novel

How Malika J. Stevely Came to Write Song of Redemption

October 31, 2022 by Mark West

Charlotte author Malika J. Stevely recently published a work of historical fiction titled Song of Redemption. It’s her debut novel, but Malika is not a novice writer. She has extensive experience as a journalist and communications specialist, and her background in journalism came into play when she set out to write this book.

Most of the story takes place on a French and English-speaking plantation in Louisiana in the years just before the Civil War, but the opening chapter is set in 1932. In this chapter, a group of construction workers are fixing up an abandoned plantation mansion when they discover the body of a woman behind one of the walls. This event actually happened. When Malika heard about it, she became curious about the story of the woman whose body was discovered. After doing extensive investigative research, she decided to write a novel based on the life of this woman.

I contacted Malika and asked her for additional information about how she came to write Song of Redemption. Here is what she sent to me:

Before serving my community as a newspaper reporter, a favorite pastime of mine was conducting interviews, specifically with seniors. It was, and is, an opportunity to absorb wisdom, and to see how issues within the world may have evolved or remained unresolved. Years ago, a senior family friend shared that her father was a crew member with a construction company in Louisiana in 1932. When he and his team were assigned to refurbish a mansion, he discovered the remains of an enslaved woman behind one of the walls. In addition to the story, the description of the sights and emotions felt decades after the Antebellum era were just a few things that stuck with me.

Usually with oral history, a story runs the risk of dying with the person who told it, unless it is shared with a multitude of people. I remember feeling a sense of responsibility to give the enslaved woman an identity and a voice. Often when we hear about those involved in tragedy, the person becomes defined by the incident. I wanted to humanize her as well as solve the mystery behind the oral history. This could only be done by researching and sharing her story as well as the experiences of other enslaved individuals whose names and accounts were silenced or never told. And in conjunction, it was imperative that there was a rich illustration of culture and languages in the book along with the perspectives of women, Blacks, Creoles and Creoles of color.

While Charlotte is my adopted home, I have ties to Louisiana and sprinkled a little of myself within the pages of the book. In addition to the reappearance of newspapers and advertising featured in the novel, music and medicine (modern and holistic slave remedies) were themes from my own life and lineage that served as inspiration, creating a literary symphony that transformed into Song of Redemption.

For more information about Malika, please click on the following link: https://www.malikajstevely.com/

Readers who would like to talk with Malika about Song of Redemption are in luck, for Malika is one of the featured authors at our next Charlotte Readers Book Club event. For our third Charlotte Readers Book Club event, Charlotte Readers Podcast and Storied Charlotte are partnering with That’s Novel Books at Hygge at Camp North End. This event will take place at That’s Novel Books, 330 Camp Road, on Wednesday, November 9, 2022, from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm. We will feature Malika’s Song of Redemption and Pamela Grundy’s recently published Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina. You are not required to have read the books to participate in our book club. This will be an open discussion with the authors. Here is the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/charlotte-readers-bookclub-tickets-453351595827

I am looking forward to talking with Malika and Pamela at this upcoming Charlotte Readers Book Club event and learning more about their contributions to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: historical fiction novel

Susan Amond Todd and the Convergence of Women’s History and Family History

March 28, 2022 by Mark West

March is Women’s History Month. Over the years, I have often seen references to women’s history as “herstory,” and I like the sound of this term. One way to celebrate Women’s History Month is to celebrate authors who write “herstories.” One such author is Susan Amond Todd, a Charlotte writer whose third novel, Life’s Fortune, came out about a month ago. In this novel, Susan tells the story of a woman whose struggle to establish an independent identity causes her to confront long buried family secrets. As she delves into her family history, she gradually learns more about her own place in her family’s history, and this knowledge helps her chart a new path for her future. For more information about Life’s Fortune and Susan’s other books, please click on the following link: https://susanamondtodd.com/

I recently contacted Susan and asked her about how she came to write novels about women’s lives. In her response, she comments on her own family history. Here is what she sent to me:

When I was about ten, I overheard my parents talking about how my grandmother had written a book. I thought at that moment, I wanted to write a book one day, too. I never told anyone and kept it to myself because I was afraid someone would tell me it was a crazy idea.

I was a daydreamer and storyteller as a kid which got me in trouble many times but has come in very handy when I write. One time at a parent-teacher conference, the teacher told my mom I had too vivid an imagination. My mom came home and told me the teacher said I needed to stop it. I didn’t stop but was just more careful from then on.

I had thought about starting to write a book many times over the years but life always seemed to get in the way and I didn’t really know where to begin. I had a degree in Marketing and have worked in banking my whole career. Then in my mid-50s I lost 80 pounds and knew if I could do that, I could write a book. I had an idea and joined a little local writing group I found online. It was just what I needed to get me going. Before I knew it, I was writing my first book White Lake and after that, the sequel to it Return Home. My third book, Life’s Fortune, was released on January 11^th of this year. It’s the first in a four-book series. I have many other ideas for books in my head that should last my lifetime.

Being an avid reader, I have been inspired by authors who wrote about the trials and tribulations of life. That’s what I wanted to write about. My commitment is to write for women in a way that they see how the ordinary woman is amazing in what she considers to be her ordinary and sometimes boring world. These women always rise to the occasion and through the struggle and contrast in their lives come out better in the end. Through my job I have had the privilege to meet and work with many women from all over the world and have concluded we all want the same thing. To love and be loved. In my books, I focus on family, friendship, perseverance, love, and surviving. Basically, I write about what I like to read.

When I have the chance to interact with women after they’ve read my books, they tell me how relatable they are to their life. That is the highest compliment I can receive.

When I sign books I always write “Follow your dream” before I sign my name because that’s what I did and what I want the person receiving the book to do.

I also have in my possession Down in the Hollow the original manual typed manuscript of the grandmother who inspired me. My plan is one day to edit and add a modern twist to it before publishing the book as coauthors with her. She was born in 1898.

As Susan’s novels demonstrate, women’s history is not limited to the remote past. In telling stories about women’s lives, Susan shows how family history and childhood experiences influence the decisions that women make in their adult lives. In her writing, Susan draws on her own family history, and Storied Charlotte is richer because of it.

Tags: family history novel

Take Back the Block: Chrystal D. Giles’s Middle-Grade Novel about the Making of a Young Activist

February 14, 2022 by Mark West

Chrystal D. Giles’s debut novel, Take Back the Block, takes on the timely issue of gentrification and its impact on Black neighborhoods. As Chrystal makes clear in her “Author’s Note” at the end of the novel, the “story is loosely based on my hometown of Charlotte. … Charlotte is experiencing an affordable-housing crisis brought on, in part, by gentrification.” Chrystal provides more information about her background and her Charlotte connections on her website: https://www.chrystaldgiles.com/

In her novel, a sixth-grade boy named Wes Henderson learns that his neighborhood of Kensington Oaks (which is based on several Black neighborhoods in Charlotte) is on the verge of being purchased by a real estate developer. If the deal goes through, Wes’s family and his neighborhood friends would all have to leave their homes. This news troubles Wes. “There is no way I could leave,” he says. “The Oaks is my home. I’ve done everything here—met my best friends, learned how to ride a bike, made my first three-pointer on the court at the park. … How could I leave all of that?” Although he would rather spend his time playing video games, Wes speaks up on behalf of his neighborhood. He gradually takes on the role of a community activist, and he succeeds in winning over others to his cause.

I recently contacted Chrystal and asked her how she came to write Take Back the Block. Here is her response:

I wouldn’t consider my path to publication a traditional one. In fact, I never even considered writing professionally as a path for myself until just several years ago. That said, I have always been a lover of books and the art of storytelling, so maybe my real journey starts with my childhood.

As a young child, I was happiest in a corner by myself reading. One of my favorite things was returning from the local public library with a stack of books; I’d spend hours sinking into a new world. Books were my first friends. That love of books did continue throughout my teenage years but I ultimately chose a career in accounting and finance and books took a backseat to my job, my family, and life in general.

That love of books did come rushing back when my husband and I started preparations for my son’s birth in 2015. We began collecting books for his library; we bought all the classics and some new stories. Then I started looking for very specific books—books that reflected my Black family—stories of us just living, learning, and being champions of our own worlds.

I was saddened that those books didn’t exist in the way I pictured them in my mind. After doing some research, I was even more saddened by the statistics on diversity in children’s literature and I set out on a path to write stories with Black children at the center.

After writing, editing, querying, and receiving rejections on several picture books, I decided to take a topic from a story I was working on and expand it into a middle-grade novel. That topic was gentrification and the displacement of people from marginalized communities. My hometown of Charlotte—like many other American cities—is experiencing rapid gentrification, and I wanted to provide an up-close view of a community fighting to remain whole. Take Back the Block was born.

It is incredibly hard to debut a novel during a pandemic but I am thrilled at all the recognition it has received. Perhaps, I am most proud it has been selected as a featured title for this year’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library’s Community Read program under the theme of urban renewal and gentrification. What a great way to get books directly into the hands of local readers and continue some needed conversations.

Be on the lookout for my next novel, it is set to publish in early 2023 from Random House Books for Young Readers.

In writing Take Back the Block, Chrystal shows how political activism often grows out of a simple decision to speak up. When Wes speaks up for his neighborhood, he begins forging a new identity as a community activist. As we celebrate Black History Month, it is important to remember that Charlotte’s most famous civil rights leaders all spoke up, called attention to injustice, and advocated for marginalized peoples. They made their voices heard, and in the process, they helped shape the history of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: gentrification novel

Salvation: A Charlotte Story from 1971

August 09, 2021 by Mark West

Leslie Rindoks, who writes under the pen name of Avery Caswell, has a history of bringing other people’s stories to light. As the driving force behind Lorimer Press, she has published the work of numerous local writers, including Anthony Abbott, Mary Kratt, and Ed Williams. Lorimer Press has recently evolved into Better Books, an author services company that Leslie runs, and in this role, she works as a writing coach with many area writers. Writing as Avery Caswell, in her novel titled Salvation, she brings to light a story of two African American girls who were abducted by a traveling evangelist from their home in the Druid Hills neighborhood in Charlotte in 1971.

Although written in the form of a novel, Salvation is based on a true story from Earthell Latta’s childhood. For Earthell, the experience of being abducted and spending several months traveling through Georgia and Florida with a preacher known as Mother Franklin was harrowing. Rather than repress the memory of this experience, she felt that it would be better to bring her story out into the open. She knew Caswell because both of their daughters went to the Davidson-Cornelius Day Care Center, and she knew about Caswell’s background as a writer, so she decided to approach her with an idea. In a recent interview, Caswell recounted what happened next:

Seventeen years ago, when we were both picking up our daughters at daycare, Earthell, whom I’d met before, approached me with a question. Her aunt had mentioned to her that I’d left my advertising job to write full time so Earthell asked if I would write about what happened to her and her sister in 1971. When she shared what had happened, I was floored. When they were seven and nine, she and her sister were kidnapped by a traveling evangelist. For decades, no one in her family had ever talked about it. Earthell wanted her story told.

So much has changed since Earthell first asked me to write her story. Seventeen years ago it was less remarkable that we might team up to tackle this project. She had a story and needed a writer; I was the writer she knew. Both of us, regardless of the task in front of us, are the type of person who strives to do what is right; we give everything our best effort. Neither of us, in Earthell’s words, “never knew all this was coming with it.” We naively started down the path and just kept taking the next step and then the next one.

By trusting me with her story, Earthell gave me an incredible gift. It forced me to become a serious writer, a better writer, a better person.

Though this is a work of fiction, at its heart is her story, told so that others will know what happened in 1971—what can still happen today, when religion seeks to justify a multitude of sins; when others choose to look away, to remain silent, to claim that being poor, or black, or small, means you matter less.

The official publication launch date for Salvation is September 15^th, but the book is already available for pre-orders. For readers who want to know more about the novel, please click on the following link: http://averycaswell.com/2021/07/a-story-about-a-story/

Salvation is this writer’s first novel, and it is an impressive debut. However, Salvation is not the work of a beginning writer. She has many years of experience as a publisher, editor, writing coach, and author of short stories and works of nonfiction. She has long been a player in Storied Charlotte, and this background has provided her with the perfect preparation to write Salvation.

Tags: kidnapping novel true story

Going to the Beach with Cheris Hodges, Erika Montgomery, and Kim Wright

June 27, 2021 by Mark West

I recently overheard two women talking about their summer vacation plans while I was browsing at Park Road Books. One of the women was about to head off for the Outer Banks the next week. She said to her friend, “I’m looking for a good beach book,” and her friend started recommending different titles. They eventually wandered out of earshot, but I had a pretty good sense of the sort of book the woman was hoping to find. She wanted an accessible, entertaining book that would be fun to read while she was on vacation. She wanted a book that would help her escape her everyday life for a few hours. In her case, she wanted a book about the pleasures we often associate with the summer months. I have no idea what beach book the woman ended up buying, but I do have recommendations for anybody else who is looking for new beach books.

I am pleased to recommend three new beach books by Charlotte writers. Cheris Hodges’s Open Your Heart isa romantic-suspense novel that relates to both Charlotte and Charleston, South Carolina. Erika Montgomery’s A Summer to Remember isa mystery in which both Hollywood and Cape Cod come into play. Kim Wright’s The Longest Day of the Year is a novel about four women whose lives intersect while staying at a small beach in South Carolina. I contacted all three of these authors and asked them about their new novels and their experiences as Charlotte writers.

Here is what Cheris Hodges sent to me:

Open Your Heart is the third book in the Richardson Sisters series, and much of the story takes place in Charlotte. I think Charlotte is such a rich place to write about because the city is evolving and changing so much. In this book we meet Yolanda Richardson who is running from a horrific event that she’d witnessed in Richmond, VA. When her father and youngest sister, Nina, find out that killers are after her, they hire a bodyguard to protect her. Charles “Chuck” Morris knows better than to fall for the fiery Yolanda, but with danger pushing them together, can they resist the temptation?

Another great thing about Charlotte is all of my writer friends who are here. There is an active community of romance writers in the city and we get together often for writing sprints and brainstorming. Pre-pandemic Sunday afternoons were spent at Amelie’s pounding out words, cleaning up plots and creating meet cutes. Writing is such a solitary gig that it’s always amazing to have people in your corner who understand what you’re going through and are willing to help you make your story pop. Charlotte is a quiet, but powerful literary city. And it’s full of so many stories.

Here is what Erika Montgomery sent to me:

I always refer to A Summer to Remember as my love letter to Hollywood and movies—though it didn’t start out that way. It was the “idea seed” of a sealed letter, never delivered, and how someone might find themselves feeling cosmically obliged to see that letter finally arrive at its destination that first drew me into the story. Of course, like all novels, the plot shifted in many unseen ways after that and became a story about a woman looking to find the identity of her father and uncovering instead a secret season of her late mother’s life with a famous Hollywood couple on Cape Cod. My main character, Frankie, owns a Hollywood memorabilia store, and the theme of memories and how we hold them as a way to hold on to people we’ve lost is a central one in the book. I lost my mother while I was writing the novel and I believe that my need to honor the joy of her memory informed the story as much as my grief did.

When I first moved to Charlotte in the summer of 2009, I had no idea I would find such a remarkable community of writers, all of whom graciously folded me, a new writer, into their universe. In fact, a group of us, who are all still close and have toured with our books together over the years, used to refer to ourselves as The Panera Bread Society, for our regular meet-ups to brainstorm over WIPs and the writing life (and life in general, too!). Halfway through the writing of A Summer to Remember, I moved with my family to Maryland and even though I am no longer living in Charlotte, my ties to the writing community there remain as strong as ever. I continue to be in constant touch with my very dear writer friends, and we have plans to tour again as the world starts to emerge from the pandemic. If that isn’t a testament to the strength and lasting power of Charlotte’s writing community, I don’t know what is!

Here is what Kim Wright sent to me:

The Longest Day of the Year is in some ways my love letter to Cherry Grove, SC, where I’ve gone since my parents bought a condo there way back in 1979 when I was in grad school. My kids grew up spending summers there and now so do my grandkids. I love the gestalt of the place in general and it’s taken on even more meaning for me since my mom died this past spring. I wrote The Longest Day of the Year for her, and I’m really grateful she got to read it before she passed. It was her favorite of my books but that probably has as much to do with the (relative) lack of sex as it does with the setting!

I got the idea for the book in a single afternoon as I was taking my daily walk to the pier and back. I noticed all the groups of ladies sitting huddled together in their beach chairs and ball hats, gossiping and reading, and I was thinking about how there’s something confessional about the beach. You loosen up and say things there, even to (or especially to) strangers that you’d never normally say out loud. And it also occurred to me that whenever you cross those dunes, you’re not only there in the moment but you’re almost transported back in time to all the other times you’ve been to the same place. There’s a timelessness about looking at the water. When I’m there I’m 66, the age I am now but I also have memories of being there at 22 and 37 and 50 and all the other years. So I got the idea of four women at very different points in their lives—but all at a turning point of some sort—sitting on the beach telling each other their stories and added the additional challenge of having all four story lines play out in the course of a single day. June 20. The summer solstice.

As for being an author in Charlotte, I think the city is underrated as a literary hub. I’ve met lots of wonderful writer friends in the city and there are places like Charlotte Lit, where I teach, and the Queens MFA program which do a great job of drawing like-minded people together. I also don’t think Charlotte’s sheer friendliness gets enough credit. Some towns have the reputation of being cities with a thriving art and literary scene but are so exclusive and snobby that it’s hard to break in. That wasn’t my experience here.

All three of the writers featured in this blog post have their own website. For readers who want to know more about Cheris Hodges, please click on the following link: https://thecherishodges.com/ For readers who want to know more about Erika Montgomery, please click of the following link: https://erikamontgomery.com/ For readers who want to know more about Kim Wright, please click on the following link: http://www.kimwright.org/

In my interactions with these writers, I have a sense that they all see themselves as belonging to a community of readers and writers…it’s a community that I call Storied Charlotte.

Tags: beach book Charlotte writers novel

Novels Set in the Charlotte Area

July 06, 2020 by Mark West

A reader of my Storied Charlotte blog recently sent me an email in which she asked, “Are there any novels set in Charlotte?” I responded by sending her a list of five novels that take place in Charlotte, but her question sparked my curiosity. I started researching this topic, and I soon realized that my initial list of five novels was way too short. I then decided to compile a list of ten novels set in Charlotte, and then I upped it to a dozen, and I finally settled on a list of twenty novels set in the Charlotte area. However, I knew that I should not write about twenty novels in one blog post, so I ended up dividing my list into two lists. In last week’s Storied Charlotte blog post, I wrote about ten works of genre fiction set in Charlotte. For this week’s post, my focus is on more mainstream or literary novels that take place in the Charlotte area. In each of these novels, the setting plays an integral role in the novel.

The Ada Decades by Paula Martinac is set in Charlotte between 1947 and 2015. Published by Bywater Books in 2017, this novel focuses on the evolving relationship between Ada Shook, who works as a librarian in a Charlotte public school, and Cam Lively, who teaches English in the same school. Ada and Cam become involved in the struggle to integrate the Charlotte public schools. At the same time that they are fighting racial prejudice, they also have to deal with the prevailing prejudice that lesbians faced during the time period portrayed in the novel. The Ada Decades is steeped in Charlotte history and culture, and it even includes a reference to the house where Carson McCullers started writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. For more information about Martinac, please see the Storied Charlotte blog post for June 22, or click on the following link: http://paulamartinac.com/

The City on the Hill is Marian Sims’s 1940 novel in which an idealistic lawyer named Steve Chandler takes on bigotry and corruption in Charlotte, which is called Medbury within the context of the novel. Sims grew up in Georgia, but she and her lawyer husband moved to Charlotte in 1930 and became residents of the Myers Park neighborhood. Her husband went on to become a local judge, and Sims drew on her husband’s experiences as a lawyer and judge when writing The City on the Hill. The publication of Sims’s novel sparked controversy in Charlotte, and several church leaders and police officials made it known that they were not pleased with the book. However, the book received excellent reviews. One reviewer proclaimed that “Mrs. Sims knows her stuff” and added that “the double problem of conflict between generations and reform of a small southern city are really integrated with the personalities of the chief characters.” Sims died in Charlotte in 1961. Her papers are located in the Special Collections Department of the Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte. For more information about Sims and her books, please click on the following link: https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/sims-marian

Clover by Dori Sanders is a children’s novel set just south of Charlotte in York County, South Carolina. Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1990, this novel is told from the point of view of Clover, a ten-year-old African American girl whose father dies in an automobile accident just hours after marrying a white woman named Sara Kate. The novel deals with evolving relationship between Clover and Sara Kate as they get to know each other through the medium of food. The family peach orchard and farm stand figure prominently in this novel. Although Clover takes place about twenty miles south of Charlotte, there are a number of references to Charlotte in the book. Sara Kate, for example, spends her Sundays reading The Charlotte Observer. Following the success of Clover, Sanders rented an office in Charlotte in order to have a quiet place to write. Clover is the winner of the Lillian Smith Award for Southern literature that enhances racial awareness. For more information about Sanders and her books, please click on the following link: https://scafricanamerican.com/honorees/dori-sanders/

Lookaway, Lookaway is Wilton Barnhardt’s satirical novel about the foibles of an upper-crust family living in the Myers Park neighborhood of Charlotte. Published in 2013, Lookaway, Lookaway explores how the changes associated with the rise of the New South ripple through the lives of a family that has deep roots in the Old South. Jerene Jarvis Johnston, the matriarch of this family, does her best to keep up some semblance of gentility and prevent her family from disintegrating, but the rest of the family members behave in ways that make it difficult for her to maintain the family’s reputation. In writing this novel, Barnhardt drew on his childhood memories of spending his summers in Charlotte with his aunt, who lived in Dilworth. Currently Barnhardt is a creative writing professor at North Carolina State University. For more information about Barnhardt and his books, please click on the following link: https://www.wiltonbarnhardt.com/

The Queen of Hearts, Kimmery Martin’s debut novel, came out in 2018. As a former emergency room physician in Charlotte, Martin is very familiar with the inner-workings of Charlotte’s medical community, and this background is reflected in The Queen of Hearts. Reviewers of this novel often refer to it as a medical drama, for much of the story is set in a Charlotte hospital. At its core, this novel is about the evolving friendship between Zadie Anson (a pediatric cardiologist) and Emma Colley (a trauma surgeon). These women first became friends in medical school, and both go on to pursue successful medical careers in Charlotte. Their friendship, however, is threatened when secrets from their medical school days start to surface. For more information about Martin and her books, please click on the following link: https://www.kimmerymartin.com/

The Skin Artist by George Hovis is set in Charlotte during the boom decade of the 1990s. Published in 2019, The Skin Artist is Hovis’s first novel, but it is not his first book. He published a scholarly work titled Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction in 2007. The Skin Artist traces the fall and eventual redemption of Bill Becker. Of the course of the summer of 1998, he goes from being a successful business manager living with his wife in a gated-community in the suburbs of Charlotte to losing nearly everything. As his life and career disintegrate, he becomes involved with a heavily tattooed dancer named Lucy, who works in a strip club in Charlotte. Bill sinks deeper and deeper into Charlotte’s underworld, accumulating tattoos along the way, until he hits rock bottom. Eventually he and Lucy leave Charlotte and go to rural Gaston County, where he grew up, and there they begin to rebuild their lives. Hovis dicusses the writing of The Skin Artist in a length interview with Paula Eckard. To read this interview, please click on this link: https://issuu.com/eastcarolina/docs/2020_nclr_online-final/44

The Slow Way Back, Judy Goldman’s first novel, came out in 1999, and it went on to win the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award. Thea McKee, the central character in this novel, has family roots in Charlotte’s Jewish community, but she knows little about her family history. She is married to a non-Jewish man, and she does not think of herself as being religious. However, when she acquires a series of eight letters written by her grandmother in the 1930s, she begins to delve into her Jewish heritage. The letters are written in Yiddish, which she cannot read, so she arranges to have the letters translated. In the process, she uncovers a series of family secrets that span three generations. Although The Slow Way Back focuses on one family, it sheds light on the experiences of other Southern Jews who call Charlotte home. For more information about Goldman and her books, please click on the following link: http://judygoldman.com/about-judy/

Tomorrow’s Bread, Anna Jean Mayhew’s historical novel set in Charlotte in 1961, shows how Charlotte’s urban renewal program affected the lives of the people whose homes and neighborhoods were destroyed to make room for new real estate projects. Published in 2019, this novel provides a vivid portrait of daily life in the African American neighborhood of Brooklyn just before it was bulldozed. As Mayhew explained during an interview, she focuses on three characters: “Loraylee, the narrator who opens Tomorrow’s Bread, was my initial inspiration for the novel. She’s a young black woman who works at the S&W Cafeteria. … The next voice I heard was that of the Reverend Ebenezer Polk, a mid-50’s educated black minister and community leader in Brooklyn. … My third point-of-view character is a 51-year-old white woman from Myers Park. … She’s married to a real estate lawyer who is on the planning commission that will ultimately decide the fate of Brooklyn.” For more information about Mayhew and her books, please click on the following link: http://annajeanmayhew.com/

Whisper My Name, the first of many books that Burke Davis wrote over the course of his long life, came out in 1949. Davis set this novel in Charlotte, but he changed the name of the city to Elizabeth. Daniel Gordon, the central character in the novel, also undergoes a name change. The child of immigrant Jewish parents living in Philadelphia, he was born with the name of Daniel Goldstein. However, when he moves to North Carolina in 1910, he changes his name and creates a new identity for himself. He joins a Baptist Church and attempts to hide his Jewish background as he starts a retail business. The story of Daniel’s conflicted life touches on the difficulties that Jews faced in the South during this period. Davis loosely based this character on an executive at Ivey’s Department Store. In writing this novel, Davis drew on his ten years of experience as a reporter and editor for the Charlotte News. For more information about Davis and his books, please click on the following link: https://www.nclhof.org/inductees/2000-2/burke-davis/

The Woman in Our House is by the bestselling Charlotte author Andrew Hartley, but in this case, he uses the pen name of Andrew Hart. Published in June 2019, The Woman in Our House is set in Myers Park. The novel deals with a young family that has just had their second child. The mother, Anna Klein, decides that she wants to resume her career as a high-powered literary agent, so they contact a nanny agency in an effort to find a live-in nanny. They end up hiring Oaklynn Durst, who is listed as a Mormon woman from Utah on her application, even though Anna has some initial misgivings about her. At first, the arrangement seems to go well, but then the young children start to experience puzzling injuries and illnesses. These problems prompt Anna to take a closer look into Oaklynn’s past, and as a result of her investigation, she gradually uncovers a series of disturbing deceptions and dark secrets. As the plot unfolds, the family’s beautiful Myers Park home takes on a frightening and foreboding feel. For more information about Hartley and his books, please click on the following link: https://ajhartley.net/meet-author-aj-hartley/

While researching the aforementioned novels, I noticed a theme that applies to most of the books, and that theme can be summed up by the phrase “things are not as they seem.” Most of the characters in these novels have secrets. Myers Park figures in a number of these novels, but in these stories, this affluent neighborhood is not nearly as serene and genteel as it appears when one is driving down Queens Road. These novels scratch at Charlotte’s surface and look behind the facades. As portrayed in the pages of these novels, Storied Charlotte is a complex place, full of contradictions, but rich in narrative possibilities.

Tags: literary novels novel

Contact Me

Links

Archives