Reading Backwards

A very smart author (you know who you are, Michelle Shores), once told me books never expire. In that spirit, I'm trying hard not to fall prey to all the commercialism of new shiny books with lots of promotional effort behind them, and return to books I still think about, years after reading them.

My new novel, In the Shadow of the Smokestack, features a relationship between sisters that some of my beta-readers questioned. How can they fight one moment, then relax together on the couch watching tv the next? Why don't they ever talk about the bad memories they share? How can two sisters raised in the same household be so different as adults?

The inspiration for delving into a sister-relationship came from Secret Language by Monica Wood. It's not easy to find a copy of Secret Language, published in 1993, but it's worth it. I had read it years ago, when I really couldn't afford the luxury of purchasing books and borrowed weekly from my local library. I found a copy for sale on Amazon, and now proudly own this beautiful examination of two sisters who lived through a traumatic past.

The bond between sisters is inexplicable to people who don't have that relationship in their life. As Connie reminisces in Secret Language: "For a moment she longs to go all the way back there, to feel herself a child again with a sister who accompanied her, silent but steadfast, through the steely corridor of childhood; she longs to go back for the click of time it would take to thank Faith for existing. For bearing witness."

Monica Wood is a superstar at writing about real, recognizable families, and I encourage everyone to pick up any (all :)) of her books.