Today “The Queerest Places” is a scheduled stop on the blog hop of two intrepid publishers of lesbian-themed literature – Bywater Books and Ylva Publishing. I’m up after Marianne K. Martin, who’s a hard act to follow. Her novel, Tangled Roots, was one of my favorite books of last year, and if you love historical fiction you can get lost in, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. I can’t wait for her forthcoming novel set during World War II, The Liberators of Willow Run.
Bywater Books published the e-book edition of my first novel, Out of Time, in 2012; it had gone out of print, and now has a new life, thanks to them. They’ll be bringing out my new work of fiction, The Ada Decades, early next year. The book already has a fantastic cover design by Ann McMan (a talented novelist when she’s not designing beautiful covers).
The Ada Decades will be the first novel I’ve published since Chicken in 1997. It wasn’t that I didn’t write anything in the past 20 years, but I split my writing time between journalism and plays, and just resumed writing fiction a few years ago.
When I did, a funny thing happened: The character Ada Jane Shook appeared in a story I was working on about a man from Pittsburgh with dementia. She was very much like an elderly woman I see on walks in my neighborhood, an old cotton-mill community in Charlotte, NC. Ada was unlike anyone I’d written about before: a native North Carolinian (which I am not), a retired junior high school librarian (ditto), and a devout Methodist (ditto x 2). At first I thought she was a heterosexual widow, but she quickly set me “straight,” and I got to know her life partner, Cam Lively, too. As I delved into their lives, The Ada Decades emerged.
If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m a little obsessed with the lives of lesbians from the past. The question of how women in other historical time periods – without the benefit of women’s bars, Pride parades, lesbian conferences or anything we now take for granted – met and built lives together is one that occupies a good deal of space in my writing imagination. I once read an interview with the great Mabel Hampton, who met her partner, Lillian Foster, at a bus stop in 1932. A freakin’ bus stop! In 1932! Wouldn’t you love to know what they said to each other? That bus stop should have its own historic site designation.
So here’s my elevator speech about The Ada Decades, just to whet your appetite:
A girl from a Carolina mill family isn’t supposed to strive for a career, but Ada Shook graduates from college on a scholarship and lands a plum job as a school librarian. The South rocks with turbulence in the 1950s, and Ada finds herself caught in the ugly fight to integrate the Charlotte public schools. At the same time, she makes friends with Cam Lively, a teacher who challenges her to re-examine her narrow upbringing. The two young women fall in love and throw in their lot together, despite their underlying fear of being found out and fired.
Over seven decades, Ada is witness to the racism laced through her Southern city; the paradox of religion as both comfort and torment; and the survival networks created by gay people. Ten interconnected short stories cover the sweep of one woman’s personal history as she reaches her own form of Southern womanhood – compassionate, resilient, principled, lesbian.
You’ll have to wait until this time next year to pick up a copy of The Ada Decades. In the meantime, check out the re-issue of Out of Time or enjoy some of the other wonderful authors in the Bywater and Ylva families. Next stop on the blog hop is Eve Francis, whose new novel, Fragile, has just been released by Ylva. Congrats, Eve!
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The Queerest Places 
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