The Next Big Thing is a blog series making its way around the internet. Today, I’m delighted to participate by answering a few questions about my newest project.  Many thanks to Natalie Serber for inviting me to join in. You can find out more about Natalie’s next novel here. And if you haven’t yet read her beautiful collection of stories, read it now. It’s a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. And it has one of the most powerful opening stories of any collection I’ve ever read.

What is your working title of your book?

My working title just changed a few weeks ago. For the last six years it was THE VIOLIN. Then it was THIS WAR SOUND. Then WAR SOUND. Today it’s ANOTHER WAY TO SAY EVERYTHING. I imagine it will change again.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

My novel is inspired by the life of a real person – Howard Scott, a conscientious objector during World War II. I learned about Howard in 2006 when my friend, the artist Amy Walsh, showed me an article in the Boston Globe, “Howard Scott’s Unfinished Sonata.”

To protest the internment of Japanese Americans and the draft, Howard walked out of a Civilian Public Service (CPS) work camp without permission and was sent to prison in Tucson, Arizona. He was released after several months only to be drafted again. He refused to report either for military duty or for work at a CPS camp, and again was sentenced to prison. While in prison, this time on McNeil Island in Washington, Scott used wood from a fallen maple tree and storage barrels to build a violin based on typed instructions sent to him by his wife, Ruane Scott. He was released before he completed it.

The article told the story about that violin. Howard’s grandson Nolle is a furniture maker who studied at the North Bennett School in Boston. His friend Jess is a violinmaker. The two of them finished Howard’s violin and presented it to Howard on his 87th birthday. There were pictures in the paper. Howard was luminous.

As soon as I read the newspaper story I knew I had to write about Howard and his violin.

I contacted Howard and then spoke with his daughter Kayleen. I flew to Seattle and took the ferry to Bainbridge and spent a week interviewing Kayleen, her two sisters, and Howard. The family gave me access to the hundreds of letters Ruane and Howard wrote to each other while he was in prison, including the violin letters. And they granted me permission to write a novel inspired by Howard’s life.

What genre does your book fall under?

Literary fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Vera Farmiga or Rosemarie DeWitt would be Indie.

Michael Peña would be Miles.

Christopher Plummer would be Beaman.

I wish I could say there would be a character played by Christopher Guest, but it’s not really that kind of book or movie. Maybe someday he’ll call me, though. I have a really good idea for a mockumentary.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Can it be a long sentence that uses a lot of punctuation and conjunctions? My novel has several parallel stories, which are connected by a violin – one belongs to Miles (a soldier just back from Iraq with PTSD), a second belongs to Indie (a college art professor), and a third belongs to Beaman (a conscientious objector during WWII with Alzheimer’s); it’s about what happens when they find each other after Miles has been called back to war.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Agency.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

My best estimate is three years, but that depends when you start counting. In some ways, I have been preparing my whole life to write this book. In other ways, I started writing the novel the minute I read about Howard, which was seven years ago – but I also wrote a dissertation and two other books during that time.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

It belongs to the same genre as books like David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Nicole Krauss’s Great House, and Michael Ondaatje’s English Patient —novels written about war and art and violence at a particular time in history that illuminate something about that time and those themes that straight history cannot. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Howard and Ruane Scott and their family. A veteran in one of my classes at a university in California, who’d been stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A painting of a soldier I bought from that veteran called “The Surge.” The photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The transformative power of art.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I wrote my first sex scene for this book.

I tagged these amazing writers to keep the blog chain going. Their books will blow your mind:

Carole DeSanti’s beautiful THE UNRULY PASSIONS OF EUGENIE R. will be released in March. She will do a guest blog post on my blog (At least that’s the plan for now. It might change.)

Monica Drake’s new novel THE STUD BOOK comes out this April. She’ll post here.

Ruth Ozeki’s new novel A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING comes out in March. She’ll post her answers here.

Emily Rapp also has a new book coming out this March, THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD. She will post her blog here. 

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