Q.What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
A.These books began as a day-dream about self-sufficiency, which underlies the life we have chosen to follow in our wild canyon in Washington State, where we care for gardens, orchards and vineyards, chickens, ducks and goats. I imagined how a girl, Jessa, might utilize the natural bounty of an abandoned farm to provide for herself and her dog. As the story developed in my mind, I was drawn into memories of the era in which it was set, the 1950’s, and the people of Jessa’s town crowded into the story to have their say. What kept me on task to tell the story is the relevance of its message for our lives today.
Q.How Do You Think Your Book Relates to The World Today?
A.Many people today tend to look back on the 1950’s with nostalgia, as a time when nuclear families occupied homes in the suburbs and life was idealized as simpler and better. I wrote this book to reveal the fallacy of that view, especially for non-whites. Today, white supremacy is experiencing a resurgence as part of the desire to return to the “good old days.” I wrote these books to reveal my own experiences with that period. because the gains we have come to accept as social justice are being challenged in the current attempt to turn back the clock. The core message of the books is that friendship across race (and other social categories) is the educator that can lead our people to embrace unity as a country
Q.What Do You Hope Will Be the Everlasting Thoughts for Readers Who Finish Your Book?
A. I hope that readers will remember Jessa’s stubbornness in the face of personal disaster and, more importantly the way her life was driven by her personal discovery that there should be no barriers to interracial friendship. She works to promote friendships among the people in her small Tennessee town, and is successful in a number of cases. The child’s innocence that she brings to the analysis of “the way things are” is comparable to the child who revealed the truth that the Emperor had no clothes – Jessa saw that there was no justification for the segregation that people in that era accepted.
Q.What was the most challenging part of writing your book?
A. My concerns in writing about the1950’s in Tennessee were directly related to what is happening today with the rise in book banning over sexual or racial relationships and certain forbidden words. I knew the era and was aware that the language used by white supremacists was part of the control exerted by the dominant class and I knew that including those words, from the mouths of these characters, would be necessary to represent the meanness of the times. The message of the book is that the disrespect intrinsic to the everyday language of the times could be overcome if people had a chance to form friendships across racial lines
Q.Can you tell me three fun facts about the main characters of your book?
A. Jessa was an only child whose parents were wise enough to get a dog “to be the sister she was never going to get.” The bond between Jessa and her dog Cassie carries us through the story of their adventures.
Florence, the Sheriff’s clerk, is a strong woman who plays an important role in the goings-on of the town. Her ability to relate to the events and people of the town can be traced to her up-bringing, as she described to Jacob: “We didn’t have much when I was little, and our closest neighbors were the Graysons, a Negro family. I played with their children and learned to ride on Sonny Grayson’s bike. I wasn’t taught that one race was better than the other. I know that’s how a lot of folks think, but I didn’t understand it when I was first exposed to it, and I still don’t. I just think it’s wrong.”
Jacob is the Black mechanic whose chance contact with Jessa’s parents in the Music Shop led to his incarceration after their deaths and Jessa’s disappearance. Jacob’s life history brings the story of the Black experience full circle, as his father was lynched when he was a child and he was subsequently taken in and trained by the town’s white mechanic, who becomes a father figure for him. He is therefore receptive to the idea that the races could “get along”, and this openness allows him to have a positive impact on both the night clerk Marvin and the town’s racist teen, Charlie.
Fran is the wife of the town’s lawyer who has been brought up to play her role as a white woman of leisure and benevolent causes. She epitomizes the 1950’s housewife’s dilemma. After Jessa brings her and a Black family together, she begins to recall her own family’s Black maid and her daughter, who was Fran’s close friend, before the family took measures to separate them. In recounting this history to her Black maid, Fran reveals that her mother employed the maid originally as a wet nurse and that she and her childhood friend were “titty sisters
Q.What is your favorite passage from your book?
A.This is from Jessa is Back and tells of the return to the tree where Jessa hid out after her family was killed: “She sat just outside the tree and stroked the dog. Everything felt so different, now. Warm instead of cold, safe instead of hunted, loved instead of lonely. Jessa buried her face in the dog’s wooly head. If she cried, now, it would be with a full heart, a happy heart. The previous day, she’d been overwhelmed by memories of the tree, her refuge, when she was cut off from everyone. Now, she could see the beauty and wonder of it through the eyes of others, and a feeling of love for her tree and her grandparent’s land swept over her.
Q.How is your book different from others in its genre?
A.These books tell the story of race relations in a small rural Tennessee town from the viewpoint of a white girl. The story of segregation, the atrocities against the Black people, must also be told, by them, and it was not my goal to describe the Black people’s experience of the 1950’s. My story reveals a truth as it became apparent to Jessa: the recognition that segregation cheats both races by depriving them of the wealth of friendships that might otherwise develop. That is not to put this harm up against lynching or the institutionalized discrimination that burdened the lives of Black people, but it becomes clear to Jessa that if society would just allow such friendships it would be the best way to counteract the underlying ignorance that promotes discrimination.
Q.Why did you decide on this story to tell?
A.This was my story to tell – I grew up in it. Although the books are novels, the depiction is drawn from my memories, my knowledge of the land and the people. I felt it was important to revisit this era now because of the rise of White Nationalism in our country. Like my German friend who was born after the end of World War II who now lives in Northern Idaho and can tell the local self-styled Nazis that they don’t know anything about Nazis, I have a story to tell about this country when it institutionalized Jim Crow. It was downright ugly, and I am confident that if we know more about the “good old days” we will oppose attempts to return to them!
Q.How did you develop your plot and characters?
A.For most of my writing life, I wrote scientific reports, reviews and textbooks. Such writing does not need a plot or characters, and it was a mystery to me where plot, in particular, came from. I began the first book with one character, a young girl that I could identify with, but then the other people in the story kept crowding in – I gladly gave them names and let them speak for themselves – It was their story, too, and they guided me through the development of plot.
Q.Do you have other books in the works?
A.A two-book series does call for another book, to carry on the story, doesn’t it? I find that I have created characters that won’t let me alone, so maybe there will be a sequel. If so, it would take place after a few years and involve Janie, Jessa’s Black girlfriend, who would visit Jessa in Tennessee.
I also have some other stories pulling at me, including the story of my father’s mother, who gave up the independence of a career as an educator to marry late in life and nevertheless raised eight children in the backwoods of Tennessee.
For more about Stacia Moffett and her work, visit www.lostandfoundintennessee.com.
