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Martin Brady

Religion & Spirituality

Bruce Feiler

Interview by Martin Brady

Bruce Feiler has been called the new George Plimpton. With his journalistic curiosity in tow, Feiler has managed to infiltrate unique areas of culture, emerging successfully with books that tell an insider’s story. In Learning to Bow, Feiler examined Japanese society; in Looking for Class, he profiled the learned atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge; in Under the Big Top, he cavorted behind the scenes of a traveling circus. More recently, Feiler scored with Dreaming Out Loud, a look at the country music business.

Feiler’s latest, Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses, is probably more scholarly in nature than his previous works, but certainly no less a testimony to accepting the journalistic challenge. Part travelogue, part religious history, part geological survey, part commentary on contemporary Mideast sociopolitical realities, Walking the Bible finds Feiler traipsing through the Holy Land, linking hard archaeological facts to the historic people and places found in the Old Testament’s first five books. From Jerusalem to Cairo, from the Red Sea to the Nile, from Mount Ararat to Mount Nebo, Feiler wends his way through some of the region’s political hot spots, interviewing pilgrims, immigrants, soldiers, farmers, priests and scholars, in his attempt to gain perspective on the spiritual dimensions of Moses’ Promised Land.

Yale graduate Feiler has, like many a good journalist, hung his hat in various places: Nashville, Washington, D.C., England, Japan and currently New York. "In 1997, I visited an old friend living in Jerusalem," Feiler says from his Manhattan apartment. "Her husband was teaching a group of high schoolers. When he pointed out that here is the rock where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, I said to myself, These are actual places? These abstractions are real? I decided to take the Bible this embodiment of old-fashioned knowledge and approach it with contemporary methods of learning, essentially plunging into it like any other world I had entered. As in my other books, I learned by doing."

Noah’s ark, the burning bush, the Ten Commandments these were the touchstones of Feiler’s geographic enlightenment. Key to this education were the various guides who helped him find his way through mountain, desert and military checkpoint. Not the least of these was Israeli archaeologist Avner Goren, a well-known man of scientific knowledge but also one whose recurring search for the Bible perfectly complemented Feiler’s own nascent fixation. Feiler grew up Jewish in Savannah, Georgia, claiming a strong religious identity, but no particular spirituality.

"I said over and over, when I started this project, that this was not about me and my religion or my God," he says. "This was supposed to be about me and the Bible. It did not take very long for me to realize that I was being self-protective. If I’d had a religious identity but had not been spiritual before, by the end of this journey, my experience made me more spiritual and less religious."

Besides offering observations on the current social climate of the region, Feiler makes a profound connection with the Bible’s stories, lands and characters. Says Feiler: "In the desert you are between being in extreme places, having extreme emotions, and opening yourself up to spiritual ideas that never existed before. That’s why the desert is such a powerful place. You’re pushed to the limits of your capacity and you crave nonhuman, nonrational support that is, God. That’s what Jews, Christians and Muslims all have in common: a single man goes out into the desert and has a transforming experience."

Feiler was also forced to deal with transformation as a journalist. In writing a lengthy volume that earnestly captures the Bible’s meaning, the author had to confront his usual methodology. "Before, I was writing about subcultures," says Feiler. "Here I was writing about culture itself. The stakes are a lot higher. In addition, it was a lot more emotional both researching the book and writing it. Finally, it was hard to be funny. I had been a circus clown, after all! To get the tone right, to be wide-eyed and naive and fun, was tricky. The Bible, after all, at its heart, is a great adventure story." But so, it turns out, is Walking the Bible.

Martin Brady is an editor, writer and critic. He lives in Nashville.

 

Bruce Feiler has been called the new George Plimpton. With his journalistic curiosity in tow, Feiler has managed to infiltrate unique areas of culture, emerging successfully with books that tell an insider’s story. In Learning to Bow, Feiler examined Japanese society; in Looking for Class, he profiled the learned atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge; in […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

James Lee Burke

Interview by Martin Brady

Two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke’s  latest novel, Rain Gods, finds the crime master at the top of his game. Burke, best known as the author of numerous books starring his Southern sleuths Dave Robicheaux and Billy Bob Holland, has also crafted other works of fiction that transcend the mystery genre, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Lost Get-Back Boogie. Burke is that rare thriller writer who can combine gritty plotting with colorful characters and poetic descriptions of physical settings, while also managing to neatly circumscribe the action with a noirish sense of the sociopolitical American landscape.

Rain Gods is set into motion when the dead bodies of nine young Thai women—human “mules” in a heroin smuggling scheme—are discovered in a remote South Texas churchyard. Sheriff Hackberry Holland—Korean War vet, former ACLU lawyer, and reformed drinker and contrite ex-womanizer—takes on the investigation, which reaches into many sleazy worlds but mainly pits him against a formidable yet strangely compelling madman named Preacher Collins. The strong narrative offers a starkly realized Texas backdrop with occasional echoes of his beloved Louisiana, a healthy amount of violence and suspense, and a continuously intriguing whodunit feel that will satisfy his many fans. Burke took the time to answer a few questions about the new novel from his home in Montana.

Your protagonist, Sheriff Hackberry Holland, is 74, has chronic back pain, night terrors about his Korean War POW experience, has sworn off drink, and now doggedly chases bad guys in a wide-open—some might say godforsaken—Texas landscape. What inspired you to develop this character, and can we expect to see him as the star of future novels?
Hack first appears in my work in three short stories contained in the collection titled The Convict. He is also the narrator of my third published novel, Lay Down my Sword and Shield. I think he's one of most intriguing characters I have written about, and I suspect I will be writing more about him as well as the rest of the Holland family.

In the course of Rain Gods, it is suggested that Holland and his nemesis, Preacher Collins, are “two sides of the same coin.” Does either one bear any resemblance to the coin that is James Lee Burke?
My own life is an enormous yawn. I think that's the reason I'm often invited to speak before groups of insomniacs.

Two current events are referenced in Rain Gods that seem crucial to the narrative and character development: Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. How do you think these events have affected American society?
The antagonist in the novel is a man known as Preacher Jack Collins. He's narcissistic, messianic, and convinced that he is the left hand of god. Needless to say, he's an extremely dangerous man. The novel has many symbolic overtones. We live in a time when men who in my view are absolutely ruthless have hijacked Christianity and used it for their own agenda.

With its South Texas setting, Rain Gods automatically conjures a strong sense of border politics and the issue of Hispanic immigration. Holland’s investigation directly—and often uneasily—involves the FBI and ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Do you have a personal view on the immigration issue or any cynicism regarding the related work of federal agencies?
I think the people who serve in federal law enforcement do the best they can with what they have. I used to work for the United States Forest Service and the Job Corps, and I was always impressed with the quality of men and women who serve our government. I think the immigration difficulties we are experiencing today are directly related to our policies in Latin America, and also the wish on the part of many business interests to see an end to labor unions.

Your treatment of women in Rain Gods might be viewed as extreme. Juxtaposed with the dead Thai drug mules and strippers and escorts are tremendously strong figures like Holland’s devoted deputy Pam Tibbs, the defiantly combative strip-club owner’s wife Esther Dolan and the feisty country singer Vicki Gaddis.
The three women you mention are among the strongest characters in my work. The victims of the sex trade are not dealt with individually because they are not central players in the story. However, my experience has been, as Orwell once said, that people are always much better than we think they are, no matter what roles they occupy.

Deputy Tibbs, though young enough to be Holland’s daughter, has romantic designs on him. The age difference bothers him, yet we’re tantalizingly left hanging about exactly what happens between the two of them. Any hints about what happens between the two of them?
I never know what lies next in the story. I believe the story is written in the unconscious and the artist is its incremental discoverer rather than its creator. At least, that is the way it has always been for me.

Three of your previous books—In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, Two for Texas and Heaven's Prisoners—have been adapted for the screen, and Rain Gods would also seem to be a logical candidate for a film. Have you been satisfied with Hollywood’s treatment of your work?
My experience with the film industry has always been a good one. In each instance, the creative people involved in the project treated the work with respect and did the best job they could. A writer shouldn't ask for more.

You’ve been referred to as “a Faulkner of crime writing.” How do you feel about that designation? And, since you began your career as a writer of “serious” fiction, has your work in the crime genre fulfilled your literary ambitions?
The comparison with William Faulker is very complimentary, but Faulkner's work is on a level with the work of Shakespeare and Chaucer and Homer and Keats. The only change that has taken place in my work is the fact that with the writing of The Neon Rain, some of my novels were narrated by a police officer, namely Dave Robicheaux. The themes, the settings, the type of people I write about are the same as the ones we encounter in my first novel, Half of Paradise.

Rain Gods is chock-full of details on myriad topics—the Korean War, the drug trade, seedy night clubs, firearms, federal law enforcement, all manner of Texas geography and flora and fauna, etc. How much research do you do, or is it all second nature by now?
I do little if any research. Most of the people I write about are composites of people I have known. Hemingway once said that once the author knows his characters, he can place them in any setting or era he wishes.

Holland’s antagonists in Rain Gods are a motley bunch of lowlifes, all fit for a Tarantino film. Have you known many people like this in the course of your life?
I was a social worker in California and handled the cases of many parolees and mental patients, some of whom were among the most interesting people I have ever known. I also made recordings of the inmates in the work camps and what was called "the block" at Angola Penitentiary in 1961. I was occasionally a police reporter and worked a bit in the oil patch, and lived in an urban slum and the poorest part of the southern mountains. I may have had few other talents, but I was always a good listener. The great stories are in the air, all around us, everyday, no matter where we're located. All we have to do is listen.

What the heck is creosote?
It's a viscous oil produced by the creosote bush. It's often used to treat wood, particularly railroad ties.

You were born in Houston but have a home in Louisiana, which one would assume is your spiritual literary base given your many Robicheaux novels. Still, you’ve written about Texas in the Holland stories. Which locale do you prefer to bring to life in fiction, and is there another Robicheaux tale on the horizon?
To me, the South and the American West represent the entirety of our experience as a nation, for good or bad. The challenge for the artist is to see the larger story in its smallest component, like coming to know a beach through a grain of sand. I'm writing another novel narrated by Dave Robicheaux now. I hope to write many more stories before I catch the train. In fact, when the latter event occurs, I'm taking my notebook and pen with me.

RELATED CONTENT

Read all our reviews featuring the novels of James Lee Burke.
 

Two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke’s  latest novel, Rain Gods, finds the crime master at the top of his game. Burke, best known as the author of numerous books starring his Southern sleuths Dave Robicheaux and Billy Bob Holland, has also crafted other works of fiction that transcend the mystery genre, including the Pulitzer […]
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Ronald K.L. Collins

Interview by Martin Brady

He was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, in 1925. By the time he died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1966, the man who came to be known as Lenny Bruce had not only achieved legendary show-business status but had also become America's foremost First Amendment martyr. His mother, Sally Marr, was a comedian, and Bruce followed in her footsteps, playing strip joints and nightclubs nationwide beginning in his early 20s. He eventually made records and TV appearances, but it was Bruce's live gigs that gained him fame, in particular because while his act was occasionally humorous it was also laced with certain unmentionable 4- and 10- and 12-letter words. Bruce claimed he was more social critic than comic, and that his use of foul language was merely a rhetorical device a part of his act inseparable from its context with the ultimate goal of de-clawing notions of profanity and blasphemy. Local magistrates in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York disagreed, however, and Bruce spent the better part of the last years of his life in court, fighting obscenity charges.

With The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon, authors Ronald Collins and David Skover, both journalists with legal backgrounds, have put together an exhaustive study of the performer's important freedom of speech cases. They offer biographical highlights along the way, including Bruce's marriage to stripper Honey Harlowe, the club life he lived so intensely and his infamous run-ins with policemen eager to stifle his dirty" mouth. Bruce's financial struggles are also part of the picture, primarily because he had a penchant for living beyond his means (not to mention a nasty heroin addiction) and later spent so much time in court that he was almost perpetually in debt to his lawyers. Indeed, attorneys, prosecutors and judges are the real stars of this book, as Collins and Skover plow through court transcripts and offer blow-by-blow accounts of the progress of each case and its eventual impact, if any, on First Amendment freedoms and litigation. The text also focuses on the somewhat pathetic episodes in which, frustrated by the legal system, Bruce took it upon himself to play lawyer, to his predictable detriment.

Bruce had his high-profile defenders, to be sure among them, Village Voice journalist Nat Hentoff, record producer Phil Spector and television star Steve Allen. Yet it's hard not to wonder why, after a time, he didn't attempt cleverer means to avoid being hounded by his dogged detractors and nemeses. Bruce's self-destructive urge was apparently not only physical but psychological, and the laughing had stopped long before he accidentally OD'd on morphine.

Although a repetitive chord is struck with each subsequent trial sequence, this well-written volume will have special appeal for readers interested in free-speech issues. The authors' research here is unstinting, drawing upon the rich Bruce media record, published documents of all kinds (books, articles, court opinions) and interviews with contemporaries, from Hugh Hefner to Lawrence Ferlinghetti to George Carlin. The book also comes with an audio CD, which complements the book's text and features dozens of Bruce performances and interviews.

He was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, in 1925. By the time he died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1966, the man who came to be known as Lenny Bruce had not only achieved legendary show-business status but had also become America's foremost First Amendment martyr. His mother, Sally […]
History

Paul Hendrickson

Interview by Martin Brady

One day in 1995, journalist Paul Hendrickson, then a reporter for the Washington Post, found himself standing in Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, where he was thumbing through a volume called Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore. One particular photograph grabbed Hendrickson's attention, filling him with a sense of history, awe and, ultimately, an absorbing curiosity that would drive him to spend nearly seven years researching his latest book, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy.

Technically, Moore's candid black-and-white photo is fairly unremarkable. But its subjects—seven Mississippi sheriffs gathered on the campus of Ole Miss on Sept. 27, 1962, on the eve of the federally enforced enrollment of the school's first African-American student, James Meredith—evoked in Hendrickson a deep desire to investigate their lives and to re-examine a tumultuous era in a region infamous for its segregation and bigotry.

The seven men were the leading state law officers of their time. In the photo, they are gathered together affably, chortling amongst themselves, cigarettes clenched between their teeth, their eyes focused on Billy Ferrell in the center, who appears to be demonstrating the proper way to swing a riot club. Ostensibly, the men had arrived in Oxford to assist in preventing Meredith from entering the university.

"The picture stopped me in my tracks," says Hendrickson, speaking from Philadelphia, where he now teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. "These men are not terrifying. They're not dressed as Klansmen. Take away the bat and the malevolent grins, and these are men who have risen above their families' blue-collar factory backgrounds."

Hendrickson, a white man born in California and raised in Illinois, had also spent some time as a young man in the late 1950s and '60s in Alabama, where he was studying at a seminary and considering a vocation to the priesthood. "I saw segregation. I saw apartheid. That never left me." Without question, the faces of the men in Moore's photograph transmit an eerie energy, conjuring fearful notions of white supremacist, redneck-style law enforcement in the Deep South, with all its attendant paranoia, provincialism and brutality. The photo became the springboard not only for Hendrickson's powerful history of civil rights but also for his investigation into what happened to these archetypal Southern good ol' boys and their families. So the author went to Mississippi.

"No sense going to the South if you don't go to Mississippi," says Hendrickson. "I get excited about Mississippi the grace, the manners, the food, the beauty of the landscape. It gave us both Faulkner and appalling racism. It is the most literate and the most illiterate state." Hendrickson followed the small-town trails of his subjects, most of whom were dead. He interviewed contemporaries and family members. He combed through newspaper archives and government reports. On a firsthand basis, he was able to speak to Ferrell (who has since died) and John Ed Cothran, who as a deputy sheriff played a role in the case of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old black Emmett Till, a signature event in the history of the civil rights movement.

As it turns out, being a sheriff was only a sometime thing for most of the seven. They moved on to other businesses, married and remarried, battled alcoholism, died young or from debilitating cancers in short, lived apparently unremarkable lives. All of them, however, were presumed to have had some involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, though gathering direct evidence often proved elusive.

"You humanize each individual life," says Hendrickson, "and each seems to be a mixture of all of our own lives. Underneath the bad beliefs, there's a kind of ordinary normalcy." Besides focusing on the sheriffs and their families, Hendrickson also offers profiles of photographer Moore (now almost 70 and living in northwest Alabama) and James Meredith (also near 70, living in Jackson).

And what of the Mississippi legacy? Is it hopeless? Is the bigotry still there? Hendrickson speaks with cautious optimism. "What I found are blades of hope. I found changes, but they are like tender shoots of grass in the spring susceptive to quick trampling or reversal." Previously a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Hendrickson should be headed for more acclaim with this amazing book, which is characterized by historical scope, sociocultural depth, journalistic integrity and an astonishing ability to reveal universal truths via very particular people and events.

 

One day in 1995, journalist Paul Hendrickson, then a reporter for the Washington Post, found himself standing in Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, where he was thumbing through a volume called Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore. One particular photograph grabbed Hendrickson's attention, filling him with a sense of history, awe […]
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Bill Maher

Interview by Martin Brady

Bill Maher was a Cornell University grad in search of a career when he discovered stand-up in the ’80s. Searching for an outlet for his often-controversial viewpoints, Maher created Politically Incorrect, an Emmy-nominated round-table interview show that established itself on Comedy Central in 1993 before concluding its run in 2002 on ABC. Maher’s one-man Broadway show received a Tony nomination for 2003, the same year he re-entered the television sweepstakes with Real Time with Bill Maher, yet another interview program that currently airs on HBO.

Maher’s frankness has landed him in hot water. He drew fire in 2001 when he asserted that the 9/11 terrorists were anything but cowards. Just recently, an Alabama congressman accused Maher of treason for his remarks regarding army recruitment efforts. But like him or not, Maher, 49, resists clear-cut political categorization. His support for the privatization of Social Security, his 2000 endorsement of Ralph Nader for president, his disdain for some dearly held women’s issues and his pro-death penalty stance have helped to make him a shape-shifting media figure.

Maher’s latest book, New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer, is a collection of wry, often caustic observations about everyday American life, the world, politicians, celebrities in short, any topic within range of his opinionated mind. Maher took the time to answer a few questions for BookPage during a publicity tour. This book is a chance for me to rail and vent, he says, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The collection calls out people, traditions and institutions in no uncertain terms, as it addresses my personal pet peeves and frustrations in a raw and hopefully a humorous way. The idea of new rules might be at odds with a personality America knows as a stalwart freethinker. Could this be an older, mellower Bill Maher? I don’t start with a political agenda and then craft my opinion, explains Maher. I start with my opinion and let the chips fall where they may. I’ll leave it to others to . . . try to categorize my thinking. The idea of rules and structure, by the way, are not exclusive to conservatives. Liberals fight tirelessly for rules guaranteeing a woman’s right to choose, minority and gay rights, a living wage, etc. As far as getting older and mellower goes: guilty as charged. Where I used to reserve Tuesday nights exclusively for my poker buddies and Jack Daniel’s, I now have a standing date with ÔJudging Amy.’ New Rules is as likely to praise Hollywood and California as easily as it lambastes elements of culture that originate from those places. To hear Maher tell it, it’s okay if Billy Joel marries a woman 35 years his junior, but he’s firmly against older women posing in Playboy. But give the guy credit: his scattershot musings are consistently inconsistent. I’m not a black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinker, says Maher. I can defend Hollywood in general while decrying some of its individual practices, just like I can have a huge problem with Western medicine but still see a Van Nuys doctor about my ingrown toenail. As for defending Billy Joel, the logic is perfectly consistent: most heterosexual men are attracted to young, nubile women. I don’t state that to be popular or fair-minded, but simply as a fact. The book has plenty to say about the Bush administration, and Maher’s animosity is palpable. Still, he isn’t working for any political party. For some reason, Maher says, many regard an intellectual free agent as threatening. If you don’t declare allegiance to a team, they’ll pick one for you. People spend way too much time trying to categorize others, trying to place them in an easily definable, one-size-fits-all box. I guess because, once in a box, you’re more easily dismissed. [My] goal was never to forward an agenda. It was to entertain, to enlighten and to meet chicks. New Rules also takes potent aim at media and lifestyle icons such as Trekkies, movies, cell phones and more, in a way that seems to position the comedian somewhere between a tastemaker and a Miss Manners for the modern age. A Miss Manners for the modern age? I like it, Maher responds. But mostly these are funny jokes in rule form. The reason these rules are so popular, however, is that they strike a pretty universal chord. It’s amazing how so many of us are annoyed by so many of the same things. Political pundit, social critic, stand-up comedian. Maher is all three (and possibly a few other names that his detractors might call him). But first and foremost I’m a comedian, he says. After promoting his book, Maher will return to TV with all-new live installments of Real Time. He’s also got a new stand-up special entitled I’m Swiss airing on HBO. And, as always, he concludes, I will be touring my comedy act as a means of creative expression and to avoid my student loan officer. Martin Brady is a writer in Nashville.

Bill Maher was a Cornell University grad in search of a career when he discovered stand-up in the ’80s. Searching for an outlet for his often-controversial viewpoints, Maher created Politically Incorrect, an Emmy-nominated round-table interview show that established itself on Comedy Central in 1993 before concluding its run in 2002 on ABC. Maher’s one-man Broadway […]
Memoir

Julia Scheeres

Interview by Martin Brady

Julia Scheeres’ memoir Jesus Land is a painfully candid account of a family riddled with dysfunction. Scheeres, now 38, grew up in a strict Calvinist household in Lafayette, Indiana, the daughter of a surgeon and his Bible-thumping wife. Her parents’ missionary zeal led them to adopt two African-American boys when Julia was still a toddler. One of them, David, became Julia’s soul mate. Together, the two endured their upbringing and shared many trials, including a harrowing stay at Escuela Caribe, a Christian school in the Dominican Republic run by New Horizons Youth Ministries. Scheeres’ parents appear more interested in their own religiosity than their children’s emotional needs. Her father’s answer to discipline was bone-breaking brutality; meanwhile, her mother turned a blind eye to rampant behavioral problems, including David’s attempted suicide.

Julia’s other adopted brother, Jerome, grew up angry and hostile, and his repeated sexual abuse of Julia was additional torment in their ugly home life. Jesus Land concludes with the news that David, whose personal notebook inspired the memoir, died in a car crash in 1987. He was only 20 years old. Scheeres recently answered questions from BookPage about her wrenching personal story.

BookPage: Your portrait of Escuela Caribe is troubling, since what’s supposed to be a reaffirming place for confused teens comes off as an insensitive reform school. Do you think your parents made a mistake in sending you there? Julia Scheeres: I think it’s a mistake to send any child to Escuela Caribe. For $3,000 a month, you can ship your child to a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic, where she’ll receive a substandard education, learn to spout “Praise Jesus,” and be so traumatized she’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of her life. Escuela Caribe is essentially a dumping ground for the problem teens of wealthy evangelicals. Many students come from homes where they were emotionally, physically or sexually harmed, yet these issues aren’t addressed by the school. Such camps are located in foreign countries for good reason: to evade U.S. regulations governing child welfare, academic quality and housing standards. The whole point of Escuela Caribe is to break the “rebellious teenage spirit” through humiliation, intimidation and suspending simple freedoms and convert kids into Christian automatons.

BP: Frank memoirs involving family and abuse can be painful reading for all concerned. What have been the reactions of those involved in your life at that time? JS: My book is first and foremost a tribute to my brother David. I found a green notebook after his funeral in which he detailed what it was like to grow up black in a white, fundamentalist family and about our time together at Escuela Caribe. I wrote Jesus Land in an effort to preserve his memory and the memory of the life we shared together. I was the person who knew him best, and it’s my job to keep telling people about what a quirky, tragic and beautiful soul he was. The reaction of other family members and acquaintances wasn’t a consideration as I wrote Jesus Land.

BP: Of all the people in your book, your father seems the most mysterious. What was, or is now, your relationship with him? JS: My father was a ’50s-era dad, who left childcare to the wife and was largely absent due to his high-pressure work as a surgeon. But he was also pressured to be the Biblical head-of-the household disciplinarian. We didn’t talk about problems or issues in my house. You were told what to do, and you obeyed. If you broke the rules, you got spanked or whipped, in my brothers’ case. I grew up fearing and avoiding my father not a healthy situation. I no longer have contact with either of my parents, who work as full-time volunteers at a missionary compound in Orlando, Florida.

BP: Being the victim of sexual abuse usually holds lingering consequences. What has been the long-term emotional or behavioral fallout for you? JS: Where to begin? A rabid distrust of people, and all men in particular? Sexual frigidity and/or promiscuity? A tendency to depersonalize and/or revile sexual partners? I’m sure it’s all well-documented in the case studies. I think the most important step for me was meeting my husband, a man who blew away my low expectations for male behavior and companionship. I don’t think people ever fully recover from ritual abuse of any sort. I still get into funks, but have learned to better negotiate them.

BP: Despite your troubled youth, you’ve gone on to obtain a master’s degree and respect as a journalist. To what do you ascribe your perseverance? JS: I’ve always had a strong sense of self and an independent streak three miles wide. Growing up, I believed that if I could just escape the pettiness surrounding me, things would get better. And they have.

Julia Scheeres’ memoir Jesus Land is a painfully candid account of a family riddled with dysfunction. Scheeres, now 38, grew up in a strict Calvinist household in Lafayette, Indiana, the daughter of a surgeon and his Bible-thumping wife. Her parents’ missionary zeal led them to adopt two African-American boys when Julia was still a toddler. […]
YA FictionYA

Ronald Kidd

Interview by Martin Brady

Many of Ronald Kidd's novels for children and young adults are built on keen historical research. Monkey Town (2006) explored East Tennessee in the 1920s during the infamous Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution. Kidd's latest, On Beale Street, offers readers a trip back to the Memphis of the mid-1950s, a city mired in Jim Crow racism but also the site of an upcoming musical explosion.

"Memphis is a seminal place," Kidd says. "As someone who as a kid listened to a transistor radio under my pillow, I got fascinated with the idea of a teenager in Memphis being exposed to black music and having it open up a world for him."

The protagonist in Kidd's new book for teens is 15-year-old Johnny Ross, a spunky and inquisitive young man facing identity and class issues. Johnny is also drawn to the rhythm and blues he hears on Beale Street, Memphis' musical mecca, and this passion leads him to landing a job with legendary producer Sam Phillips, whose Sun Records cut the first Elvis Presley hits and later helped launch the careers of music immortals like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. Kidd deftly merges the real-life Memphis music people and events with his cast of fictional characters.

The author, who lives in Nashville, was a musician himself in earlier days. "It's great to return to that in my writing," Kidd says. "It just seems like a bunch of stuff came together in Memphis in the '50s—the cult of celebrity, rock 'n' roll, how the blues went R&B—and I became fascinated with that point in history." Like his creator, Johnny Ross becomes enamored of the Memphis musicians and clubs and DJs of the day, even befriending Elvis and hanging with icons like guitarist Scotty Moore. Kidd asked Moore, now 76 and also a Nashville resident, to give his book a read in the manuscript stage to assure historical accuracy. Kidd also includes some valuable endnotes in the book, which delineate a dozen or so Memphis personages.

On Beale Street also works a strong racial theme, which becomes very personal for Johnny yet is also reflected in the confluence of musical styles, serving as a harbinger of Elvis' eventual success. "If I could find a white boy who sang like a Negro," Kidd quotes Phillips, "I'd make me a million dollars." Johnny Ross embodies the coming together of black and white. "I had to deal with the racial issue, which I embarked on with some trepidation," says the author. "Like who am I to write anything about the experience of being black in the U.S. or in Memphis at that time? But I thought the story called for it, and if I told it from the point of view of someone who is white, then that would give me a way in." The totally fictional side of Kidd's tale features credible characters who represent various aspects of the Memphis racial and economic divides, from Southern white bigots to at least one young black man who has strong ideas about justice and change. Johnny becomes fully caught up in the social collision, and surprising revelations have a dramatic impact on his future.

"I'm interested in the mixture and the sparks that are struck when different groups meet and clash," says Kidd. "Plus, the world that Johnny Ross discovers in this book is essentially gone. That's one reason I wanted to try to recapture it—because it was a really special, gritty place." When he's not a novelist, or working his day job as an editor of religious nonfiction, Kidd is also a playwright. "When I write plays," he says, "they're for adults or a general audience. But for some reason, when I write novels, they're for teenagers. It's nothing I turn off and on—it's simply the way I think about the story. It's always someone in their teenage years who's at a turning point in their lives."

Next up for Kidd is The Year of the Bomb, due out next spring. The setting is again the 1950s, his heroes four 13-year-old boys, his theme revolving around McCarthyism. "I do lots of historical research," Kidd says, adding with a chuckle, "it's hard to know when to stop. But between the Internet and books and helpful librarians, I'm always finding a pathway into my material."

Martin Brady is a musician and writer in Nashville.

Many of Ronald Kidd's novels for children and young adults are built on keen historical research. Monkey Town (2006) explored East Tennessee in the 1920s during the infamous Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution. Kidd's latest, On Beale Street, offers readers a trip back to the Memphis of the mid-1950s, a city mired in […]
Cookbooks

Paula Deen

Interview by Martin Brady

Paula Deen may be a walking food – and – entertainment conglomerate, but success hasn't dimmed her sincerely charming and caring ways. "I always remain true to my roots," says Deen from her home in Savannah, Georgia. "God has been very good to me."

Once a single mom with a simple entrepreneurial idea, Deen launched a box lunch and catering service in Savannah in the early 1990s, assisted by her sons, Jamie and Bobby. A popular local restaurant, The Lady and Sons, followed, as did self-published cookbooks that helped spread the word about Deen's Southern "comfort food" cuisine. Then came an Emmy Award-winning Food Network television program, "Paula's Home Cooking," more cookbooks, appearances on "Oprah" and other talk shows, a role in the 2005 feature film Elizabethtown and, in 2007, publication of a memoir, It Ain't All About the Cookin', which told of Deen's triumph over hardships and disappointments and her amazing emergence as a celebrity. In the midst of all the show biz, Deen remarried in 2004, to a Savannah tugboat pilot named Michael Groover. Deen, 61, has a bigger-than-life persona and a sharp drawl that almost projects deep-fried caricature. Yet when she's speaking about the importance of home and family – and the kitchen as the hub of cycle-of-life activity – she comes off as the real deal.

Her new book, Paula Deen's My First Cookbook, is her first for children."It blew me away to find what a large audience I have among the children," says Deen. "Maybe it's because I get silly, I giggle a lot and I like to have fun. You have to make it entertaining. And I probably remind them of someone in their lives that loves them very much – a mother, an aunt, a grandmother. But I've never targeted any audience in particular. To me, it's just about bringing family into the room."

Co-authored with Martha Nesbit and featuring infinitely charming illustrations by Susan Mitchell, Deen's heartwarming new cookbook features recipes for dozens of yummy main – course dishes, sandwiches, salads, soups, snacks, desserts and holiday treats, plus drinks for all-year-round, tasty surprises for mom and dad and a final section on kitchen arts and crafts ("Don't Eat These!"). Each recipe is explained plainly and clearly – just right for savvier older children who want to figure it out for themselves. Yet this is a book ideally pitched to parents, older relatives and friends or caregivers, who can share in the preparations, patiently supervise the creativity and be the "adult helper" who needs to be ever – present whenever youngsters are near cutlery or hot stovetops and ovens. "My granddaddy," says Deen wistfully, "God love him. He taught me how to make gravy – clumpy and thick like wallpaper paste – and he had the patience to let me get in there with him. It's important for kids to be in the kitchen and for us to teach them to do simple things. That's a self-esteem builder. And they see the product of their work. They're proud of what they've done, and they're trying something they might otherwise have turned their noses up at."

Besides Mitchell's colorful and quaint drawings of kitchen utensils, ingredients, finished dishes and a pair of cartoon kids who prepare them (and eat them!), the book features chapter-head snapshots of Deen and her devoted sons through the years. The elementary school picture of a pixieish Paula, age nine, is adorable.

"I didn't really cook as a young girl," says Deen. "I was too busy. I had a social life and was always active. A couple of times I remember saying, 'Mama, let me cook!' Reluctantly, she would say OK. Then, later, she'd say, 'Paula, honey, you have to leave now.' I married young, and I couldn't even boil water. Then I fell in love with it. It's in the genes, maybe?"

Deen's favorite recipe in the new book is the Cinnamon Rolls. It's a surprising choice, given that more complicated dishes stand out, like the Porcupine Balls, the Sausage Quiche or the Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki Kebabs with Grilled Pineapple. On the other hand, there's something that says simplicity and kid – friendliness about crescent rolls stuffed with marshmallows and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

"Cooking is about memories," says Deen, "and that is so important. We relate that to a time in our lives that is carefree and safe, when there wasn't a bad world out there. Cooking connects you to those times. I think 9/11 played a big part in jogging memories about family times and kitchen times. Some of our safest times were in Granny's or Mama's kitchen … back when daddies and granddaddies were our heroes."

Paula Deen may be a walking food – and – entertainment conglomerate, but success hasn't dimmed her sincerely charming and caring ways. "I always remain true to my roots," says Deen from her home in Savannah, Georgia. "God has been very good to me." Once a single mom with a simple entrepreneurial idea, Deen launched […]

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