Q: Did your grandmother really have that many children?
A: Yes. My grandfather came to the marriage with five children. Together, he and my grandmother had four children, with a fifth on the way at his passing. My grandmother then had two children between husbands before marrying her second husband and having two more children. Grand total: fourteen, including the five my grandfather brought from his previous marriage.
Q: Did your grandmother really have an evil mother-in-law?
A: No, not to my knowledge. However, it’s my understanding she wasn’t well liked by my grandfather’s brothers. The character of Imogene, while fiction, represents the brothers-in-law who failed to help her when she needed it most. In contrast, the characters of Atticus and Veronica represent the one brother and his wife who seemed to be more supportive of my grandmother.
Q: Did Dale Greene really exist?
A: Yes and no. Dale Greene represents my grandmother’s second husband. While I know their marriage wasn’t ideal, I can’t really tell you whether he was as much the villain as I made him out to be in the book. From talking to aunts and uncles, I’m told he wasn’t the easiest personality to live with. He also was neither a doctor, nor wealthy. He did, however, father two of my favorite aunts, who went on to parent some of my favorite cousins, so I’m reluctant to cast too many aspersions on his character.
Q: Did your grandmother really kill her second husband?
A: For some reason, this question always makes me laugh. No—my grandmother, to the best of my knowledge, never even imagined killing anyone. She did, however, divorce her second husband in an era when divorce was still frowned upon.
Q: Did your grandmother really march up to the school and give the principal a set-down?
A: Yes, but … I’m neither sure what transpired, exactly, to make her so angry, nor whether it was the principal or a teacher. The original story, as told by my father, is that he and his brothers got a “whoopin” at school for misbehaving. Well, my grandmother could be meaner than a snake, but nobody messed with her kids (or grandkids). Like Victoria in the book, my grandmother did march up to the school, and did flip desks over as she walked through. What happened next changes a little with each telling, but the common agreement is that the set-down she gave the schoolmaster was as much physical as it was verbal. And, knowing my grandmother, that’s the version I choose to believe. But, for obvious reasons, it’s not the version I wrote for the book. After all, who would believe a woman in that era would be capable of giving that kind of set-down? I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t known my grandmother.
Q: Are there any other interesting tidbits you can share with us?
A: Sure!
(1) In the book, Victoria mentions her dislike for patchwork quilts and that, in better days, she refused to have them in her house. While I’m not sure this was true about my grandmother, it was absolutely true of her oldest child, my aunt Gerry. She hated them, mentioning many times in my childhood that they reminded her too much of how hard those days had been.
(2) The character of Sara represents my oldest living aunt, who is still alive and well. She was never attacked by water moccasins, though there were certainly enough in Oklahoma that it could plausibly happen.
(3) In the book, Victoria miscarries the child she was carrying when Will passed. This was entirely fiction. My grandmother was pregnant at the passing of my grandfather, but the child they’d conceived was born healthy and lived well into his 70s. He (my uncle Donny) was one of my favorites of all of my aunts and uncles.
(4) At one point after Will’s death, Victoria tells Catherine that he was the “finest man I ever knew.” Not knowing anything at all about my grandfather, I wrote him how I imagined him. Imagine my surprise when, during the original editing of this novel, my aunt revealed to me that those were the only words she remembered my grandmother ever speaking about my grandfather. Upon hearing them, and realizing they reinforced the image of him I’d imagined, I added that original quote from my grandmother—passed down through my aunt—to the final copy of the first edition.
C.H. Armstrong is an Oklahoma-native transplanted in Minnesota. Raised in a large family, she grew up on the stories of the sacrifices her grandmother made as a widow with fourteen children in Oklahoma during the 1930s. It was through these stories and her desire to better understand her own grandmother that the inspiration for The Edge of Nowhere was born.
She is also the author of Roam.
charmstrongbooks.com
@C_H_Armstrong
The Edge of Nowhere Page 29