Authors Interviewing Characters: Janice Deal

THE BLUE DOOR

How much responsibility and guilt can a mother bear for a child who has done wrong?

This is the question that haunts Flo when her daughter Teddy plans to visit after a long separation. The prospect of seeing Teddy brings back painful memories of Teddy’s troubled past–a young teen imprisoned for committing murder. Can Flo find the strength to support or even cope with her daughter as she is now? Can she resurrect hope for either of them?

Flo must thrash through these questions alone; her dear friend and confidant has just died. Then, as she’s grappling with grief and guilt, her dog goes missing, and she takes a long walk to find him. On the surface, this is all that happens: A simple walk through a desert town. Encounters with people who uplift or unsettle her along the way. But for Flo, this journey becomes much more–a personal odyssey, as profound and disorienting as Ulysses’. She remembers an old folktale passed down by her family, about a young woman’s mythical journey to find her place in the world. Echoes of this tale play through the current story, and the hunt for Dog turns into a metaphysical search for meaning.

Some readers will remember Flo and Teddy from Strange Attractors, the outstanding collection that critics compared to Chekhov and Flannery O’Connor. As her sequel to the mother-daughter story unfolds, Janice Deal once more reveals the extraordinary depths of unpretentious people. The Blue Door is a radical adventure, both compulsively readable and meditative–a rare combination.

Q&A with Flo:

A conversation with Flo, the protagonist of Janice Deal’s novel The Blue Door, forthcoming from New Door Books on April 22, 2025.

I meet Flo in her home, in the desert: an apartment carved out of a tract house smack in the middle of a spartan subdivision. It’s insanely hot outside and the air conditioning is roaring. We sit in Flo’s tidy living room, surrounded by animals: a dog, who sits beside Flo’s chair and seems to be following our conversation closely, and several cats who come and go. SilverGirl—a fat and placid tabby—enters the room and clambers into Flo’s lap. Flo’s friend B., who lives in the apartment in the back of the house, brings a tray with tea and a plate of shortbread. “Let me know if you need anything,” she says before she goes; Flo smiles and nods.

Highlights of our conversation follow here:

Janice:
It’s been a while since we last spoke, yet I think about you every day. Flo, the hardest thing about your story, which readers may want to know up front, is that when your daughter Teddy was a teen, she committed a murder. Teddy spent time in juvenile prison, then wandered the country. I understand she may be coming for a visit, for the first time in a very long time. How are you handling this situation?  

Flo:
[Smiles ruefully, rubs the top of SilverGirl’s head.] Ah . . . as best I can, I guess. Isn’t that what the novel you wrote is about? It’s humbling to be a parent. When Teddy was young, I was a little smug. I thought I was so good at it. Parenting. But life has a way of teaching you humility.

[Flo pauses, takes a long drink of tea.]
People think that what happened with my family could never happen to them. That’s what I used to think, too.
Now I think . . . sometimes the best we can do is play the hand we’re dealt. Bottom line? I love Teddy with all my heart. And I always will.

Janice:
Do you believe in good/evil?

Flo:
That’s a boring concept. Life is more complicated than that. Next question.

Janice:
You’ve lived all over: California, Florida, Illinois. And now you are in Arizona. How did you end up here?

Flo:
It wasn’t a plan. I was . . . wandering. My car gave out. I got a job to pay for the repairs. I didn’t mean to stay.

Janice:
Do you like the desert?

Flo:
I do. In the desert, everything—plants, animals, people—have adapted to extremes. They’ve figured out how to survive in an environment that can be unforgiving. I respect that.

Janice:
Pick one. Heroes or villains?

Flo [laughs]:
Oh, villains. Absolutely. They need some love, too.

Janice:
What words of wisdom would you pass on to someone navigating a crisis? How do you manage to press on in difficult times?

Flo:
Oh, I wish I knew! For a while, I lost the . . . the sense of myself, you could say. I’m still working on getting my . . . confidence back. Staying grounded. [Flo sits up straighter in her chair.] 

Janice:
Tell me more about that.

Flo:
Staying grounded? For one thing, I walk a lot. It helps clear my head. When I’m walking, I remember not to take myself too seriously. Walking reminds me that I’m strong. And brave. 

Janice:
What does that mean to you: to be brave?

Flo:
I think bravery has something to do with humility. And . . . resilience.

Janice:
How do you define resilience?

Flo:
Hmmm. I’d say resilience has something to do with facing life as it is. Not wishing it was another way.
But let me circle back to something you asked earlier. Good and evil. I guess I’m contradicting myself when I say that good/evil contrast is boring. I loved the stories my mom told me as a kid, and they were based on the fact that good could . . . prevail. But there is still a lot of suffering in Mom’s stories. There’s sacrifice. Good characters are treated unfairly, or they deal with terrible pain. And they don’t always “win.” Being good is complicated; I get annoyed when people make it out to be so easy. Or clear cut. Like, someone is either all good or all evil. I hate that shit.

Janice:
So stories are important to you. You still tell stories your mom told you, don’t you?

Flo:
Yes. I do. Stories have always been important to me. Maybe because . . . they give me the opportunity to live in another world.

Janice:
Like the one behind the blue door?

Flo:
Yes. The blue door.

Janice:
Is it a secret, what’s behind the blue door?

Flo:
No, but it’s . . . fluid. The blue door, it’s from a story my mom used to tell. It’s like . . . an alternate reality. A “best case” sort of scenario. You know, “Beyond the blue door, this is true.” I go through the blue door and I imagine the way things might be.

Janice:
I’m going to quote a Mary Oliver line for my last question: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Flo:
I want to give and receive love.

Janice:
And walk?

Flo [laughs]:
Yes. And walk.

Janice:
Thank you for spending time with me, Flo.

Flo:
Thank you! You take care. Have a shortbread cookie before you go. Okay?

PREORDER  HERE
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Janice Deal is the author of four books of fiction: The Blue Door: A Novel; Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories; The Sound of Rabbits, a novel; and The Decline of Pigeons: Stories. The recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose, Janice has won The Moth Short Story Prize and the Cagibi Macaron Prize. Her books have also been finalists for the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year, the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize, and the Many Voices Project annual competition. She lives with her husband in the Chicago area. Visit her website at https://www.janicedeal.com/

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing