Cranberry Bogs, Appalachia and Dysfunctional Families: A Q&A with Kay Chronister
Lush and eerie, gorgeous and gothic, The Bog Wife is a disconcerting tale of complex family mythologies, crippling poverty and a cranberry bog with a vengeance. Kay Chronister (Desert Creatures, Thin Places) joined blog writer Isabelle McConville to talk all about her brand-new novel, The Bog Wife, down below.
Hardcover $28.00
The Bog Wife: A Novel
The Bog Wife: A Novel
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Hardcover $28.00
Five siblings in West Virginia unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured.
Five siblings in West Virginia unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured.
IM: First, can you please set up the story of The Bog Wife?
KC: The Bog Wife centers on a family with five adult children in their twenties and thirties who have lived for generations in a sacred agreement with the bog just outside of their ancestral home. When the story picks up, there has been an unexpected rupture in that relationship. The bog does not seem to be holding up its end of the bargain anymore, and so the family has to figure out how to move forward and what to do next.
IM: Where did this story really start for you and what made you want to write it?
KC: I started with the idea that I wanted to write about a family. I wanted to write about sibling relationships and everything really evolved from there. I knew if I was writing a family drama, it was probably going to be a gothic family drama, and there would be some darkness and an element of the supernatural. The second thing I thought about was setting. I wondered where I wanted this family to be, and that’s where the bog came in. Everything else flowed from that.
IM: They are such an interesting family, the Haddesleys. We have these five incredible siblings — there’s Eda, Charlie, Wenna, Percy and Nora. Did the siblings come to you fully formed as a package deal or did one voice come first?
KC: They were definitely not themselves at first. There was a lot of exploration in early drafting to figure out who these people were and how they connected to each other. I started with very foggy ideas of an oldest sister and a youngest child. The first character I had close to her final form was Wenna, who is the sibling that has left and is now returning. Her return to the family is of one of the catalysts of the plot; I thought a lot about why she would leave, what would get her to come back, and how she’d feel about it. Her personality came first, and then her reacting to her siblings and experiencing them again after time away is how I started to build them out as people more.
IM: As readers, I think we can try to relate to what we read, so I found myself wondering, ‘Am I like Wenna? Am I like Nora or Percy?’ Did you have any similar thoughts while writing them and did you have a favorite voice to write in?
KC: Definitely. I’m the oldest of four, so those sibling dynamics are very familiar from my own life, although the Haddesley siblings are not like my siblings. The easiest character for me to write was Eda. I think she’s probably the least likable character for a lot of people, but all I had to do to write from Eda’s perspective was think of my own bossy eldest sister instincts, and wonder: what if I just let those run unchecked? What if I never held back at all? It was very easy for me to get into her head space. Writing the youngest two, Percy and Nora, was the hardest for me, because I haven’t experienced being the youngest. I don’t have any older siblings. Thinking about Nora and Percy’s perspectives and how they would experience things was more of a conscious effort. By the end, I loved them all so much as characters. I really enjoyed hopping between their perspectives.
IM: I thought Eda was such a compelling character because she made me feel so much. At times, I found myself getting annoyed with her, and I thought, ‘Why are you trying to control everything?’ I was getting really frustrated, and then I finally realized that no one else is helping her keep things in order, so that’s exactly why she’s acting the way she is.
“I felt like I was on a razor’s edge with readers’ sympathy for her . . . she’s behaving badly because she feels like she has to.”
KC: I felt like I was on a razor’s edge with readers’ sympathy for her, but because I can feel the place that all of her unlikeable actions and thoughts are coming from, I understood that she’s behaving badly because she feels like she has to. The dynamic of the family supports her doing this and even requires her to do it.
IM: I think they’re all products of their environment. They’re all very limited in how they can react to things based on where they are and the functions between them. I found it really interesting that each sibling has a secret and they’re all upholding their own resentments with one another. How did you make those choices, and did you find it difficult to get your characters to do bad things to each other?
KC: I struggled a lot at the beginning with how I was going to balance writing their different points of views and bring them into a unified story. What ended up working for me was to think of each sibling as having their own individual arc and story, but have those stories intersect. Each sibling has a journey they’re on, whether it’s a secret or a resentment, that needs to get resolved by the end of the book. What I found a lot of fun was thinking about how if Charlie has this thing going on, how is that going to intersect with this other thing Percy has going on?
“We all think of ourselves as the protagonists of our stories“
I think in real life, we all think of ourselves as the protagonists of our stories, and they happen to intersect with other people, but we think of what’s going on with us as the main thrust of what matters. For each of these characters, it’s the same. Their own inner turmoil is what they’re most focused on, but it’s going to intersect with their siblings’ problems. That was how they came into conflict with each other. Whenever there was a time where a character is behaving very badly towards another — which comes up quite a lot — I knew that they weren’t thinking of how they were affecting their sibling. They’re thinking about how things feel from their perspective. It probably doesn’t make them great people, but I think that’s sometimes true to how we experience life.
IM: Did you have to shut one narrative to go to the other, or were you aware of what was going on in one siblings’ head while you were writing another?
KC: A bit of both — I wrote in the order the book is in, but I did a lot of rewriting. For example, I’d often have a version a Percy chapter, and then I would write an Eda chapter and realize the Percy chapter needed to change. Maybe we need to hear from Charlie between those two. It was a structural work in progress to figure out where I was going to slot in each of their perspectives. It was very important to me that no one disappear for too long, and that when we’re in their perspective, they’re doing something to move the story forward.
IM: I’m always interested in hearing about the creative process of characterization; I know some writers say their characters push them into what the narrative should be and have a really demanding presence. Did you experience that with the Haddesleys?
KC: I’ve never been that kind of writer, but this is the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to that. Once I’d developed each of these five very neurotic, very unique individuals, I felt like the choices for the plot were going to be very determined by what would they’d each realistically do. I couldn’t force them to react a certain way to get the plot to move in a direction I wanted it to. I did start to feel that pull a little bit, but I don’t think of it in that personal of a way.
IM: The issue of the trespassers really stood out to me — it’s how you open the book, and they stay relevant throughout. I think they represent the siblings’ doubt, fear and anxiety about their lineage and their legacy slowly creeping into their thoughts whether they want to admit it or not. It physically manifests as these stems that pop up in the bog. I think their individual compacts with the bog and each other represent the generational cycle and trauma they’re stuck in. They can either break those cycles or continue to uphold them. Why was this something that you wanted to write about?
“I’m really interested in generational trauma, the way family systems operate, and the ways these unhealthy dynamics continue”
KC: I’m really interested in generational trauma, the way family systems operate, and the ways these unhealthy dynamics continue even though no one particularly enjoys them. That’s something I find to be really compelling, interesting and frustrating. Giving it a supernatural element with the bog allowed me to think through these things and blow them up to be a little bit bigger than life size, a little more dramatic.
IM: I think with everything these characters go through, I’d argue that there are aspects of this novel that make it a hopeful story. I was rooting for each of them, especially when we get Wenna’s daydream of what they all could become outside of the confines of the bog, and their legacy, and their relationships to one another. Do you have hope for the Haddesely clan? Do you have any dreams for them?
KC: I love that question. I struggled between wanting to bail them out of their situation — because I came to really care about them as characters — and wanting to give them an ending that I thought realistically flowed from what they could or would do. When I think about what I hope happens after the ending of the novel, I think each of them have a different version of what self-actualization or achieving what they really want in life looks like. This fantasy that Wenna has about how they might have been if they were raised in more normal circumstances, is a version of what could be, but I don’t think it’s necessarily where all of them would feel the most fulfilled. Some of the choices they make at the end of the book are versions of pursuing self-fulfillment that might not be fulfilling for you or me but might be the best thing for these characters. I just hope they’re all happy in their own weird existences.
IM: I like to believe that they are. Now, to pivot a bit, the Haddesleys live in crippling poverty and their land doesn’t sustain them as it once did. Reading this made me think about the other incredible books based in Appalachia. There’s the Pulitzer Prize winner, Demon Copperhead, Shiner by Amy Jo Burns, Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy, books by Charles Frazier and Donna Everhart. With all of those in mind, why did you set the story in Appalachia, and what do you think it is about this ancient landmass that draws us to it as readers?
KC: I chose to set the novel in Appalachia partly for ecological reasons and partly for historical reasons. I started by knowing I wanted to put the characters in some kind of wetland setting. Once I decided I wanted it to be a boreal bog, that narrowed my geographic area. Most of boreal bogs are further north in New England or in Canada, if we’re talking about North America. It’s unusual to find one as far South as West Virginia, but they do exist up in the mountains. Once I had this idea of a swath of land where we might find a bog, I thought about if I wanted this to be a story set in New England, Canada, or somewhere else. West Virginia and Appalachia ended up being the place I was really drawn to writing about because it has such a unique history.
“We as a country are fascinated by Appalachia . . . it doesn’t quite look like anywhere else, and you feel the ancientness of the Appalachian Mountains when you’re there”
White settlers have not been in Appalachia as long as the rest of the country — it came after the first waves of colonization. The way Appalachia has been settled and the way it’s been carved up has led to the poverty that we see there now. A lot of the systemic issues go back a couple hundred years into that history. In Appalachia, the question of historical legacy is so complicated and tied in with exploiting the land. The Haddesleys are very economically insecure when we meet them, but they weren’t always. They have a background of wealth, and they have this big old mansion they’re living in. I think we as a country are fascinated by Appalachia on and off. It’s a really beautiful part of the country — the land is very rich and lush, it doesn’t look quite like anywhere else, and you feel the ancientness of the Appalachian Mountains when you’re there. But also, I’ve seen it described as an internal colony of America, and that’s how it’s been treated historically. It’s been abused very badly. I think the rest of the country feels really weird about it — we feel guilty, we look down on it and we don’t understand it. There are many mixed reasons for why we keep wanting to tell stories about Appalachia over and over again.
IM: I think readers will agree, especially when we consider its unique history that is still so engrained in American folklore. I don’t know that there are many other areas in the United States, or in North America, that are as mythologized as Appalachia. I’m always curious to see why writers are drawn to it, because I know that whether I’m on TikTok or listening to podcasts about the old myths and strange happenings there, I’m always immediately hooked. A lot of your past work really shines through in this book as well — Thin Places is an excellent collection of grim and gothic stories. Your debut novel Desert Creatures is an ecological horror. What interests you about these genres, and why is it important to you to write them?
KC: I’ve always loved gothic stories, and I’ve loved stories about environment and nature since I was very little. To give an example of both, The Secret Garden was my favorite book when I was seven or eight. I’m really drawn to atmosphere in fiction, and horror is such an atmosphere driven genre, particularly the strains of it that I tend to write, like gothic and eco horror. I enjoy feeling immersed in a place, in a mood and a feeling. Horror is such a powerful way to talk about things that are taboo or hard to express. For me, it feels more natural to think through things that happen in real life — like dysfunctional family dynamics — by putting a supernatural gloss over them and imagining them in that way.
IM: I agree with what you’re saying about a gothic atmosphere and horror being used as outlets to talk about these really tough situations in life. It makes me think a lot about White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. I love that book. I think she writes atmosphere and that creeping domestic type of horror really well. Can you talk a bit about your influences?
KC: I love Helen Oyeyemi’s work — she’s one of my all-time favorites. Most gothic novels are all-time favorites for me; Shirley Jackson is one of my biggest influences. With each of her books, she does something so different, so she progresses as a writer and brings something new to the table every time. I really love Jeff VanderMeer, who’s a big one for all weird fiction writers. Daisy Johnson and Julia Armfield are both great writers of that weird domestic horror that I love. Joy Williams and Joyce Carol Oates as well.
IM: I can really see each of those influences in your work. What do you hope readers get out of reading this book, and what do you hope they walk away knowing and feeling when they finish it?
KC: I hope readers understand that every person in a dysfunctional family system has their own perspective of what’s going on and how much it informs the way people treat and mistreat each other. There is hope for things to change and for those dynamics, even if they’re really old and really ingrained, be walked away from.
IM: Thank you so much for doing this today. I can’t wait for people to read this book.
KC: Thank you.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.