Ask the Author: Sandra Gail Lambert
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Sandra Gail Lambert
There are so many "here's where it all started" stories, but here's just one of them. I was on a boat in the Okefenokee Swamp and a ranger pointed at a group of five cypress trees, three of them living, two dead. Those were called the five sisters, she said, named after sisters who had lived deep in the swamp because two of the sisters had been barren (isn't that an awful word) and so the dead trees represented how their heritage had died with them. The ranger went on to talk about the importance of drought in cypress tree growth, but I was lost to a sudden anger. It had always seemed overwrought to me when people talked of a red rage that made a film over their vision, but that was precisely what happened. I gripped the aluminum railing on the boat and panted through it until I could be some version of normal again. It wasn't the ranger's fault for passing on a piece of folklore. But the assertion that because those two women hadn't given birth they offered nothing to the future, that the lives they changed and the objects they created had no value just pissed me off. I knew that was a lie. For instance, once I had touched an ancient pottery chard, felt the silkiness of the clay, and been changed. I had to believe that I, who am a dead end on a genealogy chart, had something to offer the future. This novel is an answer to that. If you want to imagine me making a rude hand gesture, please do.
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