Kimberly Brock: Authors Interviewing Characters

THE FABLED EARTH

Sometimes the truth is found in a folktale.

1932 Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.

1059. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.

Character Interview

Kimberly: Thanks for talking with me today. Why don’t we start with you telling me a little about yourself and how you came to be living on Kingdome Come.

Cleo: Why don’t we start with the fact that I don’t remember inviting you out here. But that’s what it’s going to take to get some peace, then fine. I grew up in Revery, just on the other side of the river from here, and I lived with my grandparents in a little house near the cannery after my own folks died. I only came here after my grandparents had both passed. I came to be an artist in residence, the way my granddaddy told me to do. I’d never set foot on Cumberland before that, never laid eyes on a Carnegie, either. But my granddaddy, Dooley Woodbine, had been famous friends Dr. Marius Johnston, from Kentucky. He’d married one of the Carnegie daughters and they lived at a house called Plum Orchard. Dr. Johnston built an artists’ residence and became a benefactor for Dooley, helped him publish a work of Irish folktales and watercolor illustrations. That’s a rare collector’s item now, or so I’m told. I guess I was supposed to be following in his footsteps. Now, is that enough to satisfy you?

Kimberly: Actually, there are some pretty outlandish stories about you floating around. I thought you might want to the chance to set the record straight. Should we talk about those?

Cleo: People like a good story better than the truth, don’t they? Maybe you should just believe them. Put it in your notes there that I’m a crazy woman who talks to ghosts and turns trespassing men into hogs. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Kimberly: Okay, then what can you tell us about the summer you came to Plum Orchard?

Cleo: I don’t like to talk about that summer. If you wanted to know the truth about it, you should have talked to Joanna Burton before she died. Or go find Tate Walker. He was there. He’ll tell. He saw everything the same as me the night of the bonfire in ’32. He saw those two boys go in the water and never come out. He saw what we all saw moving there. I wouldn’t be standing here right now, talking to you, if it weren’t for Tate Walker. But he might just say our eyes were playing tricks on us after the story I told about a river siren looking to take her revenge. We’re all grown up enough now to know better than that sort of silliness.

Kimberly: Did you ever figure out what you really saw in the river that night?

Cleo: Look, Miss Busy Body, I already said, I’m not talking about that. And I’m about to run out of patience with you.

Kimberly: I’m sorry. I only have a few more questions. Do you think there’s any truth to this rumor of a storm-of-the-century? Are you afraid it will change how you live now?

Cleo: I’ve seen plenty of storms roll over this island since I’ve been here and people like to say that every one of them is going to be the one to finally change this place. They tell tall tales about some storm-of-the-century because they like to believe there’s something coming. I guess they just get so tired of themselves they hope some hand is going to swoop down and wipe a clean slate for them, but I don’t hold with such things. This house has stood a long time and it’s going to stand a long while yet, with me in it until I have a good enough reason to decide to leave by my own steam. Are we finished?

Kimberly: Yes, and thank you for talking to me. But there’s one last thing I’d really like to know. Do you agree with what Dooley said? Are all stories ghost stories? And what does that even mean?

Cleo: Well, now, finally you’ve asked a question worth answering. I can tell you what Dooley said. He said all stories are ghost stories, an exchange of spirit between the world and the human heart that rides on an inhale and an exhale. Stories, to Dooley, were elemental as you and me, slipping around the forest of our bones. If that’s not a ghost, I don’t know what is. I couldn’t doubt that truth if I tried.

—

Kimberly Brock is the bestselling author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction, and The River Witch, recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. A native of North Georgia, she now lives near Atlanta. Her latest novel, The Fabled Earth, releases October 1, 2024 via Harper Muse.

Keep up with Kimberly on Facebook (KimberlyBrockAuthor), Twitter / Instagram (@kimberlydbrock) or via her website at https://kimberlybrockbooks.com.

 

Tags: featurred, women writers

Category: On Writing