Date Published: September 15, 2021
Publisher: TouchPoint Press
No one ever talks about what happened …
Summer 1971, Del Munro, a single mother of four, is struggling to make ends meet when Mother Franklin, a traveling evangelist, offers to take her daughters to the beach in Savannah.
For nine-year-old Willie June and seven-year-old Glory, restless at the end of a long, hot summer in Charlotte, it's a dream come true. To their beleaguered mother, it's a much-needed reprieve.
But what seemed like a blessing soon turns into a nightmare when the girls are pressed into service by the morbidly obese Mother Franklin whose needs are as outsized as her ambitions.
When the girls fail to return, Del, evasive about the details of her arrangement with Mother Franklin, panics. People begin to wonder if instead of sending her daughters on vacation, she sold them to the evangelist.
Is There a Message in
Your Novel That You Want Readers to Grasp?
Salvation focuses on three main themes:
1. Desperate people can make tragic mistakes
2. Beware false prophets
3. Children fall prey to both of the above and can “disappear” more
often than we might think.
Is there anything you
find particularly challenging in your writing?
Sometimes
it is difficult to remain focused and get through the first draft. I am
currently working on two new novels. Both are set in Baltimore, one current day
and the other in the 17th century. Once I have a first draft, I can
lose myself in the revision process, my favorite part of the process.
How many books have
you written and which is your favorite?
I’ve
written seven books to date and they all seem to build on one another. The most
recent is always my favorite because with each one (I think) my writing
improves.
If you had the chance
to cast your main character from Hollywood today, who would you pick and why?
Gabourey
Sidibe might make a good Mother Franklin, not only due to her stature, but
because there is a vulnerable side to this complex, terrifying character.
For Luther, I’d cast Damson Idris
Someone like Thandiwe Newton would make a great Del Munro, beautiful,
and though powerless, determined.
When did you begin
writing?
My first
published piece was a poem in fifth grade, followed by a long dry spell, aka:
school where writing was a chore and something I studiously avoided. I began
writing seriously in the 1990s when I worked in advertising which taught me
discipline and time management. After I left advertising, I turned to writing
fiction, attending Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2006.
How long did it take
to complete your first book?
I was
commissioned to write a centennial history of a NC town in April, 2005 with
books due that September. That book came together FAST, and I’m still proud of
it. By comparison, writing Salvation
took 17 years.
Did you have an author
who inspired you to become a writer?
Like so many, I was
inspired by Louisa May Alcott—to be Jo March, what a dream. My mentor, Abigail
DeWitt, who I met at the Duke Writers’ Workshop, has been my role model as far
as modern day writers go.
What is your favorite
part of the writing process?
I
absolutely love the revision process. I love taking sentences apart and putting
them back together so they come to life. It is beyond fun watching where my
characters decide to take the story.
Describe your latest
book in 4 words.
Salvation:
an exercise in patience.
Can you share a little
bit about your current work or what is in the future for your writing?
This summer
I finished revising my novel FALL
which takes place during a prolonged dry spell in a small college town in
the South. It explores the intertwined fates of small town families and the
perils of conflicting expectations.
I also have a mystery, Murder
In Milan, Prelude & Fugue, where a chemist on the lam, towing a tiny
house, stops in northwest Ohio for a wedding. When her friend, a baroque
lutenist, is found hanging in the town square, only she can prove his death was
not a suicide.
—Avery Caswell
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