I am happy to have Margaret Verble join us today talking about her new book Maud's Line with five fun facts.
1. Viola was
based on my mother’s great Aunt Jenny. Because Aunt Jenny lived to be 103 our
lifetimes overlapped, and I was around her at least once when she was in her
old age. I remember that day well. Aunt Jenny was really old. I was about ten.
And not particularly well-behaved. My mother loved her great aunt, so I was
sent outside to play. There were no other children to play with, so I played
with the gate. It swung back and forth and I swung with it. While writing Maud’s Line I wished Mama had let me stay
inside. And I’d wished it that day. It was as hot as blazes out there.
2.
Blue, Maud’s
uncle, was based on the personality of my great uncle, Bill Anderson. I adored
big Uncle Bill and I think he adored me. He taught me all sorts of things,
including how to fish the treacherous Arkansas River, how to identify birds
from their particular nests, and how to stand still and not panic when bees are
swarming.
3.
That school
on that section line did burn. And the one that replaced it burned. The story
about The Canterbury Tales being
saved because they were deemed too dirty to read and tucked away in the safe is
also a true one. But that didn’t happen in Oklahoma. That happened in
Nashville, Tennessee, in the early 1950s, when Hillsboro High School burned to
the ground.
4.
Some of the
characters in Maud’s Line have unusual
names, Mustard, Lovely, Blue and Walkingstick. I feel fairly free to give
Indian characters colorful monikers because Cherokees often do have interesting
names, and because I had an Indian great aunt who we all called Pig. Aunt Pig,
to my knowledge, never objected to her nickname. But just to give her a break, I
called her Sarah in the book.
5.
The models
for these characters really did know Pretty Boy Floyd. And my grandfather and
his running buddy, the principal of the school, once hid Mr. Floyd from the law
in the school’s storm cellar. My grandmother cooked for him while he was hiding
in there. When school started again, my mother and her brothers had new clothes
and shoes to wear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A debut novel chronicling the life and loves of a headstrong, earthy, and magnetic heroine
Eastern Oklahoma, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Maud Nail lives with her
rogue father and sensitive brother on one of the allotments parceled out
by the U.S. Government to the Cherokees when their land was confiscated
for Oklahoma’s statehood. Maud’s days are filled with hard work and
simple pleasures, but often marked by violence and tragedy, a fact that
she accepts with determined practicality. Her prospects for a better
life are slim, but when a newcomer with good looks and books rides down
her section line, she takes notice. Soon she finds herself facing a
series of high-stakes decisions that will determine her future and those
of her loved ones.
Maud’s Line is accessible, sensuous, and vivid. It will sit on the
bookshelf alongside novels by Jim Harrison, Louise Erdrich, Sherman
Alexie, and other beloved chroniclers of the American West and its
people.
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Formats: eBook, Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0544470192
Pages: 304
Genre: Historical Fiction
PRAISE FOR MAUD’S LINE
“Maud is refreshingly open and honest about her own sexuality though
conscious of her place as a woman in a sexist society, always careful
not to insult the intelligence or manhood of her male friends and
relations. Verble writes in a simple style that matches the hardscrabble
setting and plainspoken characters. Verble, herself a member of the
Cherokee Nation, tells a compelling story peopled with flawed yet
sympathetic characters, sharing insights into Cherokee society on the
parcels of land allotted to them after the Trail of Tears.” —Kirkus
“Writing as though Daniel Woodrell nods over one shoulder and the
spirit of Willa Cather over the other, Margaret Verble gives us Maud, a
gun-toting, book-loving, dream-chasing young woman whose often agonizing
dilemmas can only be countered by sheer strength of heart.” —Malcolm
Brooks, author of Painted Horses
“I want to live with Maud in a little farm in a little valley under
the shadow of a mountain wall. Maud’s Line is an absolutely wonderful
novel and Margaret Verble can drop you from great heights and still
easily pick you up. I will read anything she writes, with enthusiasm.”
—Jim Harrison, author of Dalva, Legends of the Fall, and The Big Seven
“Margaret Verble gives us a gorgeous window onto the Cherokee world
in Oklahoma, 1927. Verble’s voice is utterly authentic, tender and
funny, vivid and smart, and she creates a living community – the Nail
family, Maud herself, her father, Mustard, and brother, Lovely, and the
brothers Blue and Early, the quiet, tender-mouthed mare Leaf, and the
big landscape of the bottoms – the land given to the Cherokees after the
Trail of Tears. Beyond the allotments, it opens up into the wild, which
is more or less what Verble does with this narrative. A wonderful debut
novel.” —Roxana Robinson, author of Sparta
MARGARET VERBLE, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of
Oklahoma, has set her novel on her family’s allotment land. She
currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and Old Windsor, England.
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Friday, July 24
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