WAG: On the surface, Scorched
Earth looks like a straightforward mystery novel
in the Grisham tradition. How does it differ from
the standard entries in the genre?
David
L. Robbins: John Grisham and the others in his genre hoe a much
different row than Scorched Earth. Simply
by placing a novel in a courtroom with an undetermined
outcome does not make it a legal drama anymore than
my other books, set on the Eastern Front during
World War II, make them war novels. These backdrops
are no more than that for me, places and times to
lay my characters and their urgencies. Grisham revolves
his plots around legal complications and does so
admirably. But Scorched Earth ranges much
further than a judge's gavel or a county jail cell,
it aims deep into the roots of American racism and
human forgiveness. I don't view this novel as a
departure for me at all. My books are about humans
under duress and the extraordinary things they will
do. War is one choice to explore that theme. A dead
baby leading to a church burning and an unexplained
murder is another.
WAG:
Scorched Earth has more than its fair share
of unexpected plot twists. When you first sat down
to write it, did you already know where they were
going to be or did at least some of the twists surprise
you as you worked? On a more general level, did
the fact that you were writing a mystery novel rather
than, say, an historical novel, change the way you
approached the project?
Robbins: I'll answer the second half of the question first.
My approach to this novel was different than my
big world-at-war books mostly because it required
less factual research; I might add, by a whole lot.
Scorched Earth is a look at a small Southern
town, and I grew up in one, so I had a lot of these
people programmed in me when I sat down to write
it: Baptist churches, weedy graveyards, sheriffs,
bullies, racial tensions. Other than this, however,
my style of writing requires a lot of insight into
my characters' motivations, and this book gave me
loads of conflicts to explore at many levels: spiritual,
marital, racial, paternal, communal.
As for knowing
the ending, I always know my endings before I start
writing. But that doesn't mean it's the ending that
will be the final, published one. In Scorched
Earth, the last chapters changed after working
with my editors at Bantam. We decided to add one
more twist, and that modification makes the novel
even more effective as a mystery. The moral is listen
to your editors, and never be afraid to revise when
they're right. (Okay, and fight them when they're
wrong, but that's not the focus here. Another time,
perhaps.)
WAG:
While it has a strong plot line, big (if seemingly
diverse) themes like racial relations, religion
and the media work as powerful undercurrents in
Scorched Earth. Where did the idea for Scorched
Earth begin? Were your initial interests thematic
and abstract, or did it start out as a concrete
story (inspired, for instance, by the rash of church
burnings the country experienced a few years ago)
that grew more complicated thematically as you worked?
Robbins: The germ for the novel came from a news article out
of Thomasville, Georgia, where the deacons of a
Baptist church actually voted to exhume the body
of a mixed-race baby. In the real story, the full
church voted in time and overturned the deacons'
decision. The child was left to her rest. But the
story got under my skin. I wondered what would have
happened if the deacons had not been reversed, what
would I have done were that my child dug up like
that? And I knew I would have been very angry. Would
I have burned the church? I don't know. But this
got me wanting to explore the notions of anger,
justice (both real and legal), and the remnants
of racism clinging to our culture. Do only bad people
do racist things, or could good but misguided people
also do something like this, dig up a child from
their cemetery for ancient and unquestioned reasons?
I needed to know, so I wrote this book.
WAG:
You've lived most of your life in the South, and
Scorched Earth is set in a richly detailed,
small Virginia town. Do you consider yourself a
Southern writer? And if so, what do you think distinguishes
a Southern writer from his peers?
Robbins: Yes, I am a Southern writer. Let me say, of course
I'm a Southern writer. The beauty and curse of the
South are the same as our humidity, they are inescapable,
despite all the shade and fans and air conditioning
you want. A Southern writer is a contemplative writer.
We are thematic writers, laying out on the page
issues and passions that warm our land often even
beyond what we wish for. Southern writers long for
greatness in their work, it's another curse. We
are humorous and self-bashing, more than any other
American region. We can be cool to outsiders and
when we write we sometimes let this unfortunate
sidelight leech in, we often write just for each
other. No matter if I am describing Russia or Virginia,
my intentions are the exploration of man and nature.
This is the Southern writer in me, sweating and
marveling at Creation whether on my porch or at
my computer.
WAG:
As resoundingly Southern as Scorched Earth
is, you've drawn on a plethora of settings and periods
for your novels. What is your next project going
to be?
Robbins: My next book will complete my triad on the Eastern
Front during World War II. The novel describes the
titanic Battle of Kursk—the greatest armored
conflict in history—through the perspectives
of a Cossack family (father, son, daughter) who
have gone to war together, and a Spaniard serving
in the Liebstandarte division of the SS.
With this novel, I will have taken my readers from
Stalingrad (site of the first great Soviet victory
over the Germans) in War Of The Rats, to
Kursk for the pivotal battle on the Eastern Front,
concluding with the fall of Berlin to the Red Army,
described in The End Of War. Where will I
go after this? I haven't a clue yet. And that's
exciting.
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