Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:02 <inaudible> you are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org. I'm Josh Webber. Tonight on right on radio. Dave will be speaking with <inaudible> market author of American harvest, a nonfiction memoir set in seven agricultural Heartland States to explores the nexus between city and country and the deep bonds forged by faith and the land. The book was a finalist for the Lucas prize for nonfiction Maka was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American father and graduated from Columbia university with a degree in East Asian languages and civilizations. In the second part of our show, Liz old's talks with Mary Lowe about her latest novel, the stream, a Deadwood mystery from the rainy royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries comes a striking new heroin. A young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in 19th century. Deadwood married, Luke writes mysteries and memoir, always searching for the lessons in loss. I get to storyteller. Her attention is often focused on the beauty of biding within ambiguity, all of this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio. Hello, Marie. Welcome.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on your show radio. I'm thrilled to have you. I'm thrilled to do this interview. I loved your book. Um, God country and farming in the Heartland. I am from the Heartland I grew up in. I've lived my whole life and fly over land as opposed to you the other way around. But, uh, so, uh, I read this book with a lot of love. When we have a moment, maybe we'll get a reading from you when you think you're ready, but sure. I can read a couple of minutes just to set things up early in the book. I'm I'm on the road with a group of, uh, custom harvesters and we have started cutting wheat in Texas and I'm living in the trailers with them. And so here's a, here's a couple of pages or just a stupid, great some evenings.
Speaker 1 00:02:22 It seems as though the sky is a lid pressing down the light to the West and sending it away from us as dark ink spreads across the Eastern horizon. My heart feels crushed as though it too is being drained of light. Then I feel a direct link between the vastness of space and my tiny human soul, a connection. I feel palpably for an hour or two at dusk. When the sky is an opposition with itself, Indigo here and red there, my blood wants to flow, follow the red path of the sun. I want to bleed westward and my body wants to go there too. Eric almost always wants to use the last bit of sunlight to look at the fields. The light is calling us all to do something. I go with them when I can. The crew continues their evening activities separately without saying where they are going.
Speaker 1 00:03:17 Bethany doesn't tell me either when I asked she shrugs, Oh, we just drive around, but she's a terrible liar. And I see she doesn't want to disclose to me where they have been, but that she is also uncomfortable. Keeping everything a secret. She seems to be unsure of what all my questions are trying to get at. Justin does not seem to care. He is happy to have time to either read a book or sit and watch television in his parents' trailer. Or if invited, go with his father, I don't find this so strange. He has already told me he doesn't feel as proficient at farming as the rest of the crew and that he needs time to read and be alone with his thoughts. I too can be a loner. And so I don't find his solitude strange at sundown. I too often lie on the trailer and read, unless I'm invited to take a look at the land. And then one evening after dinner, as I'm reading Mari Sandoz, Eric bang on my trailer door, I open it and he is wearing shorts. And he says to me a little wildly, want to go shoot pigs? Yes. I say immediately meet by the pickup in 10 minutes. When I go out, I see Justin and ask if he is going to go hunting with us. No, he smiles in a sort of big brotherly way. I don't really like the noise, but you should go. Then he heads into his parents' trailer. I'll stop there.
Speaker 2 00:04:42 That's great. Oh, that's a wonderful passage. I remember it. Well for those gentle listeners out there who want to learn about pig hunting in Texas, you need to read this book and for a lot of other reasons. So I'm really let's before I start asking questions, why don't you set us up for how this book came about? And in broad terms, what's the architecture of the book? What happens?
Speaker 1 00:05:03 Well, this is my third book and my mother's from Japan. My father's American and his family, uh, has had a wheat farm for, for over 100 years in the great Plains. Mostly the farm is mostly in Nebraska and the, the architecture of the book follows basically a road trip that I took through seven Heartland States. As you said, starting in Texas, then moving on to Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and then through Wyoming to Idaho. And I'm traveling with a group of custom harvesters who are hired to cut our country's wheat. Um, and it's, uh, it's a, it's a very American tradition, um, that, um, you know, when we describe it needs to be taken out of the field as quickly as possible, the machinery that does this, the combine harvester is fairly expensive. And so people sometimes hire crews to come in and cut the wheat as it's ready.
Speaker 1 00:06:03 And the bosses who run these crews have relationships with farmers who expect them back year after year. And the gentlemen, Eric, who I mentioned in that passage has been cutting my family's fields for over 30 years. And he is a Christian man of, of deep faith who was, um, who I've known for a long time and who tried to share as much about farming as he could with me and who had some concerns that the country was very divided. And so he wanted to show me as much as he could about farming and what he called the divide. And so all of that is kind of conveyed through the lens of this, um, this road trip.
Speaker 2 00:06:41 It's a fascinating story and are so many layers and you've touched on them. It's about, you could have called this harvesting in the Heartland if you want, but it's so much more than that. And you, the title God country and farming in the Heartland, you chose God for word. And that it's even in the title is telling the signaling something to the reader. And there are these wonderful passages. Of course, it just sort of weaves throughout the whole book of you in where you are with faith or not faith. And all these other people are, it's a, it's an extraordinary sort of dialogue between someone from the outside and a whole bunch of insiders, if you will. And I'm going to throw this at you before I do, but I'm gonna say I really admire your courage as a nonbeliever myself, to confront a whole lot of really strong believers, really openly like that is strikes me as not something easy to do. I was struck by how open and welcoming they were to you. I'll stop there. I got to ramble all night about these wonderful pastors.
Speaker 1 00:07:41 It's okay. It's okay. You know, it's interesting because I, you brought, you brought up the fact that the first word is God. So it's, it's American harvest God country and farming and the Heartland. And of course, things happen before books get published. And, and, and one of the conversations that we had was, well, what's the tagline going to be? And I felt very strongly that we needed to put God in the title and not faith because faith is kind of the way that we say God, but we don't really mean God. You know, if you put the word faith in, then people who are nonbelievers are going to feel comfortable. So, so they use the word faith. And I said, well, but this is not really a book about people of faith, a fields kind of like a cup. This is a book about Christians and previous books that I have written in.
Speaker 1 00:08:25 The book that I wrote before, this was, uh, was about, was set in Japan and focused predominantly on, on Buddhism in Japan and on my family who, who runs a Buddhist temple, but this is a book about Christians, you know? And so I thought I'll add to just say directly that it is about God and not pretend like it isn't. Uh, and so it was important to me that I not, you know, do anything that felt, uh, like I was trying to get out of what it was that I had written about that, but you're right. I am, I'm not baptized, I'm not a Christian. I don't have a Christian practice. And yet I'm, I'm on the road with people who we would consider to be evangelical Christians, um, other, perhaps not, you know, fundamentalist Christians, which is slightly different. And I, and I really didn't know the difference between any of these terms right before I went on the road with them. And I, I, part of the project was to figure out what all of that was.
Speaker 2 00:09:24 Yeah. So you went in with this idea that you were going to quote unquote, investigate this idea. Um, it didn't come to, you know, expo was after the fact, when you look back and saw what you had collected, uh, you knew going in, you were going to confront these, uh, ideas. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:09:41 Right. I mean, I didn't know what I would find, you know? Yeah. But yes. Yes. And, and, and I didn't know, I mean, early on in the book that I think the first church, sir, cause they, these are, these are devout Christians and rain or shine. They go to church every Sunday, which is not how all custom harvest crews work. Right. A lot of them will work on Sunday because the weather's good and they can cut the wheat, but not, not the team that I was with. They always go to church on Sunday and early on, but you go to church and I have no idea what that service was about. Yeah. It's like a foreign language. I have no idea what I was told. I liked the music, but I didn't understand a thing. The pastor said
Speaker 2 00:10:20 Those are wonderful moments. And of course you, uh, come to know, if not understand if never quite you can, you can describe this for me, how much you get it. Um, but your journey along the way is fascinating. Can you tell us about, um, your relationship with Christianity from beginning to end? Because if you were on some sort of a path yourself there, um, and I'm not even sure where you ended up, frankly, I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1 00:10:47 Uh, well, I mean, it's probably continues. Um, I mean, I think, I think I did. And I think I say this in the book, I did think, well, here we are. We still have this Christian faith. That's still around, you know, 2000 years after Christ was, was born and died and there must be a reason and it, and it, there must be reason to it. And it can't just be that it's because people are brainwashed into believing something. There must be something to this. I don't really know what it is. And I, and I thought that because I feel that way about, I felt that way about Buddhism too. You know, that this, this, this old practice is still here. Well, why, why is that? There must be a reason. I don't know what, I don't know what the reason is. And I say in the book, I know kind of what people in my world, what I call my world think.
Speaker 1 00:11:38 Um, and so I know what I'm supposed to think. Um, but I also know from experience that, you know, there are things you have to investigate for yourself rather than just parroting opinions that you've been taught. So I gradually, I would go to these services in church and it would start to make sense. I mean, I think early on one of the things I learned, there's a service we go to in Oklahoma city at a mega church. Justin says, I think you should go to a mega church, just in a 23 year old guy who is the one kind of four year old college educated person on the trip. Who's almost like a tour guide for me. Uh, and so we go to the mega church and then the following week, we go to a small country church and I leave the country church, not understanding what happened, but in the mega charity, to me, the message was, was very clear that, you know, Christ came and I'm in pain and Christ is here to help me and the pastor can help me, let me go to the country church and it's English, but I don't under, there's like something going on that I don't understand.
Speaker 1 00:12:42 And Justin says, well, the mega church was what we call a secret sermon. It's a sermon that's pitched to someone like you to draw you in. Um, and then in the small country church, there, there are things going on in that sermon that are meaningful to us. You mean Christians like us? That don't mean anything to you because you don't speak this language yet. And so, I mean, I think one of the things that does happen is that I do start to kind of understand the difference, but the, but the bigger transformation that takes places, that the conversations that I start to have with people around fear, um, and, and then a crystal around love and the number of people I meet who say, well, you know, you're not supposed to be afraid. You're not supposed to be frightened into your relationship with God. And this is, this is interesting and it's really timely. Um, the idea that, you know, it's not healthy for us as people to be motivated by fear, we should be motivated by a desire to be helpful and loving of others. And there are people I meet on the road who are Christians who believe in that, you know, and then there are people who, who seem to be motivated more by fear, which is seen as something that's not healthy. Um, so that's, you know, that's one of the, really the big, the big concepts that I came to understand, which is really very simple concept.
Speaker 2 00:14:01 Yeah. Right. So you mentioned, uh, Marie, uh, your, you used the phrase my world, and that recalled to me the word divide that Eric used earlier on. And it's in the book, of course. Talk to me a little more, what you mean by that your world versus the other world. This comes into play a lot in the book, this divide that Eric was talking about, that's a big topic.
Speaker 1 00:14:19 It's so interesting because the farmers who I was with use that world and in our world, in my world, they use that very easily. And so when I came back from being on the boat and I would talk to my friends who are, you know, live in the city and who are like me, college educated knowledge, workers, writers, they didn't like that term. My, our world. They didn't believe that there was a division in worlds. They would say, well, I don't, I don't, I don't see that. And I would say, well, that's fine that you don't think that we live in different worlds, but farmers, I was with really literally think they live in a different world. They see this divide that you don't just, which is interesting. And it was Eric actually, who first said to me, cause I said to him, I have these questions about farming.
Speaker 1 00:15:03 I don't, I don't understand. My question really began with saying, I don't understand why you're a Christian or a lot of people in your world who are creationists, but you all seem to use GMOs or, you know, the technology of farming. And yet all these people I know in New York city where I lived at the time and believe in evolution and they all want organic food. And there seems to be a conflict there. And Eric finally said, well, you know, this is not your question. Isn't really about God or organics or GMOs. You're asking about the divide. And that's the first time that that concept came up. And he was really saying, there's a divide in our world. So even I actually, when I was living in the city, didn't understand that that's what I was looking at. And that's when he wanted me to examine, you know? And so I, I, I came to understand that they're, you know, they're really, there is this huge divide. We see it right now. Right? And then in the news, and then the arguments and the fights that people are having, they predate the selection and they will probably go on after our next election, that we look very differently depending on where we are and, and who surrounds us and how we work.
Speaker 2 00:16:06 Book is a beautiful distillation of that divide. And I'll remind our listeners, we're speaking with Marie with Suki bucket. If I pronounced that correctly, I hope the author of the recently published by gray Wolf, our wonderful local publisher, American harvest God country, and farming in the Heartland. So you've mentioned Justin and Eric, two big characters. Bethany's another one I'm really intrigued by her. I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the women you encountered along the way you lived with and encountered, and we can come back to Eric and Justin too, but I was always fascinated with what your relationship was like with these women, especially those who traveled and lived with you. You want to tell some stories about maybe Bethany to start,
Speaker 1 00:16:44 Well, this is a traditional world, right? Where the roles are very, very much determined by gender. The men are the, are the people doing the work and the hard labor. And this is the year that I go on the road with the custom harvesters is the first year that one of the harvesters is a woman and that's Bethany, who's in the book. And the other woman who's on the road is Emily Eric's wife. And Emily does all of the cooking, which is an extraordinary feat. And she plans three meals a day. And when the men are working, she's preparing lunch and then she's figuring out where in the country everybody is. And she drives out in her suburban, lays out a picnic, right on the back of the, of the, of the truck and feeds everybody and then cleans it all up. And then it goes back to make dinner, to prepare, to, to bring back out to the field, a lot of work.
Speaker 1 00:17:29 So they're able to have harvest because she plays that supportive role. So conversations about like, who should be doing those conversations generally, don't don't happen. We do have Bethany who's as skilled a harvester, really as anybody else, but she's definitely not out there saying women should be able to do this too. She's she turn it into a political, a political act, but we do along the way, you're right in the book, we meet women who farm and who are capable of doing the farming, but they don't speak the language of, of, um, of feminism in an overt way. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2 00:18:05 It is. It's fascinating. I thought it was also fascinating that with Bethany, it seemed that your relationship turned a little sour when she realized that allow me to speak in delicately about your farming skills, that maybe you didn't have very many farming skills.
Speaker 1 00:18:19 She's a very, yeah. I, you know, these were all young people who were excited to go on the run and in this world getting to go on a custom harvest cruise, a very exciting thing. And you still meet people who will say, you know, I, gosh, I always wanted to do that. Or people speak very nostalgically of this. I mean, it's a, it's a phenomenon in certain communities. It's something that people think of very romantically. And they remember back in the days when they did it, or they wished they had done it, et cetera. So, you know, these, these are young people who are very excited to be on the road and it, and I'm sure it got very irritating to have this older person with no discernible farming skills, asking a ton of questions. You know, this is not a world of that kind of inquiry. Um, uh, these are not people who generally read books. So, so I brought, I brought something that was a little bit irritating to the, to the table and I was just very, very different, but Bethany is a very interesting character too, and clearly very intelligent, I think.
Speaker 2 00:19:13 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So as long as we're talking about these characters really got them to open up to you, or, I mean, to say, allow you as a journalist, as a writer to record your experiences with them, how did you get to gain their trust?
Speaker 1 00:19:28 Well, I mean, a lot of that was really because of Eric and Eric is 57. Eric is a devout Christian loves the United States, lifelong Republican voter. And actually Eric in 2016 began to say to me that he was very concerned that Trump would be elected. You know, remember in 2016, nobody really thought that seriously thought that Trump would be pro become the president. And Eric would say to me, no, I think that this might happen, Mary, based on what I'm hearing, because he spent all this time in the interior of the country. And so he did not vote for Trump. Couldn't bring himself to do it was very, very passionate that this was going to be destructive for the United States and felt that he needed to take some kind of constructive action and felt that part of the problem we have in this country is that people like me didn't understand people like him. And so he wanted me to go on the road to write about, you know, what's in the Heartland to try to have some kind of constructive dialogue. So that was the, the motivation. And that's what made this possible, but you're right. It's a very insular world. It's not easy to gain access to it. It's not easy to have concrete long conversations with people. And it's really because of him, that, that I was able to,
Speaker 2 00:20:40 Yeah, the many things that you would teach people from your world, if people are not in our world here who live in larger cities and maybe have lost the connection with their farming roots, many families and cities in the Midwest have one or two generations removed from a farm excess life. But I think what people don't realize is the degree to which there is diversity in the Heartland, and I'm going beyond skin color here or obvious physical characteristics. There's this wonderful scene in the cafe where I think the girl is calling out, there's a Baptist, probably not an Anabaptist, but that's a Baptist family and they're probably Catholic. And those are this that he could just pick up and that's a fun scene, but it's also a reminder of what many people for a long time considered to be really true diversity. I remember stories from the old folks in my family talking about mixed marriages, a Dane with a Norwegian or something
Speaker 1 00:21:34 True. And, you know, it's, so I I'm I'm, my husband is from Scotland and I've, there's somebody in our, on the Scottish side of the family, where there was a, uh, a Catholic and a Protestant marriage. And of course I'm from California. And I just thought, well, they're both Christian. And then of course, they're there, you know, there's centuries of fights between Catholics and Protestants who see each other very differently. And if you travel through Europe and you learn about these extraordinary religious battles, those tensions would have carried over into the United States. And then, and then we also, in at least in, in my book that I've written, we meet Mormons and they also were, were persecuted as well to the point that they fled all the way. You know, they started out, I didn't even realize this initially, but they began in Illinois and then they moved all the way out to Utah due to persecution.
Speaker 1 00:22:25 So there, there is there you're right. There is quite a lot of diversity. And there's a point. One of my favorite points in the book is we're waiting for an experimental combine to be delivered, or it's early in the morning and there's a truck driver and he just looks like a guy, you know, with this hat and his, his flannel shirt. And Eric says to me with great excitement, listen to the way he talks, listen to his accent, you know, and I just think he's some guy. And so we go and talk to the truck driver and the truck driver finally says, Oh, you hear my accent. You want to know where I'm from. And it turns out that he's kind of escaped from a very conservative, Amish community and outside, he looks like a truck driver, but Eric could tell from this man's accent where he was from, there are all kinds of things that he, um, he taught me to listen to and look for in people that I, you know, I didn't, I didn't know anything about. And that's, um, that was a tremendous gift and it, and it speaks to the ways in which people arrived in the United States. Uh, it was fascinating.
Speaker 2 00:23:30 Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. A stress to our listeners, that this is a beautifully written book and you have a, you have a journalist's eye and eye for detail, the way a farmer walks. We learned about that trucks and cafes. And, uh, but your talk lovingly
Speaker 1 00:23:46 About the great Plains, there's a line. You talk about the way some people react to the great Plains, and then you say, but to me, the Plains are uniquely beautiful. No, I've always felt that way. I'm a native son of the Plains, but maybe tell us a little more about your reaction to the physical nature of being on the planes and for that long waking up and going to bed every night on the planes. Well, I mean, in a conversation I had with somebody that I think is not in the book and she is a lifelong resident of Nebraska and Iowa. And she, she told me how she went to visit some, some friends in Pennsylvania. I said, what did you think? And she just said, well, there were just so many trees. I didn't like it. I couldn't see the sky, just like wherever I went.
Speaker 1 00:24:30 I couldn't see the sky. And, and that is, you know, you, you do have that experience when you're anywhere in one of these planes, when you're on the Prairie and that you can see the sky and you see the storms coming toward you and you see storms walking on the horizon, you see sunsets happening. And then we do have a really, for me, a really powerful moment toward the end of the book in Idaho, where we see the eclipse. And then we have this huge view of, of what this interplay of light and atmosphere does because we're in a plane and we see very far off in the distance, the Tetons suddenly appear because it's dark and the sun that's hitting them just right. So that feeling of vastness, um, I just found absolutely exhilarating and it's, and it was different every single night. Well, I cannot recommend this book enough.
Speaker 1 00:25:20 The authors Marie would Suki market. The book is American harvest God country and farming in the Heartland. Josh is going to kick us off pretty quicker, but what are you up to next? Why don't you tell us what's next on the horizon for you? Well, I think I'm going to go back to writing about, about Japan. I have a novel that I'm working on and people have enjoyed the nature aspect of American harvest. I do describe a lot of the, you know, the birds and the wildlife. And I think that I will probably continue to, to bring that I, to what I do next, but in a different context, we look forward to that will keep us in mind. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:26:11 This is chapter one.
Speaker 1 00:26:15 Galway Ireland May, 1877 when I was 15 and my brother's name is 16. We attended our own wake. Our family was in morning as they were forced to send us off to America all the day and night people came into the house. Shamus listened to the stories with father and the men, and they all acted brave and talked of the things to do
Speaker 3 00:26:44 And see in America, Shamus paid them little mind, but the women wailed and worried as if we were dead and gone and talked about how we would be missed. They all talked about us as if we were not there while I was scared to my bones. I held myself very tight together. I knew this was my chance to make good. I would not end up like my aunt Mary, who was a widow left roaming, the streets of Galway, or like bitty Rafferty, whose husband beat her when he was too far gone with the drink. And I never wanted a child of my own to die. Like my sister, Kathleen at age two from the cholera. And certainly as much as I loved her, I did not want to end up like my dear mother whose heart had been broken too many times. Having watched two of her children die.
Speaker 3 00:27:41 And now two of us leaving. She had my younger sister married by her side and the two boys, Shawn and Peter as the potato blight had struck again, the English landlord of the state via state, where we lived and worked determined. He must rid himself of tenants, not enough that he had taken our land. No Irish could own land, but when these terrible times struck, he sent us away. So he wouldn't have to feed us. He gave mother the money to send shameless and myself away to America. Mother blessed him as if he had done it for our own good and part of my heart. I did also, but in another part of me, which is dark and deep, and I hope God never knows a bit. I cursed him terrible for the tearing apart of my family. Another famine had come upon the country.
Speaker 3 00:28:35 My father said it was not as bad as the great one, the black 47, but still people were starving in the ditches. And there was talk of a terrible plague starting up in Limerick. As if we Irish had not endured enough. Our landlord claimed he had little food to give us. So we gathered seaweed to eat. And the few slimy potatoes that were left in the field with two fewer mouths to feed my family would be better off. So many of our neighbors had fled to America that as their stories came back to us, I felt I knew their country. I was often asked to read the letters home because I had some schooling. Mother took education very seriously. She herself had learned to read in English from her father. Not that she had much time with field work and the children father spoke Irish most of the time, but mother insisted we children's speak in English.
Speaker 3 00:29:35 She said it was the only way we'd get on in the world for the English ruled our land. The letters America told of hard work, scullery maid, laundry worker, serving girl, but also of the money that followed. I kept remarking on the many opportunities for young girls. I knew that if those girls could do it, I with my learning and not have bad looks would prosper. Maybe I would do it by marrying a rich man. Maybe I would find a way to start my own business and make enough money to bring over my whole family. After all my name was Bridget named for the goddess of poetry, midwife to Mary and the Saint with the Holy mantle. She was a protector of all that was wise and good. My mother had always said that I was brighter than the moon.
Speaker 4 00:30:32 Oh, that's lovely. I feel like you've really set up Ireland and what it was like, what caused people to have to immigrate here. And I wonder about people leaving and no phones, no mail, very, uh, you know, it's like, it must be so sad to leave when you think you might never see these people again.
Speaker 3 00:30:59 Exactly. You know what? I really lives when I've been trying to imagine in myself, what, what, what, what, what could even be the equivalent right now for us? I really have to say it would be going to Mars. I think I, you know, again, I just think that, uh, because the world has gotten so small and so easily connectable that that really, I mean, it was one of the reasons why I started it out this book the way I did, because they would probably never ever see their family again. And they all knew that as much as they hoped otherwise. And, and this was true that they did have wakes to really give the reader a sense of what an amazing and scary adventure these two are going off for.
Speaker 4 00:31:53 Why don't you give us a little, I mean, we've gotten a little bit of a setup from what you read, but tell us a little bit more about the story, what people,
Speaker 3 00:32:03 Well, it starts, uh, really after this scene, we go to we're on the boat and I did a lot of research about what it would mean to take a boat across the ocean, to get to America, uh, and cabin on the boat. And she, she miss her brother and Bridget meet two other guys Patrik and his buddy, and they, they become friends on the boat. And then when they land in America, Bridget stays in New York and works. Uh, she works for a boarding house for a while and her brother and these two other guys go off, further West. They get on the railroad. A lot of the Irish work, the railway is going across the country. So they did that. And then as we find out, they end up in Deadwood. In the meantime, she follows them to st. Paul, because her brother Shamus has connection with a wealthy family on summit Avenue in st. Paul. And she has had experience. And the wife in the house is of Irish descent. So that's a good connection for her. And she works there for a while until, uh, two things happen. She finds out her mother has died and the, the son in the family is kind of coming on to her and she thinks she better Hightail it out of there. Plus she just wants to see her brother he's all really left. So she goes on to Deadwood and that's where the majority of the book takes place. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:33:33 Uh, you know, I had no idea what they were was so big. It sounds like it was really like a major city,
Speaker 3 00:33:40 You know, absolutely lives. What's so interesting. Uh, again is I'm doing research. These frontier towns were boom places. I mean, they just kind of exploded. And, um, dad would, you know, was a mining town. And so her brother and his two buddies, they get, uh, they stake a claim. The town itself there's so much going on. People have come from the East. People have come from the West, the Chinese have come. Um, the railroads are bringing people in it's really, really happened. And, um, when you go to Deadwood, now you can see some of that still there, but it's definitely a quieter town. Yeah. There was a TV.
Speaker 4 00:34:24 Sure. Dan, where did you watch that?
Speaker 3 00:34:28 We had watched some of it. Yes. It was great to get some, I've been to Deadwood quite a few times and I did a lot of research there. I, I, um, I really liked to do pretty in depth research. I read diaries and letters and really, I want to hear the voices of the people from that time period and what, especially what the women were concerned about and thought about. And yeah, so, um, I, I definitely went out there quite a few times. Why don't you tell us what a real is? Oh, okay. Well, um, I have to back up a little, teeny bit. So I'm of Irish descent and I wrote a book about my grandmother. They Kerwin, um, who was a postmistress in a Western town in Minnesota and my mother, her daughter, when we were not, when, so I have three sisters and we were, we were not well put together.
Speaker 3 00:35:27 And we were about to go out. Sometimes my mom would look at us and say, Oh, you look like you look like a street. And so I always knew it wasn't a, but it took looking it up in the eye. It is a Gaelic word. And that was the other thing that's interesting is I have some Gaelic words in my, in my speech and they're from my mother and I had no idea they were gay, like even in the Oxford English dictionary, I found that definition, which is a Slattern only woman in other words, a slot. So thank you so much, your mother, dear.
Speaker 4 00:36:08 Yeah. You know, you, do you make the work and girls to the prostitute, he made the very sympathetic characters. I, you know, I don't in this book, I don't think of them as sludge.
Speaker 3 00:36:20 I think of them as working girls. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, women really didn't have a lot of choices. Um, you know, they really, they could do laundry. They could do do a boarding house and cook, or they could be a working girl for a theater. And you know, that line was always kind of interesting. You're a saloon girl, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean you're a, you know, a prostitute, but often it was a slippery slope.
Speaker 4 00:36:53 I'm just wondering if there was, this takes place after the war.
Speaker 3 00:36:59 Right.
Speaker 4 00:37:01 Wondering a couple things about that. One did the civil war really touched dead wood at all? Or was it too much
Speaker 3 00:37:05 Far away? It was, it was probably too far away. Not that, you know, there weren't repercussions, but, um, actually what was kind of more interesting was, you know, what was going on with the native Americans around dead wood at that time? One of the things I, yeah, I read, um, uh, a number of diaries of women who were with their husbands who were in the army, you know, that were out in North, in the Dakotas and stuff. So that was very helpful information for me. Yeah. Was there a Ford near deadline? Yes, there was, but it was, I think it was, it wasn't very close. It was maybe more, I want to say it was in the middle of North Dakota, but I, I don't have my notes with me.
Speaker 4 00:37:52 Well, and you talk about Kuster and I can't remember in terms of years, if he was, had already died when this book took place, if he was still
Speaker 3 00:38:00 Boy, that is, you know, I know I did a lot of research around that. Not so much that I wanted to incorporate it, but more just to get a sense of the era and what was going on. It was, it's pretty close, I think just before, just after I think. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:38:15 Yeah. I think he might've died in 84, 85. I can't remember, but I think he was still alive. Cause you mentioned, and I'm playing his favorite sigh at a dance,
Speaker 3 00:38:25 Right? Yes, yes, yes. And again, that was another thing that was interesting to do research for was the music, the clothes, the music, the, I was amazed at what you could get to eat in dead wood. It was still, yeah. I would never have that. You could get fish and sea food and you know, it got the fancy stirs. Yes. Yeah. And there was the Del Monica was there. I was like, Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. In your acknowledgements you say that you sort of intimates that this is the first of the series, is that right? And where are you going to go with this? Yes, it is. Right. And, um, I'm, I'm glad you asked, um, you know, one would think with this pandemic that I would be getting just a ton of writing done. It's odd that it's a little bit hard to focus, but in fact I'm about halfway through the second book. So, um, it, it, what, I'm what I'm going to be. What I kind of seen for this series, um, was I wanted to fall have Bridget go across the Western United States. So the next book she'll be in Cheyenne. And then in the book after that, she'll be in salt Lake city and then she'll go kind of around Phoenix. And then finally she'll end up in, um, in, uh, San Francisco. So these are each separate.
Speaker 3 00:40:01 If I, if I live long enough, she might make it back to Ireland who knows? I have a, I have a lot to look forward to then. So me too, I have a lot to look forward to. It is just so I, you know, I, um, I mainly written contemporary novels and, and I've always enjoyed the bit of research that I've had to do for that. But when I wrote the book about my grandmother and was really doing deep research, I just found out I just loved it. I just it's, it's just absolutely fascinating. And you never know, you almost don't know what you're looking for sometimes until you find it. I mean, it's really hi everybody. And then you get these little, just like the oysters, you know, like these little things that just you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I know that, you know. Yeah, exactly. What about your, um, you've won some awards, you've won some awards for a young adult boy, correct? Yeah. And also I did really well with a picture book that was sleep like a tiger. Um, and it, uh, one, uh, Charlotte Zola tow for the text award and then it won, um, an honor award for the illustration. So it it's done very, very well. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:41:36 Your other book? Well, that's the Caldicott one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I feel really lucky because I taught at Hamlin and their low residency program, uh, teaching I've written a young adult book called dancing with an alien. I'm going to be having a, a middle grade book called <inaudible> come out. And that is that an Iceland and Trekkie is the Icelandic word for dragon. Um, so I, but that, because I was teaching in this program for writing for children, I just learned so much from my fellow faculty members. So it was just an amazing program. So you can learn from your students too. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Um, you have also just published a book of poetry. Do you have a poem you want to read and then we'll talk about that. Yeah. I would love to the book is called heart wood and it's out from homebound publications out East.
Speaker 3 00:42:39 Um, and I, yeah, I'm thrilled, you know, this is my fifth book of poetry. Um, and, uh, again, every time I get a book published a forgery, I always feel that it's slightly a miracle, but anyways, um, and as some of your listeners may know, my, my first mystery series was, uh, the Claire Watkins mystery series. That's contemporary and it's, there's nine books in it. And it's set down on Lake Pepin and that's because I have a little house on the Mississippi and a teeny tiny town called, uh, Stockholm, Wisconsin. And so a lot of my poetry comes, you know, I'm really interested in landscape. It doesn't matter if I'm writing poetry or I'm writing about the black Hills and dead wood. Um, and so it really, I really use that a lot in my work. And this is, uh, this poem is called unwinding and you're really see Stockholm is present in this work unwinding.
Speaker 3 00:43:44 The shoulders of the Bluffs are generous with green. So is the comfort of the fields, the universe on roles with every step we take like Paul and love sips over everything. The last yellow held in the Willow leaves, turns my heart into a bird, my body, and whines like a spool of thread when touched in the right way. The moon walked with me tonight. As I headed toward home. Remember how it feels to open a door for the first time. Light breaks out, turned around as many times as you need to finally see like a top, you blur into a home, keep unwrapping the present, drink the cup of sun. The earth has handed you. There's more. Oh, unbelief. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:44:46 Uh, talk about you. You're right. In so many genres and so many different ways of expressing, you know, poetry and memoir and mystery and children's books. Talk about how you do you, do you like do one all at once and then do another, or do you do a bunch all at the same time and kind of jump from place to place depending on the mood you're in? I mean, how do you do that? Yeah, well, that's, yeah, it's a good question. I've been at this a long time. So I've had the time, my, my really my base is poetry. That's where I started. I actually, um, have done a lot of translations from the French poets and French children's books. So language is really, I love the language of poetry and I really use that. I think I, I think I hope in my, all my writing.
Speaker 3 00:45:42 Um, but when I, after I had been writing poetry for a number of years, I really felt like I had some bigger stories to tell. So that's when I started writing some and, and I wrote a mainstream novel. So I'm, by this time I'm in my mid twenties. Uh, I went and lived in New York for a little while and I tried to sell this book that was set on the West bank of the twin cities or right where KFA, um, I lived right around there. Yeah. Um, and it was called designing women. And, uh, before the TV show came out and I got some nice response from editors in New York, but they all said the same thing, which was great characters, wonderful dialogue, but there doesn't seem to be a plot. I was kinda like, yes. So I thought, well, I'll write a mystery because mystery is all about plot.
Speaker 3 00:46:41 So that will really help me. That's what I needed to work on. That's what I'll focus on. If I've already got character and I've got dial, I love dialogue if I've got that working for me. So I wrote my first standalone mystery red Lake of the heart, and that was set in the twin cities and in the summer with the lakes, a lot of swimming in that book. And, um, and yeah, then I realized that, uh, I loved writing the longer stories and also that I could use, you know, so what I, I tend to write poetry kind of all the time. Um, you know, it just verbals along. And, um, but yeah, and, and again, I wrote nine books in the Clarence series. And then when I wrote the book on my grandmother, which again was kind of an odd thing to do, but, um, that really led into me wanting to write a historical mystery series because I was so fascinated with what I was, what I was finding out by doing the search, you know, it was just a fun thing.
Speaker 3 00:47:49 It just felt like it fed me, you know? Yeah. Cool, cool. Well, we are almost out of time here, so I sounds like what's next is more Deadwood mystery. It's a yes, absolutely. And then Draki is coming the, the middle grade book, which is about a young boy who goes to Iceland with his grandfather, uh, from Minnesota because his grandfather brought an egg back from Iceland and it's a dragon and they have to get it back to Iceland. So, um, that'll be coming out in another year or two, and I'm really excited. I did a residency in Iceland for five weeks and just fell in love with the country. And I'm just so excited that this book is coming out. Because again, that landscape is just unbelievable. So, well, thank you so much. I've just enjoyed talking with you. Thank you. Thank you. And just to end up, do you have a website or a place where people can read more about you or you or the website? Yes. I have a web it's just Mary lowe.com. So a very easy to get to. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Well thank you very much. And I'm going to be looking forward to reading more Deadwood mysteries as they come out to send me kind of your publicist. Send me one and we'll talk again. That sounds lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great evening. Okay. And you stay well.
Speaker 5 00:49:27 <inaudible>.
