Anna Jean Mayhew - The Dry Grass of August

Table of Contents

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

At age forty-five, I left my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, for the backwoods of Chatham County, seeking perspective: I couldnt write about Charlotte until I left it. That providential relocation resulted in my friendship with novelist Laurel Goldman, a fine teacher who is both a tough critic and an admiring fan; this skilled combination has brought out the best in the many writers whove studied with her for the past thirty years, including current and past members of her amazing Thursday morning writing group: Cindy Paris, Fabienne Worth, Melissa Delbridge, Mia Bray, Cat Warren, Eve Rizzo, Carter Perry, Christina Askounis, Jackie Arial, James Ingram, Carolyn Muehlhause, Maureen Sladen, Mary Michael, Phaedra Greenwood, Charles Gates, Betty Reigot, Mary Caldwell, and the late Wilton Mason and Knut Schmidt-Nielsen.

Thank you, Lee Smith, Angela Davis-Gardner, and Peggy Payne for your critical feedback and generosity of time. Ill pay it forward.

And the writers on whom I cut my teeth in Charlotte, NC: J. R. McHone (water brother), Dennis Smirl, Dick Bowman, Jerry Meredith, David Frye, Greg West, and Bill Barfieldto you, I say: Aardvarks forever!

In New York: John Scognamiglio, my editor at Kensington Books, who guided me with care and consideration through the publication process, and my agent, Robert Guinsler, who continued to believe in my book when Id all but given up. Thanks to you both for taking a chance on a seventy-one-year-old first-time novelist. Now theres a marketing angle!

Pat French, confidante and mother-confessor, thanks for hiking with Jean-Michel and checking on him when Im away, for not telling me what you think I should do unless I ask you, and for sharing your editorial talents. Ill never forget your call from the airport when you finished reading my manuscript.

Thank you, Diana Hales, for packing your bags when I holler, Road trip!

Institutions: The North Carolina Writers Network, for keeping wordsmiths connected in the Old North State; The Weymouth Center, for providing the peace and solitude scribblers need; The Carolina Room at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, and the Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough, NC.

For careful reading and critique: Kay Bishop, Robin and Mae Langford, Penny Austen, Kathryn Milam, Traci Woody, Tiffany Wright, Sofia Samatar, Richard Hoey-Bey, Gwendolyn Y. Fortune, Nancy Rosebaugh, Aimee Tattersall, and Daphne Wiggins-Obie. Im grateful to Bob Conrow and Jamie Long, who gave me the use of their lake home, where my embryonic novel matured into a newborn. And to Taylin, the precocious strawberry-blonde angel who patiently asked me, in the locker room at SportsPlex, when she was eight, then nine, then ten, When can I see your book? She never doubted that she would see it in print someday.

Other writers from whom I learn so much, on Tuesday mornings: Mary Harrison, John Manuel, Leslie Nydick, Patricia Owens, and James Protzman; on Tuesday evenings: Beverly Meek, Jennie Ratcliffe, Sally Schauman, Virginia Tyler, and Cynthia Zava; on Wednesday mornings: Gabe Cuddahee, David Halperin, Ron Jackson, Susan Payne, and Sarah Wilkins; also to Joyce Allen, Poppy Brite, Sidney Cruze, Ray Harold, John Rhodes, and Mary-Russell Roberson.

My gratitude to the women who brought order to our home when I was a child, and when I matured into an inept house-keeper: Mary Leeper, Elizabeth Cureton, Verta Price, and Atlanta Feaster.

Family is all. Thank you, my childrenHomer Jackson Faw III, Teresa Colleen Faw, and Scott Mayhew Pharrfor your everlasting acceptance of the oddities that make me a writer, for putting up with my inattention and vacant stares, for accepting my absences when Im off somewhere musing. I am likewise deeply grateful for the ongoing faith and support of my sisters: Mary Jane Mayhew Burns, Linda Mayhew Gore, and Susan Mayhew Devine.

Jean-Michel, you rock!

Please turn the page for a very special
Q&A with Anna Jean Mayhew.

Q. Was there any one thing that compelled you to write the novel?

A. In 1957, something happened that changed the way I saw things; thirty years passed before I could write about the feelings it evoked in me. I was seventeen, working as a lifeguard during the summer, and had a deep tan (my hair was bleached almost white by the sun, and my eyes are pale blue; theres no mistaking my Caucasian genes). When the color line was removed from the Charlotte city buses, my parents told me that if one of them (a person of color) got on the bus and sat next to me, I should get off or at least move to another seat. One day a black woman sat down beside me, and my parents words flashed through my mind. But I felt riveted to my seat, like it would have been so rude to move. So I sat there and eventually looked down to where our arms rested side by side. My skin was a lot darker than hers. That made a lasting impression on me.

Q. How long did it take you to write your novel?

A. Eighteen years from conception to final draft; while I wrote, I was working full-time as well, but I believe the novel would have taken me many years, regardless of the circumstances. It had to percolate, to find its center, and I had to be patient. I did not know, when I started writing the book, how it would end; I didnt know most of the characters, and only knew a few of the events.

Q. Were you writing in isolation, or did you have support from other writers?

A. Tremendous support from writers in a small group Ive been in since I began the novel in 1987. Several books have been published by other members of the group, and in one of them ( The Dream of the Stone, Christina Askounis, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993) the acknowledgments say, This book might have taken half as long to complete without the help of writers in Laurel Goldmans Thursday-morning group, who drew the best from me through draft after draft.... Thats true for me as well.

Q. Did you start with an idea, with a character, setting?

A. Character, first and last. The narrator, June Bentley Watts, aka Jubie, was in my head long before I began the book. Shes a year younger than I was in 1954, so readers might assume shes me at that age. Perhaps she was to begin with, but she quickly took on her own personality and led me through the story, as long as I was willing to listen to her. The false notes occurred when I stopped paying attention to Jubie or tried to write my own story. When I lost her voice, the book lost its heart, and I got back on the right path only by paying attention to her.

Q. Your protagonist is thirteen years old. Is your novel young-adult fiction?

A. My novel is literary fiction; however, I hope young adults will read it, because its set in a time long before their lives and can give them a look into history through the eyes of someone their age. I didnt want the book marketed as young adult because I didnt want it limited by that.

Q. Your book is set in 1954 and is rich with details of that time. Did you have to do a lot of research?

A. Yes. I like to find out about things, to dig for information; I can lose myself, blissfully, in the happy task of research. My husband gave me a 1954 road atlas he found on eBay, so I was able to map the trip the Watts family took through the South. In May 2004, I went to Washington, DC, to exhibits on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education at the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress. The Carolina Room at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County provided me with online maps of Charlotte in 1954. I bought encyclopedia yearbooks and studied them, also stacks of popular magazines of the time, The Saturday Evening Post , Life, Look, etc. I am still stunned at how white they all are; when writing, I searched period publications for pictures of blacks living their lives and found instead stereotypical stories such as President Eisenhowers golf caddy, and ads for Aunt Jemima pancake mix.