Q&A with debut author Barbara Davis

Barbara Davis is the author of “The Secrets She Carried,” which is about a woman who reluctantly inherits a North Carolinian plantation and finds an unmarked grave on the property, beginning her quest to discover the person buried inside. Davis will be discussing and signing her novel at Flyleaf Books Tuesday.

Davis spoke with staff writer Sarah Vassello about the novel, fulfilling her dreams of becoming a writer and the role of North Carolina in her book.

Daily Tar Heel: What inspired you to write your novel, “The Secrets She Carried”?

Barbara Davis: The inspiration, it’s kind of a funny story, I was standing outside of a parking lot waiting for my husband to come out of a store, and I looked across the street and there was a grave by the side of the road, just a single grave, nothing around it, just by itself, and I just kept thinking about it. These graves are just all around North Carolina — you find them in cornfields, you find them under a big oak tree, you find them all over the place, and I just started wondering who was buried under that particular grave.

So just all of a sudden, this almost fully formed character of Adele Laveau popped into my head like a movie, and it just started coming to me: This story that this woman would have things that no one would know or ever know because she was buried in a place where no one would ever find her.

DTH: What is the book about?

BD: The book is about a woman who lives in New York City, she has been estranged from her maternal grandmother for 30 years, and all of a sudden she gets a letter from an attorney: Her grandmother has passed away, and she has inherited this old tobacco plantation that she really doesn’t want. She’s got a lot of bad memories and she doesn’t really want it, so she goes back basically to sell it and just rid herself of it. While she is walking the property and exploring the property, she stumbles onto this grave that is marked with no name, no date, only a line of poetry, and the rest of the novel is her trying to unravel the story of who is buried there, how they came to be buried there.

Clearly, the grave was not meant to be found, so why was it a big secret, and what does this person who is buried there have to do with her family?

DTH: This is your debut novel. How does it feel to have accomplished such a milestone?

BD: It also feels a little surreal because this book has been percolating in my head before I even started writing it — probably about for four years, and then during the writing process, probably about three years — so I lived with these characters and this book for about seven years as a wish, a dream.

DTH: Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about the “The Secrets She Carried,” or you as an author?

BD: The book kind of speaks for itself. At this point, I’m trying to look down the road — I’ve got my next book coming out in November, which is called “Once Upon A Tide,” and you’re always planning two, three, four books out, but I can never imagine loving a book and loving characters more than I do the characters in this book, especially Adele Laveau, who is actually the dead woman who is in that grave. I just absolutely love these characters, and I don’t know if any other characters or any other story that I write will ever be able to take “Secrets’” place in my heart.

arts@dailytarheel.com