Writing to Save a Life

PW Talks with Jonis Agee

by Jessica Liese -- Publishers Weekly, 4/30/2007

Jonis Agee's fifth novel, The River Wife (reviews, Mar. 12), is her first trip back in time.

The River Wife has its roots in the 1812 earthquake in New Madrid, Mo. What made you choose this event?

I've always liked big disasters. Like most of us, I'm fascinated by them. When I found out about [the New Madrid earthquake], I had to go there. I did have the experience that the character has in the beginning-I had vertigo. The ground continues to shiver there.

You've written several novels, but this is the first historical one. How was the process different?

I was worried when I began to research. There's a little museum in New Madrid that sits next to the Missouri River, and I found this book the government sent people to record accounts of the earthquake-the earthquake went on for a solid year; there were two eight-point earthquakes and over 3,000 aftershocks. An early account describes a young girl who was abandoned by her family. She was 16 or 17 years old, trapped under a fallen roof beam, and they just left her there, still alive. I looked through the records carefully, praying she'd been saved, but she wasn't. She began to haunt me and became Annie Lark in my novel. I think I wrote the novel to save her life.

How did John James Audubon get a cameo?

Audubon spent a lot of time in that area of Missouri, but I was very surprised when he showed up.. Annie became very observant because she was so physically limited. It seemed natural that someone else who was absorbed by observation would meet this character and they would join together.

In addition to your novels, you've also published several short story collections. How do you decide which form to use?

They dictate their own length. I tend to write short stories as relief from working on a novel. There are often a lot of extra characters whose voices come up and want to be in the novel. They all want their stories told, so the only thing I can do is write a book of stories with these characters and give them a say about their lives. Right now I'm starting something new, and I can tell that it's a novel.

You frequently set your work in the South and the Midwest. Why?

This is the second book I've written about Missouri, and in a way I'm writing about all the places I've grown up in. I was kind of mourning the loss of the land and our separation from so many things that have built our character and connected us to each other and to what endures in life, which I think is the land. We keep seeing these little vestiges of our past and we're trying to shore up the ruins against our futures. The South is obsessed with this because they lost the [Civil War]. They've had to live with defeat and ruin. It's made for very interesting literature.