Stealing Time with Margaret Verble

THE PULITZER FINALIST SAYS HER FOURTH NOVEL “FELL OUT OF THE SKY”

COURTESY OF MARGARET VERBLE

MARGARET VERBLE’S LATEST NOVEL, Stealing, is a historical fiction about a young Cherokee girl in the Midwest who is removed from her family in the 1950s. The book is told through the eyes of a nine-year-old Kit Crockett, whose father is said to be descended from Davy Crockett and whose mother is of the Cherokee peoples who survived the Trail of Tears. Kit befriends a woman named Bella, who is brown, like Kit, and who takes up residence in the cabin where Kit’s Uncle Joe once lived. It’s a sweet friendship. Kit brings fish that she catches to Bella; Bella braids her hair and makes her peanut butter sandwiches. Their relationship grows and deepens; Bella is a sort of mother that Kit so desperately yearns for. Then Kit’s tender life is stolen from her, and she is forced into a Christian boarding school.

Before talking with Verble, I began listening to the audio book of Stealing. I make it a point to read an author’s latest writing before an interview, but time was short for this one. Cherokee actress DeLanna Studi narrates the book, her cadence and pitch perfectly suited for young Kit. The story is mesmerizing; I looked forward to my drives on long stretches of two-lane roads—from Great Barrington to Sandisfield, or West Stockbridge to Williamstown. The country setting of the Berkshires felt connected to the rural setting of the Stealing as it slowly revealed an eye-opening reckoning of history and small-town prejudices.

Verble, whose Maud’s Line was a Pulitzer finalist in 2016, is a speaker in the second annual Words Ideas and Thinkers (WIT) Festival held by the Authors Guild from September 21-23 in Lenox. From her home in Lexington, Kentucky, via Zoom, she talked to me about her writing technique, her Cherokee heritage, her storytelling, and her favorite authors.

The New York Times compares Stealing to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. How does that make you feel? I was stunned. I read The New York Times book reviews every week, and I know that to get a review like that is just a remarkable thing, although they did review my book Cherokee America very well, too. I’ve been lucky with The New York Times. And, of course, you like being compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, but I like even more being compared to the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. That’s a masterpiece.

What is it about Stealing that connects with people? People—women in particular, I suspect—like books about children who are in distress. You can name a lot of books that have been successful with that kind of motif, and some of them not very well-written. And Kit’s a likable kid. That helps.

How did you develop her character? I didn’t have to develop her. The first paragraph in the book is the first paragraph I wrote, which is unusual. From the moment that child saw that rooster and admired it, I knew who I was dealing with. I could write 40,000 words in and find something new about a character that I didn’t know before. Kit came full-blown. She fell out of the sky. The whole book fell out of the sky. I actually wrote Stealing before I wrote Maud’s Line. I wrote Cherokee America, which was my second novel published, before I wrote either one of them. So, my books are not published in chronological order. But Stealing was so easy to write.

You were turned down 92 times for Cherokee America. You have said that the market wasn’t ready for that book. And you sent Stealing out maybe 10 times and realized pretty quickly that the market wasn’t ready for that book either. Now, though, there has been an uptick in the number of books by Indigenous writers. Yes, I was sending those books out before that uptick. I wrote Stealing in 2006 and 2007. That was long before that uptick took place.

Why wasn’t the market ready for those books? At that time, there was only room in the market for two Indians, Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie, and they just wouldn’t publish anybody else who was Indigenous. It was hard to find Indian writers that anybody knew anything about. For some reason, it broke loose. They say we have a renaissance in Indigenous writing, but that implies that there was ever a first time. It’s the first time that Indigenous people really have been represented in American literature.

Why do you think that’s happening now? Everything about books really is about the Northeast. Up in the Northeast, people became even more concerned about minority rights and issues, and that was just part of it.

You don’t feel obligated to explain the whole of Native American culture in your books. Why? One of the comments I got repeatedly on Maud’s Line was that I had written a book about Indians that really didn’t pay too much attention to issues with white people. It was just about these people as people. That’s how I experience my own. Nobody’s walking around saying, “I’m an Indian.” Indians experience their lives just like everybody else does, as human beings, and so that’s reflected in these books, particularly in Maud’s Line.

What authors and books do you enjoy reading? Flannery O’Connor probably has had a greater influence on me than anybody else. I can read her again and again and laugh out loud. She is fabulous. I would also say that Hilary Mantel is probably the preeminent writer in the English language in our lifetime, at least so far. I like British writer Sarah Waters. A lot of Americans don’t read her, but she writes just wonderful literary fiction, just so rich. I admire her a great deal.

Any book in particular of hers? I just love The Little Stranger. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009. It’s like The Turn of the Screw in that you’re not exactly sure what’s going on—except a lot longer. And it’s set in an old English house. She’s just so good at what she does.

Any other book that you’ve read recently that you’ve enjoyed? I read as much history as I read novels. I have not been happy with a novel I’ve read in six months, but I’m currently reading Myth America. This is written by historians, and it’s a series of essays. The one I’m reading now is on the Southern strategy, how the Republican Party took over the South from the Democrats. It’s just fascinating history. It’s sort of myth busting, because this particular historian says that didn’t really just happen with Richard Nixon; it has been going on for some time and lays it all out.

What’s your writing method? I write every day. I wrote this morning, before this interview. I woke up and ate breakfast and brought a cup of coffee up to the computer. I wrote 402 words. I know that because I keep count of the words. Basically, I write a movement in a book, or a scene in a book, and then I stop.

What subjects are you drawn to in your writing? What’s a thread that goes through all of your books? One commonality is the land. I don’t think you can be raised Cherokee and not be interested in the land or be raised as any kind of Native American and not be interested in the land.

Everything is grounded in the land. It’s such a vital thing, that connection to it. You see that in Maud’s Line; you see that in Cherokee America. When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky is set in Nashville, in the neighborhood that I was raised in, only decades before. I was raised in a neighborhood that sat on top of, number one, an Indian burial ground; number two, a Civil War battlefield; and number three, an amusement park. A zoo. So all of that history is in that book, and it’s all very connected to this very specific piece of land.

Christianity and the Native American people figure prominently in Stealing. Why is that? I do not think that we have paid enough attention to the destructiveness of Christianity to Native American people. Nobody wants to say that, except maybe in academic circles. Certainly, that is the point I’m making in Stealing.

Did you do a lot of research for your latest book? I had to research when Davy Crockett was popular. And I had to research a little bit about criminal trials. After I wrote either the first or second draft, I bought some books on Indian boarding schools. This child did not go to a government boarding school; she was sent to a Christian boarding school. But I thought, well, maybe I better check and see if there’s anything missing. There wasn’t anything I was missing. I read them to validate that what I’ve written was accurate.

What does being Cherokee mean to you? I’m proud to be a Cherokee. In fact, I was just in Oklahoma, in the Cherokee capital. The Cherokee Nation is just exploding with innovation. I read in the paper today that they were giving $75,000 to Alzheimer’s funds. We support the public schools in Oklahoma to the tune of several million dollars a year. So, the Cherokee Nation is now thriving. When I was growing up, it was not thriving. In fact, we thought that it would be extinct by the time I was this age. So, I have a great pride in the fact that we’ve managed to wrestle our tribe away from extinction and into real success.

You’re very involved in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Well, I’m getting ready to vote for Chief. My ballot came yesterday. The Cherokees are getting ready to air a program on OsiyoTV, which is our television broadcast system, on my books and on me. The Cherokees know what I’m up to, and I know what the Cherokees are up to.

The 2nd Annual Authors Guild WIT Festival, “Changing the Narrative,” will be held September 21–23 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. For more information, go to authorsguild.org/witfestival

— Anastasia Stanmeyer