Inspiration for my Book A Place Unmade

By Carla Seyler

The catalyst for my debut novel, A Place Unmade, was an article in the New York Times called Save our Food Free the Seed. When I say catalyst, what I mean is I felt as though my hair caught on fire. In 1980, the Supreme Court allowed living organisms to be patented. This opened the door to patents on fruits and vegetables, plant traits or attributes, for example, even a particular color or hue of a carrot. With this decision, as well as scientific advancement and government policies, agriculture in the United States evolved from a large base of small farms to a few large industrial agribusinesses. 

Before the early 1920’s, small farmers would save their seeds to plant for the next season. Crops evolved depending on their particular growing conditions, creating variety. Then the Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to use hybrid seeds as they would be more productive. But a hybrid seed won’t grow the same plant, so farmers are forced to buy new seeds every year, locking them into a dependent relationship with the agricultural company. 

Uniformity creates economies of scale. If everything is the same—the seeds, the produce—they can have uniform harvesting, storage, sales racks in the grocery stores. It’s easier to grow, ship and sell. But that’s what make it so vulnerable – the lack of diversity. All the bananas, all the apples, everything is going to mature at a particular time. If there’s only one type of wheat or corn being planted, it’s a lot easier to develop a weapon to attack. A parasite or a disease could affect everything. 

Four industrial agricultural companies now control 60 % of all the seeds that are produced in this country. Only one of these companies is American—the others are Chinese and German. They control all the pesticides and fertilizers. They use one or just a few versions of a grain or vegetable, and this makes our food supply increasingly vulnerable. 

Once I read the NYT article, I wondered how I couldn’t have known this. Then I thought, I bet there aren’t many other people who know about this. So I had to write a book to highlight the danger.

But how? Initially my idea was to blow up a seed bank. A seed bank is a repository for plant genetic material, a safe place to store all the different produce grown across the world. It’s also like a lending library, where a country may deposit seeds for safekeeping, and then request them later if there is a need. This happened during the Syrian War, where the Svalbard Seed Vault, or Doomsday Vault, provided Syria the means to restart their country’s agriculture. 

The Svalbard Seed Vault is in Norway, close to the North Pole. Since I know almost nothing about Norway, I had to come up with a better idea to tell a story about the dangers of industrial agriculture. I looked for a parasite or disease that could present a significant danger to our food supply, and found the wheat streak mosaic virus. It’s a real bug, transmitted by mites, that can wipe out more than 80% of a farmer’s grain crop in no time at all. One of my characters figured out a way to weaponize the virus in order to control the commodities market and make a lot of money. That part is fiction, but the rest could really happen.

Another motivation was to base the book in part in a city I love—New Orleans. I wanted to portray the city realistically and use places and settings that aren’t typically depicted. Some descriptions of New Orleans in popular fiction present this incredible city as a caricature instead of a place where residents go about their lives. The university Valentina attends is similar to the public university I attended for my undergraduate degree—very open, practical, and offering an opportunity for personal growth. Growing up in New Orleans allowed me to experience many different cultures and backgrounds, and I wanted that for my characters. A university setting was a realistic place where they could meet, interact, and participate in an ethics class that became the framework to the challenges they faced. As they worked together, I had a natural platform for them to express different perspectives and values. 

I borrowed heavily from City Park in New Orleans to create Valentina’s employer, Winslow Park. In addition to being a city that celebrates music and food, New Orleans is family-oriented and multi-cultural. Sometimes that gets lost and I wanted to emphasize that.

I also hoped to highlight the importance of small farmers and the critical contribution they make to our country, not only from an economic standpoint, but culturally. It’s a way of life that is endangered and we should be doing much more to support them.

I wanted to empower the younger characters to make a difference in a significant crisis, and have them be the first to recognize the problem.

And finally, I wanted to show a nuanced view of the scientists working in agricultural research. It’s not all black and white, or good and bad.

Thank you for allowing me to tell you the backstory of A Place Unmade. The title is from a poem by Wendell Berry, who has advocated for small farmers for decades. 

Here is a link to my website that provides more information about my research and upcoming events: https://www.carlaseyler.net/ and you can find me on Instagram at carlaseyler_author.

—

Carla Seyler is the author of A Place Unmade, her debut novel. She hopes there will be many more books in her future, as she has wanted to be a writer since she was seven. She grew up in a large family steeped in the rich and sometimes warring cultures of Italian American and Acadian French immigrants. Always loving, usually loud. She read constantly as a child and preferred that to almost anything. After graduating from the University of New Orleans (UNO) and Loyola University, she worked in the field of vocational rehabilitation counseling for many years. She is a native of New Orleans, a place that has been unmade by disasters both natural and engineered, but one that offers a master class in grace, patience, resilience and joy.

A PLACE UNMADE

A Place Unmade is a book about someone who commits a crime, causes a disaster and the people who try to stop him.

Valentina Sorelli is a part-time graduate student and full-time marketing director of a community park in New Orleans. Jack Stillman is a corporate executive who hijacks his company’s research for personal gain, and he doesn’t care about the consequences. Their separate paths intersect when Valentina meets Jack’s son Sam, who becomes the link between the worlds of scientific discovery and corporate espionage.

As the story unfolds, Valentina and her classmates unite to try to stop Jack. They get a little help from a corporate whistleblower as well as the FBI. Valentina’s friendship with one of her classmates evolves into something more as they fight for their lives. A Place Unmade takes the reader on a provocative journey into the dangers lurking in our decreasing lack of biodiversity and patentable genetics.

BUY HERE

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips