Quakertown
A Novel
by Lee Martin

List Price: $14.00
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0452283361
Publisher: Plume

Lee Martin is the award-winning author of the acclaimed memoir From Our House (available from Plume) and The Least You Need to Know, a short story collection. He is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, among other awards. He is currently associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Ohio State University.

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Q: What drew you to this particular episode in southern history?

LM: I was living in Denton, Texas, teaching at the University of North Texas, when I first heard the story of Quakertown, a thriving black community in Denton that disappeared in the early 1920s, forced to relocate because the Board of Trustees at the women's college didn't care for the fact that Quakertown was on its doorstep. This story was particularly relevant to me since I came upon it at a time when I was dealing with my own issues of displacement, having moved to Texas where I felt very far from my native Midwest. The story of Quakertown, one of homes lost and families splintered, felt in some way like my story, and I wanted to better understand what it meant to call a place home and to investigate how far someone might go to protect and preserve that place.

Q: At the beginning of the book, you include a quote from Gertrude Stein. What is the source of the phrase "just enough haughty?" What is the significance of the rare white lilac?

LM: "Just enough haughty" appears in the "Rooms" section of Stein's Tender Buttons. I found it to be an interesting focusing phrase for Quakertown since so much of the book concerns pride and where it can lead if we don't take care. The phrase created a sound that I sensed was important for the novel. The white lilac, a prized possession for Little Washington Jones, is an expression of his pride. The lilac also speaks of nature's persistence and its independence from human beings and all their deceits and follies.

Q: Is Little Washington Jones modeled on a real person?

LM: Yes, Little is modeled after a man named Henry Taylor, who was a resident of Quakertown. He was an extraordinary gardener who had a rare white lilac in his front yard. I take a good deal of liberty with his story, of course, but I stay true to his talents with plants. When I first started thinking about the novel, I was interested in the juxtaposition of natural beauty with the ugliness of racism.

Q: Shame is a recurring theme in the novel. Of all the emotions, do you feel that shame can have the most significant impact on our lives? What about pride, and its role in the novel?

LM: I've already noted that pride plays a significant role in Quakertown. Little takes great pride in his gardening talents and in his family. Andrew Bell has a tremendous love for his wife and his city, despite their flaws. Camellia Jones is devoted to the baby she carries. Ike Mattoon demands the respect he feels the citizens of Denton owe a World War I veteran, no matter his ethnicity. Kaiser Bell creates an identity to his liking when he rediscovers Camellia, the love of his childhood. I hope the novel illustrates what these characters have to protect and how complications arise when they go to extremes to do what they believe are the right things. Does shame have a significant impact on our lives? We're human, aren't we? We make mistakes. We play things over in our minds. We wonder what if. But my experience tells me that a little shame goes a long way and has to be countered with forgiveness. Otherwise, we fall into despair, and we don't return. Shame and forgiveness: that mix often provides the center from which I write.

Q: Why did you decide to tell the story through the viewpoints of many characters?

LM: I sensed early on that the story was too big and made up of too many voices to restrict myself to a single perspective. I also wanted to create a chorus that would sing the hymn of Quakertown-part elegy, part celebration. I needed the individual voices of that chorus--those folks, white and black, who, together, would tell the story from as many angles as possible so we might get what we couldn't from the biased account of any one character: a more complete look at a very complicated story, as any episode of race has always been in our country.

Q: What are some of your favorite novels?

LM: The Great Gatsby; To Kill a Mockingbird; Madame Bovary; The Catcher in the Rye; Rabbit, Run. Also, the more recently published, Plainsong, by Kent Haruf.

Q: Did you start out feeling more affection and/or compassion for some characters than others? If so, did this change over the course of the process?

LM: I try not to preprogram my response to any character because I want them to take on lives of their own and reveal themselves to me a bit at a time, but I will admit to having an immediate affection for Little Washington Jones while at the same time having a writer's desire to get him into trouble. A virtuous character requires a flaw; a flawed character requires a virtue. It's my job to see all my characters as completely as I can, in all their glory and their shame.

Q: Did you make a conscious effort not to judge your characters?

LM: As I mention above, I think it's a big mistake for any writer to judge his or her characters just as it's a mistake to judge the people around us in real life. Characters have to surprise in order to have any sort of relevance and resonance, and for that to happen the writer has to stay out of the way and let the characters be multi-dimensional.

Q: The stage manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town said, "It's a terrible and a wonderful thing to be a human being." Is this one of the points you're making in Quakertown?

LM: I'm interested in the simultaneous joy and sorrow that so often takes place in our lives. So to answer your question, yes, I agree with Wilder. It is terrible and wonderful to be human, and therein lies the mystery, the power, and the charm of our stories. Such a moment of joy and dread and fear and pride it is when Camellia finally gives birth to her baby and her secret comes out. This is the kind of moment that interests me-the one that captures the complexity of what it means to live one's life.

Q: Do you feel your novel is ultimately about redemption? Do you believe people really can be saved? What does it take to accomplish this?

LM: I've made my own journey from shame to redemption-several of them, in fact-and, of course, I've filtered that experience into the novel. Can people be saved? What does it take? I won't claim any right to speak of other people's situations. I'll only speak for myself. It takes a strong heart, a belief in something good and decent and lasting in your life, the faith of others, a willingness to forgive not only those who have harmed you, but also the ways you've found to harm yourself. Or maybe it takes just enough cowardice to keep you from disappearing into unforgiving hopelessness and despair.

Q: You end the book on a hopeful, upbeat note that leaves us with an indelible image of youth and family and joyful song. What was some of the thinking that went into shifting this Epilogue to the present tense and into the mind of Camellia and Kizer's child? What did you want readers to walk away from your story feeling?

Little's wife, Eugie, tells Camellia at one point in the book, "We do this and we do that, and pretty soon we've made a life. Maybe not the one we thought we'd make, but, still, there it is, the only one we've got. It's up to us to find a way to love it." Eugie is pointing out that, if we're lucky, life goes on beyond those moments of shame and horror and injury that we never could have imagined. Time passes, and, if we allow it, healing comes. The Epilogue tries to reinforce this idea by shifting into the present tense and into the perspective of the child, Eugenia. She, who began as her mother's secret and shame, becomes a presence of hope at the novel's end, lifting her voice in song. I hope readers come away from the book with an appreciation of how much these characters risked, how much they lost, and how they survived. I hope there's a feeling of looking forward to the future without forgetting the past.

Q: How does writing a novel compare to writing a memoir? Is one easier than the other?

LM: Narrative is what draws me to each form. In both the memoir and the novel, I'm interested in telling a story. I'm also compelled by characters, both the ones that I invent in fiction and the ones that I recall in memoir, and I'm interested in finding the contradictions that reside in them. I like to apply narrative pressure until something hidden in a character rises to the surface. So there are surprises in both fiction and nonfiction--narrative surprises and also surprises that deepen characters. My challenge in any form is to write toward discovery, to find more truth than I'd have if I didn't write the novel or memoir. Of course this discovery can sometimes be more painful and public in the memoir, but I wouldn't say that one form is easier than the other. Each has its own challenges. The thing I liked about writing my memoir, From Our House, was that I already knew what was going to happen. I didn't have to agonize over plot; I simply had to artistically shape memory, which, of course, is a challenge in its own right. I also had to deal directly with my own shame, my own remorse, my own flaws-a harder task than letting myself appear in the guise of invented characters in Quakertown.

Q: Q: What are you reading now?

LM: Because I teach in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, and because it's thesis defense time here at the end of the school year, I'm primarily reading student work, and it's very compelling reading-stories and essays from folks we'll be hearing about in the years to come. How exciting, and also humbling, it is to have a small voice in the development of such excellent work. When I've had time recently to do my own reading, I've enjoyed Maxine Clair's novel, October Suite; an essay collection by Rebecca McClanahan, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings; and a stunning memoir by Kathleen Finneran, The Tender Land. I've also been revisiting the stories of Andre Dubus.
Excerpted from Quakertown © Copyright 2009 by Lee Martin. Reprinted with permission by Plume. All rights reserved.

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