Dear friends,
For every theologian or philosopher, I believe that the world needs 10 novelists. Fiction tells us we’re in the story. If I had to say why I love a good novel, this is it. Yes, I read to escape, but mostly I read to be reminded that I am in this vast human story. So are you.
This is also why, ever since I wrote and illustrated “Mrs. Smith’s Chicken Soup” in second grade, I’ve longed to write the Great American Novel. I’m almost 70, and no go.
But my daughter-in-law just did it!
And I couldn’t be prouder. Her novel, The Brunswick, is available for pre-order now. It’s been a huge privilege to watch Callie go from, “I think I want to learn how to write a novel,” to “Would you read my first draft?” to “I just got my first review on Publisher’s Weekly.”
Callie has written herself into this story (and my son, David, and all of their children), but not in a showy, memoir way. She’s also written me into the story, not intentionally, but as a bystander to a history I can recognize. She’s dedicated it to Chief (my husband, her father-in-law). It’s a work of historical fiction, one so expertly woven that I was carried away, and I didn’t draw any conclusions until the afterglow as I considered the meaning of the story after reading the last page. Here’s some of what Publisher’s Weekly had to say:
Murray draws inspiration from the kindertransports of the 1930s for her quietly impactful debut historical. In April 1939, war clouds hang over Europe, but in the small town of Norcross, Ga., Cora Cain is focused on managing her depressed father’s struggling general store, formerly a grand hotel called the Brunswick. Enter Thomas Watkins, an out-of-towner whom Cora hires to help revitalize the store, which occupies part of the building’s first floor. Then family friends George and Evelyn Cohen approach Cora with a proposal to house Austrian refugee children in the hotel’s rooms. The faithful Cora agrees despite her father’s misgivings, and she and Thomas prepare for the children’s arrival…
Callie told me last night that when she speaks to groups about the book, she asks if they see any parallels in their own lives to the stage she sets in the book. That’s what novels have the power to do: ask us good questions.
As much as I love almost all fiction, I prefer stories that mirror this reality: Life is hard, and life is hopeful. I loved Annie Proulx’s book Shipping News, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Her next novel, not so much. A NYT review at the time of Accordion Crimes, her book about the children and grandchildren of immigrants concluded that the novel’s message was that the future “seldom has any good for us.”
Maybe so.
But I love a story—in fiction or real life—where the final note is focused on the good, seldom as it may be. And I think that whatever good shines through the cracks in our darkened stories is worth at least 10 novels. I see this everyday in the hope that shines through the hard stories of our refugee friends and neighbors and those advocating for them.. Their work is important, and we need narratives that remind us this is our story, too.
Looking for the good with you,
Kitti
P.S. – When you give to Refuge, you give to a good story in a hard time.
