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Christopher Scotton

Goodreads Author

Born

in Washington, D.C., The United States

Website

http://www.christopherscotton.com

Genre

Fiction

Member Since

January 2013

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I grew up about 30 miles outside of Washington, D.C. in what was then undeveloped country. It was a place of cornfields and tree houses, dammed-up creeks and secret swimming holes. In the summers, my brothers and I would dash out around 8:00 am for wherever and return just in time for dinner in the evening. It was a magical place to be a kid and I wanted to recapture that wonder of discovery as fourteen year-old Kevin explores his new surroundings in my debut novel The Secret Wisdom of the Earth.

When I was about Kevin’s age, developers bought up most of the land and the idyllic bounds of my childhood became one big construction site—creeks were backfilled and swimming holes ran to mud. All of us neighborhood hellions felt a great sense of l I grew up about 30 miles outside of Washington, D.C. in what was then undeveloped country. It was a place of cornfields and tree houses, dammed-up creeks and secret swimming holes. In the summers, my brothers and I would dash out around 8:00 am for wherever and return just in time for dinner in the evening. It was a magical place to be a kid and I wanted to recapture that wonder of discovery as fourteen year-old Kevin explores his new surroundings in my debut novel The Secret Wisdom of the Earth.

When I was about Kevin’s age, developers bought up most of the land and the idyllic bounds of my childhood became one big construction site—creeks were backfilled and swimming holes ran to mud. All of us neighborhood hellions felt a great sense of loss at the destruction of our woods—one we couldn’t quite understand or articulate, but it hung over us that summer like a fogged-in field.

By the time I went off to college, the countryside of my youth was solidly suburban. It was in college that I first fell in love with Appalachia. Initially for her music—the spinning lilt of a fiddle reel; the compact fury of a mandolin run; the plaintive harmonies—then, for her beauty, as I came to know the region in my twenties with little but a backpack and a camp stove.

About that time, I met a good friend’s mother for the first time—she was an incredibly beautiful woman who seemed to carry with her a deep-set sadness. I asked my friend about it and he told me the story of how his three-year-old brother died in the most horrific accident at home you could possible imagine. I carried the story of this child’s death with me for many years and knew that I had to write a novel about its effect on a family. I also knew that Appalachia, a region I’d come to loved so well, would be a perfect setting for this nascent coming-of-age novel.

But as the years unspooled—I graduated from college, began a career, moved to London, got married, had kids—I discovered innumerable reasons not to write. In fact, I perfected the art of excuse-making. On and on, month after month, year-to-year.

And as I stared down forty, I realized that this great bright dream of being a novelist was in danger of becoming my single biggest regret. I began writing The Secret Wisdom of the Earth the very next day, with the awful death of my friend’s young brother as the tragedy that sets the story in motion.

It was slow-going, to be sure—I’d rise at 5:00 a.m. each morning, write in the quiet hours before work, then revise and edit in the evenings after putting my boys to bed. But it was in this routine of early rising and evening editing that the main characters, Kevin, Buzzy, Pops, Tilroy and Paul, began to take shape.

I completed about half of the novel in London—fleshing out those characters, their relationships and the loss each of them suffers—but something was clearly missing from the story. The various plot paths I needed to tie everything together turned out to be nub ends. I moved back to the States and immediately went down to eastern Kentucky in hopes of breaking this narrative logjam. It was on this trip that I saw my first Mountaintop Removal operation.

The horrific gray scar of that mine brought back the sense of sickening loss I’d had at fourteen when the pristine woods I’d grown up in were cut down, hauled away and replaced with tract housing. I knew then, looking out over this massive, denuded landscape in Kentucky, that the eradication of these proud ancient mountains was a fitting allegory for a loss that all of the main characters suffer. Once I connected these themes, the rest of the story began to bubble forth.

My trips to Kentucky, talking with folks and listening to their stories, showed me that the apologue of Mountaintop Removal is a complicated one—one that can’t be reduced to simply good vs. evil or rich vs. poor. I tried to portray this hard-bought paradox and lay it alongside Kevin’s story in a compelling way. ...more

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Christopher Scotton’s books

Average rating: 4.1 · 9,712 ratings · 1,637 reviews · 3 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Secret Wisdom of the Earth 4.10 avg rating — 9,665 ratings — published 2015 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Secret Wisdom of the Earth - Free Preview (The First 4 Chapters) 4.21 avg rating — 47 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton (January 05,2016) by Christopher Scotton (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Christopher is Currently Reading

Christopher Scotton is currently reading

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

by Cormac McCarthy

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 08, 2013 05:04AM

Christopher Scotton is currently reading

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

by Anthony Marra (Goodreads Author)

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May 22, 2013 05:57PM

Quotes by Christopher Scotton (?)

“I guess I learned that even though most people are good, they can be talked into doing bad things by one or two jerks...And I guess, people sometimes need someone who can stand up and remind them that they are good people and they know what's right.”
― Christopher Scotton, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

12 likes

“Pops smiled. “Son, the more people I meet, the less good I get at labeling them. That’s a wisdom I hope you acquire.”
― Christopher Scotton, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

8 likes

“I held her and she cried into my shoulder so deeply that I could feel the sorrow from her soul blending completely and profoundly with my own.”
― Christopher Scotton, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

8 likes

See all Christopher Scotton's quotes »

Polls

August Side Reads 1st Poll!!

Top five books will move onto the second round.

The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

by Nadia Hashimi

8 votes, 14.0%

Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

8 votes, 14.0%

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed

8 votes, 14.0%

I Am Pilgrim

by Terry Hayes

8 votes, 14.0%

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

by Christopher Scotton

6 votes, 10.5%

We Are Called to Rise

by Laura McBride

6 votes, 10.5%

The Butterfly and the Violin

by Kristy Cambron

5 votes, 8.8%

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

5 votes, 8.8%

The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

2 votes, 3.5%

The Tale of Despereaux

by Kate DiCamillo

1 vote, 1.8%

57 total votes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Seasonal Read...: Spring 2015 Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE POSTS	3347	574	May 31, 2015 08:59PM
Reading with Style: SP 2015 RwS Completed Tasks - Spring 2015	1046	116	May 31, 2015 09:05PM
Around the World ...: Karen Michele's US Road Trip 2015	7	23	Jun 28, 2015 10:51AM
2025 & 2026 Readi...: Ilona's 2015 Reading Challenge	10	69	Jul 04, 2015 04:40AM
The Life of a Boo...: What to read in August 2015	47	183	Jul 08, 2015 01:50PM
The Life of a Boo...: Stuck in a slump - Needing some Goodreads friends and recommendations!	7	54	Jul 12, 2015 04:50PM
Reading with Style: Su 2015 RwS Completed Tasks - Summer 2015	1153	115	Aug 31, 2015 09:01PM
Crazy Challenge C...: Winter 2014 Seasonal Scavenger Challenge - Hibernation	224	170	Sep 11, 2015 09:19AM
Crazy Challenge C...: TRIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC	103	123	Oct 08, 2015 05:23PM

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Christopher’s Quotes

“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

3538 likes

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

tags: bookroom, books, libraries, wisdom

10430 likes

Christopher’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-8) post a comment »

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message 8: by Erik F.

May 14, 2013 06:52PM

Thanks for the friend request, Christopher. Flannery O'Connor was a very talented lady, blessed with a wicked imagination! "A View of the Woods" is very disturbing, even nightmarish. Some of her stories (their endings, especially) nearly knocked me out of my seat.

Anyway, I look forward to talking with you more around this site.

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message 7: by Maciek

May 13, 2013 02:41AM

Hi Christopher! Thank you for the friend request. I'd love to talk about literature and am looking forward to many interesting exchanges of opinions! :)

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message 6: by Cheryl

May 09, 2013 12:36PM

Thanks for the request, Christopher. Looking forward to the SLT reading challenge!

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message 5: by Mel

May 09, 2013 12:25PM

Thanks for the friend request! :) Nice to connect on here with other Southern Literary Trail members. I enjoy that group a lot.

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message 4: by Natalie

May 09, 2013 05:31AM

Thanks for your kind words. :) BM is a personal favorite and I find myself defending it a lot from naysayers. Then again, I'm also a fan of American Psycho.

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message 3: by Richard

May 08, 2013 11:37PM

Hello Christopher. Thanks for the friend request. I look forward to further discussions.

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message 2: by Christopher

May 06, 2013 09:33AM

Melki wrote: "Wow! Great news about your book. I'm looking forward to it."

Great to connect, Melki. BTW, I see you have Blood Meridian on your to read list. It's very violent but a stunning book. I'm reading it again now and highly recommend it. Glad to see you only rated Oscar Wao 3 stars--my thoughts exactly...I gave it a “meh” --Chris

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message 1: by Melki

May 06, 2013 08:56AM