Authors Interviewing Characters: Ann Putnam

New York Times bestselling authors are calling I Will Leave You Never (May 9, She Writes Press) by Hemingway scholar Ann Putnam “extraordinary” and “heartbreaking” and we are thrilled to feature this Authors Interviewing Characters piece!

Ann Putnam Interviews Zoë Penney from I WILL LEAVE YOU NEVER

The main character’s most devout wish is to keep her family safe. Her greatest fear is that she cannot. The book begins in a perilous season of drought in the Pacific Northwest, as a serial arsonist sets fires near where Jay and Zoë Penney live with their three children. It gives Zoë nightmares about her home rising in explosions of fire, and haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Jay. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. 

“Ann Putnam is the kind of extraordinary writer who captures heartbreak and longing with such startling precision and in such beautiful prose that you cannot help but me moved.” Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times best-selling author of Wench, Balm, and Take My Hand

Ann:  My oh my. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it.

Zoë:  It’s amazing that I’m still standing. Or in this case, sitting—for this interview, which is going to be strange in itself. I’ve never done this before.

Ann:  Just like the year you’ve just lived through. It began with an arsonist, didn’t it?

Zoë: Ah. The arsonist. It was so unusual and so terrifying. There isn’t anything more dangerous than arson, I don’t think. I was terrified he’d start a fire and we’d get trapped inside. The fires always started at night, so of course that’s when you worried most. And no way to truly protect yourself. You can’t just stay up all night looking out the windows, though that’s what I sometimes did. I’d hoped the dog might sense something, but I was never very sure how good a watchdog she really was.  

Ann: What were some of the precautions you took? I found this very interesting.

Zoë: Oh, yes. Besides motion sensor lights all around, we parked the car right up against the garage door so nobody could lift it up and slip inside. And we locked everything up, of course. I always worried about someone breaking a window to get in the garage. It was chock full of combustibles. Including the garbage and recycle cans we moved inside. Our garage was an arsonist’s dream. It was full of paint cans, and turpentine and gasoline for the mower, the usual, rags, sponges, even an old mattress. And we moved things away from the house, of course, just like they told us, or really just anything you could set fire to. We had the kids raking the leaves all the time and then putting them in trash bags in the garage. We trimmed back the shrubs next to the house, kept the lights on upstairs and even some downstairs. Don’t come near us!  We’re all awake and watching for you! 

Ann:  And didn’t you worry about living right next to those woods?

Zoë:  That was the greatest worry, I think. They were so dry that fall, in all the drought we’d been having. It was so strange, because you know, in the Pacific Northwest it’s just rain rain rain. And then everything to be so dry and all those fires being set. Jay and I argued about moving the woodpile away from the house, but we never did that. We put a motion sensor light on it, and just hoped for the best. It was so close to the woods that it seemed kind of futile. Or Jay thought so anyway. And then so much else was going on.

Ann:  How many fires did he set during that time?

Zoë: 51 and counting. It was terrifying. The fires ringed our house, and since we were right next to those woods, and in the middle of that strange Pacific Northwest drought as I said. We didn’t put up Halloween decorations or anything like that. We had a very odd neighbor move in down the hill, who put up terrifying Halloween decorations. People worried he was the arsonist. And they kind of targeted him. The kids worried about fires a lot. I worried all the time and did a very bad job of hiding it.

Ann:  Was anyone ever injured by the fires?  

Zoë:  I’m really sad to say that several people lost their lives to the fires he set. In a retirement home. I don’t think the folks had any way to get out. It was just so heartbreaking.

Ann: Is that when your dreams started?

Zoë:  Yes, that fall. It was strange and actually kind of wonderful. I dreamed of this little house in the woods and I saw a little boy staring out his upstairs bedroom window. It was winter and very cold, and he’d found this lost dog he wanted to keep. His father beat him sometimes and he made him keep that dog outside even though it was too cold for any living thing. In my dreams, I had the idea that if I could comfort that little boy in some way, he might not grow up to be the arsonist, as I thought that’s maybe who he was. My friend Meghan said I was “lucid dreaming” to cope with all this. I just know I longed for those dreams. I kept them secret because I never could explain them.

Ann:  Is that about the time the dog got pregnant? What do you call it when this happens?

Is there a special term for it?

Zoë:  How about getting knocked up?

Ann: And then she had her babies in your bedroom! That must have been something.

Zoë:  What did we think we were doing?! Jay made this 6’ by 7’ whelping box which seemed like it took up most of the bedroom. But the birthing and the pups were lovely for the kids. And then when their mom got so sick and we had to feed them day and night from these little bottles of goat milk, and then we’d lay them on our shoulders to burp them. It was wrenching when it came time to let them go. But they were Alaskan Malamutes! We couldn’t keep all six of them. We’d have had a dog sled team. 

Ann:  Weren’t there other strange things going on?

Zoë: It was in the spring, and all nature was going crazy—you know, the slugs would somehow come during the night into the house onto this ledge by the window where we kept the printer, and eat the paper and then vanish by morning. They’d leave their little slimy trails all over. We never saw them or could figure out how they could get inside like that. Just their shiny trails and then the paper eaten away. And then this crazy blackbird in the woods started crashing into our bedroom window at dawn. I mean, over and over. The neighbor thought the bird had gotten drunk off fermented elderberries next to the woods. Who knows?  It sounds kind of nutty, doesn’t it?  But the kids loved all that.  And then the moths hatching in our food in the panty? So many things couldn’t be explained. And then what happened to Jay. Nobody could explain why he got cancer like he did.

Ann:  He was still undergoing radiation then?  

Zoë:  He was just kind of finishing with it. It was really hard on him. But he was valiant. He was so graceful in keeping it mostly to himself. I feared I might lose him. I worried about it all the time. We could barely talk about it.

Ann:  To me, that’s the heart of the novel: a story of a marriage facing great peril.

Zoë:  The kids, too. They were so brave and kind, and they worried so much. But they were kids after all, and lived their lives more out of joy than fear, unlike their mother!  You know, how do you live in joy not fear when the sky is falling?  

Ann:   For a moment there, I thought your life sounded like a comedy. But it’s not.

Zoë:  (she pauses, takes a long breath) You know, it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things, if you can love them for what they are teaching you. There were still some laughs, though. Gotta have those.

Ann:  But here you are. Still standing. Even if you are sitting down for this interview—for which I thank you very much!

Zoë:  Thank you, Ann. I couldn’t have done it without you.

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ANN PUTNAM is an internationally-known Hemingway scholar, who has made more than six trips to Cuba. Her novel, Cuban Quartermoon, came, in part, from those trips, as well as a residency at Hedgebrook Writer’s Colony. She has published the memoir, Full Moon at Noontide:  A Daughter’s Last Goodbye (University of Iowa Press), and short stories in Nine by Three:  Stories (Collins Press), among others. Her second novel, I Will Leave You Never, will be published this spring. Her literary criticism appears in many collections and periodicals. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington and has taught creative writing, gender studies and American Literature for many years.  She is finishing a third novel, The World in Woe and Splendor.

www.annputnamwriter.com    

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing