbols and Meanings in Churches and Cathedrals by Richard Taylor

  Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life by Melody Moezzi

  Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison

  An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

  Perfect Chaos: A Daughter’s Journey to Survive Bipolar, a Mother’s Struggle to Save Her by Linea Johnson and Cinda Johnson

  Scattershot: A Memoir by David Lovelace

  Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon

  The Daily Adventures of Mixerman by Mixerman

  BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  This is a novel about an unconventional family. What do you think makes a family?

  Darius believes he should be able to solve Marianne’s problems through love, and Marianne is determined to beat her devils alone, and they both fail. What do you think the role of family should be in helping a loved one with mental illness? Do you have any experience with this, and if so, how has your family responded? Has it found balance?

  There is still shame and stigma attached to a diagnosis of mental illness, which spills over into treatments such as ECT and residential care. What did you make of Marianne’s experiences with both? Were you surprised that she had never talked openly about her manic-depressive illness?

  How much did you know about mania, depression, hallucinations, or psychotic episodes before reading this novel? Did you learn anything about schizoaffective disorder or the bipolar disorders?

  Did you make assumptions about Gabriel based on the fact that he’s a priest? What did you think of his responses to the personal tests he’s forced to navigate?

  Guilt plays an important role in the novel. Has this story made you rethink anything in your own life?

  The three female characters are each damaged, and yet they’ve responded to the challenges facing them in different ways. Why do you think this is? Do you believe that what happens in life is not always as important as how we handle it?

  EmJ feels that she’s invisible. Might she have felt differently if she’d had the support of family and friends? Does Marianne make things better or worse for her? Had you been Marianne, what would you have done?

  Different characters exhibit different kinds of heroism in the story. Who do you think the real hero is and why?

  Marianne is a woman of extreme mood swings, whereas Gabriel has learned the art of emotional detachment. Lack of emotional control creates problems for both of them and drives the plot. How much in our lives is steered by emotion? How have you learned to balance and manage strong emotions? Or do you feel that you haven’t?

  On the flip side, what is the role of reason? From the beginning, Marianne is determined to find sense where there appears to be none. Do you agree with her epiphany that there is reason in everything, even if we can find it only with hindsight?

  Marianne has worked hard to manage and control her bipolar illness, and yet still the monster returns. How does she change and grow in the story? What do you see in her future?

  What did you think about Darius? Were you rooting for him or not? How does he change and grow in the story?

  What do you think the future holds for Gabriel and Jade? (Invite me to your book club and I’ll share my thoughts!)

  A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR

  What was the inspiration for this novel?

  My first three novels grew out of dark what-if moments related to my life, but this novel came to me through a scene. One summer my family and I were visiting my childhood village in England when the opening of a story—set in the church—began playing in my mind. I saw the church ladies twittering over wedding flowers up by the altar while an elegant American woman watched from the back pew, eyes hidden by sunglasses. I felt their rising concern for the stranger and witnessed one of them dash off to fetch the vicar, who was attacking stinging nettles with a weed whacker. When he crouched down to say, “What’s brought you back after all this time, M
arianne?” she replied, “I’ve come home to die.” That was all I knew.

  I put the scene aside, but I was curious about this woman who talked of death although she wasn’t dying. Understanding Marianne’s thought process, however, was a challenge, and the only thing that made sense was her homing instinct. Like Marianne, I have a strong connection to my childhood village, and I’ve never reclaimed the part of my heart that lives there. I love walking into the butcher’s and hearing the owner say, “Hello, Barbara, how are you?” as if I’ve been buying his chipolatas every week. On some level this novel is about the pull of my childhood village and the sense of community that I still miss.

  I was also drawn to the idea of a character who had done everything right to manage her mental illness and still everything had gone wrong. My experience from living in the trenches with mental illness is that the challenges never end. The triggers are out there, waiting. And there are always new levels of acceptance to attain.

  The last piece of the story puzzle came from my fascination with music as therapy. When my son was younger, I worked hard to find something that would bring peace to his battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We tried meditation, yoga, all the usual suspects, but once he got his first electric guitar, he discovered that creating music was a natural tonic for his anxiety. By the time he’d become an intern at Nightsound Studios in Carrboro, I’d already abandoned a story about a bipolar teen and her dad, a musician who ran a small local recording studio. One evening my son came home talking about his work, and the next morning I woke up with Jade front and center in my mind. Jade was the missing piece of Marianne’s story.

  What drew you to these characters?

  Originally I was drawn to the strong female characters. Marianne and Jade are both survivors, and I have deep admiration for the way they’ve fought back to take control of their lives. I knew from the beginning that Gabriel and Marianne would try to help a child no one wanted, and I fleshed out EmJ through watching interviews with Kurt Cobain. He was such a gifted, yet tragic figure, and something about him has always haunted me.

  I was intrigued too by the stress Marianne’s crisis would place on Jade and Darius, because loving someone with mental illness is a never-ending learning curve. Both of them were running away from their pasts when they found Marianne, and suddenly they become caregivers. Jade is used to that role; Darius not so much.

  Gabriel was a different kind of hero for me. When I first saw him, he was barefoot and writing a sermon to U2. He seemed to have his coping mechanisms in place, and yet I kept glimpsing dark corners. Watching him slowly unravel was pretty satisfying.

  What were the particular challenges of writing this novel?

  In a word: Marianne. Being inside her head was exhausting and didn’t always make sense. I have legal pads filled with endless notes during which I tried to pick apart her actions like huge math problems. (I flunked math.) And early on I committed the sin of trying to write a bipolar heroine as opposed to creating a complex woman who happens to be manic-depressive. I didn’t want her to be a victim, but I wanted her struggles with the illness to be authentic. And somewhere in there I allowed the disease to take over. But once I’d found her dry cynicism, I was off and running.

  Gabriel was equally tough for similar reasons. As he says, people make assumptions about priests. I really didn’t want to write a man of faith (even though my father was a vicar). I’m married to a Jew and far removed from my old life in the Church of England, but Gabriel was Gabriel. He knew his heart even if I didn’t. Again, I had to find the person behind the label. Or in his case, the collar.

  The pace of this story was also different for me. Every novel has its own rhythm, and this one evolved with short, quick-moving chapters, snappy dialogue, and fewer descriptions of the natural world than I’m used to. Part of that came from the chaos that is Marianne, but all the characters chattered at me nonstop. New scenes kept popping up, and I had to wrestle them back down. It was hard to find the balance between one story and four strong characters, all of whom wanted their say. I think that’s the reason we never hear directly from Mrs. Tandy or Sasha. It got to the point where I was saying, “Enough voices, Barbara!”

  Did anything surprise you while researching and writing this novel?

  I never know where I’m heading with a story, and it changes with my research and each rewrite. Jade’s heritage, however, was my biggest surprise. She was the one character who popped out fully formed, and yet I never realized that her mother was black. I heard her voice from the beginning, and the line about Sasha being a skinny white chick intrigued me. Then I was in the Carrboro post office and saw this beautiful African American woman with a funky sense of style. She turned around and I nearly said, “Oh, you’re Jade.”

  The protagonists in your last two novels have been men. Why did you switch to a woman this time?

  It wasn’t a conscious decision. Typically I’m more drawn to male characters because I love figuring out emotionally detached men. (I’ll be honest, I want to make men cry.) But that opening scene in the church wouldn’t go away, and the idea of fleshing out the emotional life of a woman with a mood disorder was a challenge I couldn’t resist. Marianne is emotion amplified, which makes her unlike any character I’ve written before. Even on her meds, she’s the opposite of emotionally detached.

  Do you have a favorite scene?

  So many scenes were fun to write, especially when Jade opened her mouth. I love the first scene between her and Gabriel, but my favorite scene is probably their last one. I’ve always been drawn to the idea that people who need each other find each other, and the last chapter made me sing. (Literally, since I wrote and rewrote it with “Summertime” by My Chemical Romance playing on my iPod.)

  You write about families coping with the demands of invisible disabilities, but in this story you don’t have a traditional family. Why is that?

  These characters are not just a social group. They are four broken people who choose to support each other. I see them as an unconventional family—yes, even Gabriel becomes part of it. The world is changing, and the definition of family isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. I also wanted to flip The Perfect Son, which is a story driven by the notion that you can’t escape genetics, to write about a family with no blood ties.

  Can you tell us a little about your writing process?

  It’s a messy disaster until the end, because I have a few problems with that big thing called plot. I’m an organic writer who likes to meander and take her time. That’s not an option when you’re under contract, so I’ve learned to speed up. Once I get an idea I simultaneously write and research, reaching out to interview anyone who can potentially help me find my story. If my deadline allows it, my preference is always to write a crappy first draft before I do anything, and then to pull back and create a storyboard—see what works, what doesn’t. Since I’m a visual person, books on screenwriting have always made more sense than books about how to outline. My storyboard, which at some point gets broken down into a chapter-by-chapter timeline highlighting point of view, setting, turning point, and emotional change, is the closest I get to an outline. (Although it’s really about me keeping track of details.) And then I rewrite endlessly, which means throwing out half of the storyboard. The magic doesn’t happen for me until the third draft, and often it’s not until the fourth or fifth draft that I get a sense of the emotional layers. The gardener in me loves to keep digging.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2016 KM Photography

  A Brit living in North Carolina, Barbara Claypole White writes hopeful family drama with a healthy dose of mental illness. Her debut novel, The Unfinished Garden, won the 2013 Golden Quill Contest for Best First Book, and The In-Between Hour was chosen by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance as a Winter 2014 Okra Pick. Her third novel, The Perfect Son, was a semifinalist in the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction. For more information, or to connect with Barbara, visit www.b
arbaraclaypolewhite.com.