Q&A with author John Milliken Thompson

Novelist John Milliken Thompson will be coming to the Bull’s Head Bookshop Friday to talk about his new book, “Love and Lament.”

Staff writer Melissa Bendixen spoke with Thompson about his interest in Southern history and his writing experiences.

The Daily Tar Heel: Can you tell us about your new book?

John Milliken Thompson: “Love and Lament” is basically a good, old-fashioned Southern family drama, with lots of turmoil and upheaval. It takes place in the turn of the last century, going up to World War I. It’s a historical novel told through a young woman’s point of view about her family and her coming-of-age. She steps up to her community needs while the men are away fighting. There is lots of lament, because a lot of the family members die along the way, but there’s just enough love to give it some light.

DTH: And what was your inspiration for the book?

JMT: Well, my inspiration was really my father’s mother, my grandmother. She lived in a big family and lost most of her family members by the time she was a young woman to one disease or another. This was at a time when modern medicine was just in its infancy. So she had to deal with lots of that — lots of grief in her early life. And she went on to become the first woman sheriff of North Carolina, so my main character, Mary Bet Hartsoe, does the same thing.

Now, those are the only two facts from my grandmother — the rest of it is fiction. I didn’t really know a whole lot about her early life. She was not one to talk a lot about the past, even though she did tell great stories. She was more focused on the present, and that was sort of intriguing to me later as a writer. The past was just something not dug too much into. And writers want to dig into that a lot of times.

DTH: Why do you feel that you are drawn to the past, as opposed to writing about the present?

JMT: Well, I had written a lot about the present — I started out doing that. I was writing short stories, and they were all sort of modern characters set in Washington because I spent a lot of my teen years in Washington, D.C. But after a while I just got bored with those stories. I just wasn’t excited about them in the way I became later excited about writing about the past.

It wasn’t until much later that I sort of, out of desperation, started writing a story that was set in the 1880s. That was my first novel, “The Reservoir,” and I just got totally fascinated with it and into the research. And at that point I just didn’t care how long it took. It did take three years to finish that book. So it was a matter of becoming patient, and then sort of finally realizing that my best material, at least for now, is in the past. And I’m really focused on the post-Civil War period. It’s just a period I find rich, and it speaks to me. I feel like I’m mining, I’m digging, when I get into a story within that period.

DTH: What do you hope people with take away from your book?

JMT: From this book, and also from my previous novel, I think a lot of what I hope people take away is that these people endure. They put up with a lot, and they go through a lot of hard things in life, but they keep putting one foot in front of the other. Not just in a ground, determined way, but they manage to find some joy in life despite all the crap that rains down on them.

DTH: What kind of advice would you give to young writers right now?

JMT: The main thing that I’ve learned is to be patient, to persevere and don’t give up. Because a lot of people will say you’re good, or they’ll say you’re not good, and all of that just doesn’t matter in the end. It’s about what you think, and what you believe. If you believe you’ve got a story to tell, that’s what’s important, really.

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