The Steep and Thorny Way(83)

The central plot of the book—Hanalee’s story—emerged after I researched Oregon’s nineteenth-and twentieth-century interracial marriage laws for one of my other novels. When I dug deeper into the history of the state’s prejudices and restrictions, I unearthed the troubling exclusion laws and unofficial “sundown laws,” the latter of which kept African Americans from passing through certain towns after dark. I also discovered the widespread use of eugenics in Oregon and the Ku Klux Klan’s takeover of the state in the early 1920s—including the KKK’s control over the 1922 gubernatorial election. As a lifelong resident of the typically open-minded West Coast, and a resident of Oregon itself since 2006, the lesser-known histories of the area shocked and saddened me. Whenever I experience a passionate reaction to a controversial piece of history, I find myself compelled to write a book about it—not to dig up old wounds and tarnish a region’s reputation, but to pay tribute to those who endured and overcame the forgotten injustices of the past. I’ve always been in awe of fighters and survivors.

For some reason, the idea of using Hamlet as the template for such a book entered my head in the summer of 2013, and that’s when the entire plot of this novel burst into life. I don’t remember the exact moment the Hamlet concept possessed me, but I do remember telling my daughter about my early thoughts for the book as we walked between aisles of novels at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, Oregon. She said, “Mom, your eyes look so excited!”

Before I submitted my proposal for The Steep and Thorny Way to my agent, Barbara Poelle, I, admittedly, got cold feet, despite my extreme passion for the book. I worried that people would be uncomfortable with the fact that I’m a white woman writing about a biracial character. I got nervous about the controversial nature of my chosen subject matters. I nearly even changed my main character to a half-Jewish girl, because my husband is Jewish and I was raised Protestant, and we witnessed some of the prejudices against interfaith marriages when we married in the mid-1990s. Changing Hanalee’s race didn’t feel honest, though. That wasn’t the story that wanted to be told.

I conferred with my agent and my early readers, all of whom urged me to go forward with the novel. It was important to me to consult with readers of different backgrounds, but I also understood that the opinions of a few people would not necessarily reflect the reactions of all readers.

I approached the creation of my characters the same way I do with all my novels: through intense, detailed research. Thanks to the Oregon Black Pioneers, the Oregon Historical Society, and the Washington County Museum, I found a wealth of information about the first decades of the 1900s in Oregon—everything from photographs to letters and personal items from the time period, as well as oral histories and museum exhibits, such as the wonderful “A Community on the Move,” presented by both the Oregon Black Pioneers and the Oregon Historical Society in 2015. I also dove into 1920s Harlem Renaissance literature, exploring the works of such writers as Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Wallace Thurman, who wrote about the varying experiences of African Americans and biracial individuals during the era. I do not claim to have gotten everything right. However, I made every attempt to portray Hanalee’s experiences, as well as Joe’s, with accuracy, honesty, and respect. Any mistakes made in this regard are entirely my own.

For Joe’s character, I conducted research using such sources as Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest, by Peter Boag (University of California Press, 2003), and the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (www.glapn.org). I first learned about the eugenics movement when I read the book Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Robert Whitaker (Basic Books, 2001). Interestingly, the University of Vermont’s website (www.uvm.edu) contains a highly detailed page covering the history of the eugenics movement in Oregon, including a lengthy list of links to historical documents, photographs, and institutions related to the use of eugenics in the state.

When writing a novel about the prejudices of the past, a writer must inevitably tread a delicate line when deciding whether to incorporate terms and labels now considered offensive. If I chose to completely strip The Steep and Thorny Way of such words, I felt I’d be sanitizing history—cleaning it up and pretending that modern political correctness actually existed in the past. I strove to study the language of the 1920s to reflect how people in that era would have described both Hanalee and Joe and to learn how the two of them would have identified themselves, to make their characters and social interactions as authentic as possible. There are some words, however, whose power to hurt and belittle goes beyond the need for historical accuracy, and I chose not to use them. No offense is intended by the inclusion of any derogatory and/or outdated words within this book.

As I mentioned before, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet served as the template for the main plot structure of the novel, as well as the inspiration for the characters and the source of the chapter titles. I also wanted to incorporate an African American story to reflect Hanalee’s father’s influence upon her. I turned to the 1996 Coretta Scott King Award–winning story collection Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales, by Virginia Hamilton (Blue Sky Press, 1995)—a book I highly recommend. The Creole-based tale “Marie and Redfish” particularly caught my eye. I did a little digging and also found an 1889 retelling of the same story, titled “Posson [sic] Doré,” or “The Golden Fish,” in The Journal of American Folklore (Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 36–40, American Folklore Society, Jan.–Mar., 1889). I strove to make Hanalee aware of stories and songs from her father’s Southern heritage, as well as from his years of working at the Portland Hotel, in which he would have met other employees transplanted from various regions of the South. To me, “The Golden Fish” also wonderfully represented Hanalee’s growing connection to Joe and his fears of getting caught and butchered. The folktale is one of violence, yet also one of survival and love. I hope readers will find the same to be true of The Steep and Thorny Way.