Article: When you write a book...

When you write a book, people are always asking you what kind of book it is. I am tempted to say something like, "It's a GOOD book, a well-written book, look, just read a sentence or two, I think you'll really like it." It's hard for me to put a label on this book because it such an odd blend of humor and violence. When pressed, I'll say something like, "It's Southern fiction seasoned with a dash of literary murder mystery." That's probably accurate, but in my head, gods in Alabama has always been a love story. I don't mean that in the traditional sense of Boy meets Girl, music swells, cue the naked fat babies with heart-tipped projectile weaponry. I'm talking about a mother-daughter love story, about the relationship that grows between the narrator, Arlene, and her estranged aunt, Florence.

Now, I should mention that the second most common question you're asked when you write a book is "Which character is most like you?" And once people have read this book, they always think they know the answer: Arlene. I can see where they get the idea; Arlene and I are both southern women who moved to Chicago for school, and we're both a little bit high strung. Yet, strangely enough, Florence is the character I identify with most strongly. I hesitate to admit this: She's two decades and change older than I am. She's a virulent racist. She's tough and bloody-minded, a steel magnolia with zero magnolia. More like a steel lump of steel. She's made up entirely of corners and brickle-burrs and bile. None of that is me. But I can't help but feel close to her because of the relationship she and I share with motherhood.

Florence, long before the book began, lost her son, and that's why she's such a dried husk of a woman. She loved her son so deeply, so fiercely, with a love that was ferociously all-consuming. Like Florence, and like every other mother under the sun, I am held hostage to the world in the form of my children. Sam and Maisy Jane are the sum total of my heart. And sum total of my heart is even now, even as I type this, out in the world wandering around, probably in traffic. It's unendurable. How do we go through every day with them out there on their bikes, among snakes and lightening and mean kids and rabid squirrels and chaos theory and predators? Florence did, and she lost one of them, and the world changed for her.

I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter Maisy, I almost never wanted it to end, even though I hate pregnancy and would never, never do it if I didn't get a baby at the end. Even if I got, say, my own tropical island at the end, I wouldn't do it. But with Maisy, I wished I could stay miserable and sick and pregnant forever. My son Sam was already five and bounding around like a goat, leaping carelessly up the sides of mountains, running like a joyful lemming straight into the wide, wet sea. I knew, even as Maisy kicked viciously at my bladder, that this was the last time I would ever feel I could adequately protect her. It was the only time in her life, when, at every moment, something would literally have to go through me to harm her. I didn't understand that when I was pregnant with Sam. I didn't understand how he would be so immediately separate from me, so perfectly himself, and so absolutely vulnerable.

But now I can see that the idea of Florence, her character, was conceived in my brain on the morning I first felt Sam quicken inside me, felt that almost imperceptible flutter, the suggestion of a shadow of movement. Long after my babies left my body and became independent creatures, busy and fearless, the idea of Florence remained. The idea that I could become her, that the world is not safe and yet my children are out running around in it, is never far away from me. Florence will be with me as long as I am living.

I came awfully close to not writing gods in Alabama at all. As I worked on it, I kept thinking, "I can't seriously want to write the love story of a pathological liar who isn't quite an orphan and a pet-killing, borderline sociopath who isn't quite her mother." But Arlene and Florence's storyline was the one thing I couldn't change. The parent-child relationship that blooms between them is the heart of the book.

And yes, in some ways, it is a cold, small, awful heart. It is at least two sizes too small and made of flint to boot. But once I had chipped my way inside, I found it to be rich and sweet, five times a normal heart's density. I realized then that I had I brought the two of them together as a talisman against my own fears, against every parent's fears. It's terrifying to have your soul walking around on earth separate from you, on unsteady legs, absolutely convinced it is immortal. Florence knows that in ways Arlene and I cannot imagine, and yet she chooses to love anyway. That choice makes me proud to identify with Florence, in spite of her flaws. And that choice means that to me, this book will always be a love story, no matter where it ends up being filed on the bookstore shelves.

Copyright © Joshilyn Jackson