Interview with Author Amy Greene

Amy Greene's debut novel, Bloodroot, has a lyrical voice and a riveting family drama set deep in the Appalachians that you'll long remember. This New York Times best selling novel, which comes out in paperback this month, tells the story of Myra Lamb, a mysterious and wild young girl who's inherited "The Touch" from her grandmother. There's passion and loss, magic and family secrets, and complex relationships set against a dream-like yet totally believable setting. Here's more from Amy:

Jennifer Haupt: I know you grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, and your parents told you stories about the Appalachian people. Was there one story in particular, or specific people they told you about, that was the inspiration for Bloodroot?

Amy Greene: It's true that my writing has been inspired by the folklore of Appalachia, and all the stories I grew up hearing. I'm lucky enough to have inherited a rich tradition of storytelling and folk belief, passed down through generations of my family. One particular scene in Bloodroot, where Clifford blows down Byrdie's throat to heal her thrush, is based on a story that my dad tells about his mom taking his baby sister to a neighbor man who had never laid eyes on his father, who cured her thrush the same way.

My mother also tells a story about a witch named Huldie that lived down the road from her when she was a little girl, who would read the neighbors' fortunes in coffee grounds. In Bloodroot, I named the witch Lou Ann. She puts a curse on her cousins that won't be lifted until there's a baby born in their line with haint blue eyes. A haint is what we call a spirit here in the mountains, and because spirits can't cross water, that aquamarine shade of blue is supposed to fool them away. That kind of folk magic has been practiced here since the 1700's, when settlers brought it over from Scotland and Ireland, and it's still part of our culture today.

JH: Myra is such a wonderful, complex character. How did you find her?

AG: Bloodroot started with this image I had of a woman with black hair and blue eyes living in the mountain woods with her twins, hiding from some kind of danger. At first, I was mostly interested in exploring the character of this woman I had envisioned, not sure whether a story would evolve. I just picked up my pen and began writing without a plan, compelled by my interest in Myra. While I knew that she would be the heart of the story, and that I would find her eventually, I wrote about all the other characters first, getting to know her through the people whose lives she turned upside down. Bloodroot ended up being told by six narrators because I felt strongly that they all had something necessary to say about Myra.

JH: Do you believe in-have you witnessed-the magic powers that Byrdie and Myra possess?

AG: Although I've never witnessed it firsthand, there are people in my own family who are said to have the touch--like my great-aunt who took off warts by rubbing stones in a circle around each one and then throwing the stones away, and my grandmother who is rumored to have once raised the kitchen table off the floor just by looking at it. When I was small, I remember a friend of the family moving out of her house in the hollow because it was "hainted." People here do still believe in and practice folk magic, especially the older generation. I think it still holds weight because, for whatever reason, psychological or mystical, people see tangible results.

JH: The women in this story are so strong-heart-breaking and inspiring. I know that your mother worked on a tobacco farm, and I'm wondering if she was an inspiration for any of the characters in Bloodroot?

AG: I think the historically hardscrabble way of life here in Appalachia has made strength necessary to survive, particularly for women. Myra's grandmother, Byrdie, was inspired in part by my mother, along with other tough women who had a hand in raising me, like my aunts and my neighbors and the ladies that I went to church with. While the characters aren't based on specific people, they're composites of many people I've known and loved, with bits and pieces of myself thrown in.

JH: When did you first come up with the seed of this beautiful story and how did it develop? How long did it take you to write it?

AG: I started working on the first draft of Bloodroot back in 2006. I spent hours shut away in my bedroom with a notebook and pen, emptying the story from my head onto paper. The very first draft was fairly easy to write, and I was able to finish it within a few months. Then it took almost a year to form a novel from the messy collection of character sketches and scenes that I had accumulated in my notebook.

JH: It's not easy to incorporate a foreign way of speaking into a manuscript and you've done it beautifully with the Scots-Irish dialect. Was this difficult for you to do?

AG: In the first draft of Bloodroot, bringing the language I've heard all my life to the page wasn't as much of a challenge, maybe because I can hear the voices of my family, friends and neighbors when I close my eyes. They just flowed naturally into the narrative. But in successive drafts I focused more on making the vernacular of Appalachia more digestible and accessible to people from other parts of the country.

JH: How difficult was it to leave your characters after you finished writing this novel and go on to find new characters for your next novel?

AG: It was hard when Bloodroot was released last year to sit back and watch it take on a life of its own, to let go of the story I wrote in private and release it into the world. The story and the characters are still with me. And even though I have other stories to tell, and other characters to fall in love with, Bloodroot will always be special. No matter how many novels there are to come, there will never be another first one.

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JH: Is there one true thing that you discovered when writing Bloodroot, or learned from Myra?

AG: In the process of working on Bloodroot, I explored how much inheritance shapes who we become and where we end up, and how much of a struggle it can be to forge your own identity, especially in Appalachia, where the pull is strong to follow tradition. But the one true thing I came away with is this: as hard as it might be to overcome whatever dark legacies and circumstances you've inherited, it's possible to move forward with what's good from the life you've lived and leave the rest behind.

Amy Greene was born in the foothills of East Tennessee's Smoky Mountains, where she still lives with her husband and two children. Her critically-acclaimed debut novel, Bloodroot, was a New York Times national bestseller. Her second novel, Long Man, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012. She has been nominated for a Weatherford Award, and was recently named Tennessee Writer of the Year.