Poured Over: Bonnie Jo Campbell on The Waters

By Jenna Seery / January 13, 2024 at 6:00 am

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters follows the interwoven and often complicated lives of a family of women inhabiting an island in a Michigan swamp. Campbell joins us to talk about the challenges in crafting this novel, matching her unique characters with an equally intriguing setting, small-town storytelling and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.                 

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.         

Featured Books (Episode):
The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Full Episode Transcript:
Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Bonnie Jo Campbell. I don’t even know where to start. I love your work. I mean, one, I love your work, but also, you take me to communities and places that I might not otherwise encounter. And that’s one of the things I love about reading, the new novel is The Waters. It’s just out. So we’re staying spoiler free in this conversation. I think anyone who listens to the show regularly knows that I am not a fan of spoilers, especially not for new releases. So Bonnie, thank you so much for joining us. It’s really great to see you. When did you start the waters? Because I mean, honestly, Once Upon a River was seemingly not that long ago, and yet it was published in 2011.

Bonnie Jo Campbell
I know, it seems like a long time ago. Well, you know, I try to figure out how long these books take to write. The truth is, they always take longer than you really think they do. Because you can find things in them that, harken back Once Upon a River took five years to write. But there are things in that book that harkened back to 15 years ago. So The Waters, I guess there are elements that are probably 20 years old, but I started working on it, probably it took eight years. So and you know, it’s funny those COVID years, everybody thought those COVID years were going to be so productive for writers. But I don’t think they were, I don’t know. I mean, we were all writing, but I’m not sure we were writing well, or we were writing what we wanted to write somehow. This book took a long time to write and it was very hard to write, it almost was enough to make me think I never want to write another book again. It was so hard.

Wait, was it these women? Or was it because you’ve said in past interviews that you’d like to put your characters, interesting characters in complicated situations, I’m paraphrasing you but you put some interesting characters into some very complicated situations in The Waters. And I’m just wondering, though, okay, you just told me that you thought you might stop writing because of this book.

Maybe I’m being hyperbolic. Like, this is too hard. I mean, I think because it turned out that in order to write this book, basically, I had to have cancer, my mother had to die. Somehow, I tried to write a light hearted book about a girl who loved mathematics that was me trying to write a light hearted book, a fun book, I’m starting to think we write books, despite ourselves or me anyway, you write the book that your soul wants to write, even though that wasn’t what you intended to write? You know, for me, anyway.

You’ve given us three generations of women. There’s the mother herself, which she has a standard sort of name, but I love the fact that she’s called herself so I’m just going to keep referring to her as herself in this conversation. And herself has three daughters, Primrose, and also Molly and Molly’s the middle. Then there’s her granddaughter, Dorothy, who everyone calls Donkey. And Donkey loves math, and men. Yeah, math and men. But these women, these women, they’re complicated. They’re prickly, they are stubborn, they want their own lives. They’re living in rural Michigan in a very small community. And then you take it one step further, and you put them all on an island. When Molly comes and goes from the island, and Prim comes and goes, but really, Donkey and Herself are on this island. And I did have a moment when I started reading, I was like, what year are we in? And then I realized it was the present day.

Yeah, it is, you know, I am trying to make it feel timeless. And nobody has a cell phone. So you know, I did leave it vague in that sense. I loved putting these people in this landscape. But the funny thing is, is the landscape, I often say my stories rise out of the landscape. I mean, landscape reflects the character. And so it’s all very muddled. And initially, when it was going to be this lighthearted story, it wasn’t in a swamp island. It was just on a farm in a kind of farmhouse, it was a farming area. But the more complicated these women got, I realized this is a swamp of character. This is a swamp in every way. And this is where it has to be. This is a very fertile, mucky, uncertain place. I mean, decisions are hard to make and things are unclear. You know, in the swamp, you don’t even know the next place. You’re going to step you know, you could sink in, you know, and disappear in this swamp anyway. So I really I did love making the swamp up. And I kind of made it up from I always used to tell people I grew up on a creek, but the truth is, it was a swamp. And I don’t know why I told people it was a creek it was a swamp with a creek going through it and shows you how you have your own view of what really happened. And then my grandparents had this little tiny island in the St. Joe River, hey, they had their own private island. It was the craziest thing. And so I kind of put those two together. I mean, I really have had experience of living on a tiny island, and it really does give you a different view of the world. I mean, you can stop people from coming across your bridge. You know, this island just had a little walking bridge. And so that’s kind of how I built this. I wanted there to be a physical barrier between these women and the rest of the town. It’s kind of heavy handed. It’s a little heavy handed. I hope I made it seem natural in a way.

I think when readers meet Herself, they will absolutely buy in the way I did, I should say other readers, there is no way this woman was living in town with other people. There is no way.

I do like her name. Because I know it seems kind of silly, but I’m from an Irish family, right? And there was always this use of the word himself. Like the man of the family, you know, does himself want coffee, and so but I’d never heard it herself. So I thought we need a family where the matriarch is as much a force of nature as any patriarch ever was.

She is, she is absolutely I mean, she’s not like anyone I’ve met recently on the pages of a book, and I’m quite enjoying the fact that she’s just, she’s a little wild. I mean, all of these women I, yes, Prim has gone to become a lawyer and Molly’s a nurse. But they’re responding to how they grew up in some ways, right? And Rose is Rose and Donkey is Donkey. And Rose and Donkey both have much tighter connections to the community and the island, than their sister suit and they are slightly feral. And I say that in a nice way. But these women are slightly feral.

Yeah, they and they all are. Yeah, even the ones who consider themselves civilized, you know, are quite feral. You know, there’s something about that, even though these women, not all of them are on the island. They are on the island. Like at every point, you know, there’s this kitchen on the island. And anytime you’re in the kitchen, you’re very aware of who is here and who is not here. So in a sense, even if it’s just Herself and Donkey, you know, the three sisters are there, the mother, and the aunts are actually there and the table where all their chairs are, they are feral. They’re exactly who they are. And I mean for everybody who comes from that island to be a healer of some kind. Molly’s a nurse, obviously, she’s a healer and Rose. She seems like a lazy slacker. You know, she seems like just a lazy slacker party girl who can’t be relied upon. But I take her very seriously. I’ve always been interested in women like this, women who just can’t behave and they can’t follow the rules. They have to be who they are, despite every force in the universe against them. There are people who read this book, some of my readers who well one of my readers for sure, who was massive was a male, just couldn’t stand Rose Thorn. Just couldn’t stand her. Like she’s so lazy. Why do you want us to like her? And I was like, well, she’s the one who really ties together the whole town. I mean, she’s the one who connects the town and the islands in my opinion.

No, I agree with you. Because also lazy is not the word that I would use to describe Rose. And there are some other characters who are like, yeah, she’s a total slacker. What is going on here? She feels broken to me in a way. And I have a lot of compassion for her. I mean, obviously, there’s a piece of her backstory that does inform some of what I’m saying. But also, even before that, though, she just never seemed like she had her place. And yet, she can’t quit the island. Right? Like she keeps coming back. She keeps coming back. And then I get the feeling she is finally staying. Yeah, I’m not giving anything away by saying she just always returns.

Rose always returns to the island. But yeah, there’s something about her. I mean, this is a broken town. I mean, this is a town that’s losing its soul. And there’s a way to look at this story. That’s kind of a psychological way, maybe even a young way of looking at a situation. And if we’re looking that way, Rose Thorn is a person who other people project on, you know, she’s a person that other people are always putting their own junk on her, you know, the people who don’t like her, or the people who she’s the bad one, you know, in the town, and they enjoy it, you know, they enjoy disparaging of her. And I think that that kind of person can be a really important person in the community. But if you’re a person who other people project on, it’s sort of exhausting. It’s sort of exhausting. I mean, I think all of us have had that experience in real life of having other people put their crap on you. And it’s like, it seems like it’s shouldn’t be anything and yet you find yourself worn out by what other people are thinking, but I just enjoy Rose Thorn, and she’s an adventurer to some degree. And she makes conversation. And she is based on a real character who I grew up with. There was there was a gal in my hometown and I thanked her in the back of the book. She was all messed up. But she was somebody who was really important to all of us, you know, and she was the one who would, if you were a young person, you could always talk to her. She was a little older than me. And, you know, she was some very important person. So I really enjoy a character like that. And I also enjoy the Molly character, the nurse and a lot of people don’t care for her because she’s such a know at all. And she’s very stuffy and opinionated and very, you know, science oriented. But you know, she’s the perfect nurse, because she comes right in and she just, you know, bustles in like, you know, I think I think Donkey calls her a woodchuck, she kind of bustles around and bustles into a situation and she’ll do the right thing you know, so kind of fix somebody or provide medicine when somebody doesn’t want it. And she’ll take care of people.

Molly is kind of the perfect middle child. And she is the middle of the three grow up. But Molly is a middle child, I think we need to cut Molly a little bit of slack because she’s bookended by really big personalities on either side of her and she’s just gonna be like, I’m gonna go do my thing. But all of these women, all of these women are of this place, right? I don’t think you can separate these characters from this place. And I wouldn’t want to separate them from this place. And as much as Prim has gone to the west coast and said, Oh, no, I’m not going to live here. She’s of this place. I mean, you can’t it’s almost like the swamp and the town are characters in their own right. And yeah, there’s a cast that rolls through too. But I mean, essentially, it’s these women, this girl, this town and the swamp that.

Yeah, definitely. And it’s so funny, because Molly, you know, Molly’s the one who, who scoffs at the whole island, you know, that she thinks, you know, kind of has an opinion that this island, this island existence really is problematic and shouldn’t be done away with. And yet you can’t even imagine her without the family being there on the island, her existence really wouldn’t make any sense. I mean, isn’t it funny that like, in a family, even the people who go away from the family, that’s their identity, it’s not, they’re just loose in the world, it’s that they particular went away from that family. So they’re very intimately connected with that family, you know, they’re still there. And I think, you know, Prim, absolutely, she may be a million miles away and only show up once every three years. So distinctly there, you know, her personality is there. And, and in a family like this, everybody gets to riff off everybody all the time, whether or not they’re there. I had fun doing that. I mean, they’re holding together once in the whole book, everybody is finally together. So and it’s funny because I introduced them on page one or something about here’s the family. And then so I keep them apart as long as I can, until they finally all get to come together.

And it is really satisfying. But also Molly is of the sisters, she’s the one who notices almost everything right? There’s a moment where when they’re all together, finally, she’s the one who knows that Donkey, the then 12 year old, likes to eat her green beans unbroken. I mean, Donkey is a kid who loves math. She loves her family, she loves her mama, she really loves her mama, but she loves her grandmother, even though she’s a little afraid of her. But like Molly notices everything. And she doesn’t always get credit for that, because there is the day where she’s walking around with the cat ears on that was pretty cool.

A crazy cat lady.

It’s part of her thing. But also she’d been wearing it was Halloween, she was wearing cat ears to you know, entertain her patients at the hospital. I mean, she’s not as cold as Donkey makes her out to be, because we are in many ways, seeing this world through the eyes of a 12 year old who makes a couple of bad decisions. And I may have dropped some editorial notes at your 12 year old well, then 11 year old before she turns 12 There’s a moment with a bucket, you know what’s in the bucket, we’re not going to go in there. And I’m like, really, really like. She’s 11, she doesn’t know, as the nominal adult in the room holding the book in my hands. I’m like, really is really an idea. And it’s not gonna end well. Right. But the way you keep moving the story forward, right, you’ve got this series of moments and decisions and this 11-year-old that is five foot 11.

I did that because I was five foot 11. So I grew up my entire height by the time I was 11.

You also have a master’s degree in math, my friend. I mean, I knew you’ve done a PhD program. I didn’t realize you’d finished. So you have an MFA and a master’s and there is beauty in math. I will even I who was not a big math person will admit that, yes, math can be a gorgeous thing when it’s written out as a proof and all these other kinds, and we do lots of things because of math. But I do want to talk about the balance between math and creating a novel because to me, they seem interrelated, right? Like learning music, math, and foreign languages. They all sort of work in conjunction and writing fiction is not that dissimilar. I mean, it’s, it’s not that you’re using a formula per se. But there are some things you have to think about when you’re constructing a really great thing, right?

It is funny that, you know, I always I actually, I keep meaning to, in my spare time to write an article that’s about how writing short stories actually is something like doing mathematical proofs, in a sense, you know, in a short story, you’re actually trying to show something, you know, and in a mathematical proof, you’re trying to show something and you use in a mathematical proof you use, you know, the language of logic, mathematical logic, and in a story, you’re using human emotions and a narrative. And so there is something and you know, the plotting is, I mean, that was the hell of this book. You couldn’t believe how— I really question whether I had lost my mind when I was writing this book. Because I had a draft many, many, many years ago. It was long, and I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out what is going wrong. Why can I just write this book? And I really thought, you know, I’d lost my mind. And I started rereading those, like, basic how to write books. Like all these people, you know, Ben Percy like, yeah, right about, oh, we all every book should have a three, act, whatever. You know, a lot of people who love plot love to make it like this thing. But I was reading all those books trying to figure out why can I make this novel behave? And then, you know, and then the novel was what it wanted to be. It’s the spiraling thing I mean, the story goes away, and she comes back. And it’s not a straightforward narrative. And then, after I finished, I started reading Sharon Blackie, do you ever read her she’s this mythologist from the British Isles, this Irish Scottish mythologist. And she talks about what’s wrong, especially for women with the heroic journey, the hero’s journey. Turns out, it’s not made for us. There’s this thing she calls the post heroic journey, which is a spiral. It’s more about community. And it’s more about I mean, the hero’s journey, we all know what it is from Joseph Campbell, that you’re, you know, the hero was called away on a journey called away to do a task. And it turns out, that wasn’t what this novel was. And I was trying to make the novel be that, and I was like, well, maybe there’s three tasks, because I have these three women. And so I was trying to force it into the shape. But it kind of after I’ve started reading this Sharon Blackie stuff, I was like, Finally, what a relief. What she describes is exactly what I did. So I was glad I managed to like do a thing that at least is recognizable to someone.

Having read the novel to it was just, I’m not thinking necessarily about structure. But I’m also thinking about you sitting here telling me that you’re trying to put a narrative on to feral women are like, I don’t want to be in a typical narrative.

They were not going to cooperate. And the thing is another thing about the book is that sometimes when I look at it, when I think about why did I end the book the way I did, there’s a whole bunch of this book, I mean, the men or there’s some very badly behaved men in this book, but I think to some degree, this book is about redeeming men. The book, in a lot of ways is about this toxic masculinity. And we can’t deny it’s happening. And in rural America, it’s happening everywhere. And it’s happening in women as well as men. I mean, that masculinity, we all have elements of it. And it’s out of control, like in this town, I wanted to investigate that like what is happening, this masculine element of wanting to develop the swamp, that’s an element that goes to all through the book is that land use, you know, what is the swamp good for? Well, the women see that it’s good for medicine, and it’s good for all the animals there. And it’s good for life, and everybody takes enjoyment from the swamp. But there’s a lot of this sort of farming community that just can’t see why we don’t just fill it in and turn it into fields, you know, and that’s the kind of masculine you know, the Bible tells us, right, make use of all the beasts of the whatever in the fields and we should be developing this land, but that’s the sort of masculine element and so I’m trying to work with this hyper masculine community. Just see how long the Earth, can, we get back to some balance. So I have a sort of serious intention here laying out to fix society.

But art is part of that. I mean, that’s, that’s where I’m gonna say we can actually do that. I mean, we know that reading fiction helps increase empathy. We know this, like, there are actual scientific studies saying that you can build an empathy muscle by reading novels about people who are not quite like you. I mean, I again, as I said, at the top of this interview, I was trying to figure out where we were in time and very quickly figured out that we were in the present day, but I did have a moment of, okay, because it’s you, we can’t see anywhere. And I do appreciate that timelessness. Because I do think you are asking questions, especially when I see the relationship between herself and her daughters and her granddaughter, there are patterns that as a society we have perpetuated, that, regardless of where you are, I mean, maybe they’re more pronounced in some communities than others. But these are all sort of universal concerns. And there are some men, I will admit that I met a couple of them and I’m like, Oh, you hypocrite. And that’s what I might say about there’s one especially who was like, Well, I guess I do need Herself’s medicine and healing. And but I don’t believe in it. And by the way, they’re all just everyone’s trying to do their best they really are. And some are more successful than others. But it is, at least for me, I mean, I’m a city person, I fully admit that I’m a city person, I’ve spent time in small towns, and they’re kind of fascinating to me, because they’re so different. You grew up, though, in quite rural spaces. I mean, you’ve spent time in Chicago and places like that. So it’s not like you’ve always been in tiny places. But there is something very attractive to you about the communities that you write about. And it’s not just finding balance. And it’s not just trying to fix us. But there is something to the storytelling. And I just can we sit with that for a second?

When I was first trying to be a writer, you know, right out of college, I did try to write about people in Chicago, because I was like they are way more interesting. And so yeah, I lived in Chicago, and I lived in Boston for a while. And, and weirdly, until I started writing about the kind of people I grew up with, my writing didn’t work. And then one day, I wrote a story about a girl going to the dump with her mother in a pickup truck. And it was like, oh, somehow, it’s like, this is what my voice is for, like, this is my experience. And this is the voice I had. And I don’t know what it is. I mean, I don’t want to feel like I can’t, that I wouldn’t be able to write about something else. But for some reason, so much of writing is about your sensibility, you know, and my sensibility requires maybe a certain amount of empty space or something. In a rural community, everybody has space around them. Writing that takes place in a city has to take into account that, you know, you may not be alone in the same way as easily. So my characters always have the opportunity to be alone, very much alone in nature. And maybe I see that as a way that’s somehow built into their character. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just somehow how my sensibility works, that I have all these characters who can be alone who can be these small communities, although the men, the funny thing about the men is they don’t really in this story anyway. They don’t really want to be alone. They like to be in this Greek chorus. They really serve as this Greek chorus of men.

I love the fact that you describe them as a Greek chorus because I will say there is a little bit of Lear, I felt a little bit of King Lear sort of throwing around in the background. And you do reference it at one point with Prim and Rose and Molly there’s a line that basically calls them out by Lear’s daughters names it’s a little Thousand Acres Jane Smiley’s it’s kind of that territory but not as direct and I just I love the idea that you’re putting together this rural America with Lear.

Yeah, it really was fun. Super fun when Jane Smiley did that. So but I’ve always seen in my family, there was three and my mother has a sister and a little brother. And I have a very, very strong grandfather. And my grandmother was wonderful. But it was my grandfather on the island who was the powerful one somehow I always saw my family as King Lear. I always saw it as Lear being an element. So I love playing with that. But I love especially having the granny be King Lear. I think that’s more fun to have a female version of that.

I very much enjoyed it. It was very satisfying. But I will say that herself and her daughters and her granddaughter, it did have me thinking about Margo from Once Upon a River and I do feel like they share an orbit that if they all bumped into each other on the street somewhere or on a river that they would absolutely understand each other. You’ve always talked about sort of setting your fiction in Comstock County, but I do feel like there are certain kind of woman. And I think there are some readers who might not realize that Margo, in Once Upon a River is Margo from Q Road. I’ve been reading you for quite some time, I have been reading it for quite some time. When I first read Once Upon a River and this was a while ago, obviously, I had a moment where I was like, wait, what? And I sort of feel like there might be an opportunity like Donkey could come back later.

I don’t know, I know how you feel about. Just bring all the women together all these fabulous women that I love to write so much. I know. Because you wonder, and people do ask me about that I go to the trouble of creating these, right. And they have like, lots more interesting stuff can happen to them, you know, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard to like, I could imagine writing things that happened. But actually coming up with the architecture for a novel, it’s so hard. That’s why like, I just, I’m eager to get back to writing some short stories. Because, you know, short stories, I literally come up with an interesting character in a difficult situation. That’s all I need and set me free. Although I say that, but every short story I’ve tried lately has turned into a 35-page monstrosity, so you never know where people are gonna go. They may not behave in a 16 page, you know, thing that you want.

Also famously one of the, was it American South? It’s one of the stories I think, from American Salvage that you played with for 25 years?

Yeah. And I was like, I couldn’t figure it out. That story. Dang. I was like, I care about this alcoholic and a drug addict. And they were in love. And I thought it was a very tender love story. And every time I wrote it, and I would share it with a friend, they all say like, I don’t want to read about these people. They’re horrible. And I was like, damn, I gotta go back to go and figure out because they’re not horrible. They’re just, I’m not doing my job. I’m not doing my job if you think they’re horrible, I have work to do. So I would march that story out. And that’s how it started feel with The Waters story. Because, you know, I love these characters. And I was in love with them. And I had an I mentioned you, I had a 650-page novel. And I love those scenes. I mean, I had a dinner scene that went on for 150 pages. And I just thought that was the most fun I’ve ever had my life. Just I mean, it was kind of like a set a play or some, you know, a three act play all taking place at dinner, you know, and I loved it. But I realized there was no way to create a structure. I mean, that’s the thing with a short story, I don’t worry as much about the architecture the thing, right. But I know that if people are going to invest, you know that much time into a novel, they really need it to be satisfying at the end, or at least I need to present it in a way that I can make a case to them. It shouldn’t be satisfying. You know, I can make a case that that crazy ending I put on this novel is just the right one.

I don’t think the ending is that crazy. It feels very organic. To me, it feels like the only way it was going to play out. I will say that someone loses their pants in the swamp. And I found that very, very funny, especially given who it was. And some other things got lost in that swamp. And I thought, well, this woman knows.

Well, you know, that somebody eventually had to go in.

And I’m glad it was him. I’m glad it was that person because couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. When I think of how quickly the story moves as well. I mean, this is it’s not a short book, but it’s also not the longest book either. It’s just it moves it exactly the way that it needs to move with. And it’s so interesting to me hearing you talk about how much it befuddled you because it doesn’t feel that way when you’re reading it.

The goal is to make these things look effortless. This was the absolute natural way that I happened. And there was no other way it could have happened.

But you’ve had the same editor for both novels, right? But the last two Once Upon a River and The Waters and I’m just wondering, can we talk about that process for a second? Because obviously, you are sitting there wrestling with this thing, eventually you send it off to your agent, but the real work really does sort of happen when you’re sitting with your editor and saying, Okay, now we have to do the thing, right?

Not really, I mean, no. Work is really for me sitting at that desk and Okay, I can’t expect Jill to— what she can tell me is, you know, it’s not really there, you know, she can tell me what she likes about it. And I have to be careful because she can only read it a few, you know, you can’t reread a novel too many times. So I have to be very careful about when I send it to her, because I have to be really sure that I need because her mind is only going to be fresh for it one time for sure. And then after that, as much as I can keep her right with me. So it really is that I had sent her a version and she kinda, you know, she told me what she liked about it, and what was working and what was not working. And I said, Great, I’m going back in, I showed her the 600-page version, we all agreed that was long. And so I went back in. And so, you know, I probably could have put upon her a little bit more, but it’s very dicey. Usually, I never want any reader to look at it more than once or possibly twice, because it can’t be fresh. And they’re all always remembering the old version, you know, that stuff is in there. So then the next version I shared with her was this length, she let me know what was working what she was worried about. And then what she’s really good for. It’s like the art ball practical tip. She’s got just a sensibility. And she’s always told me she like, you know, I trust myself, implicitly, she you know, she does trust herself. And she’s always right, you know, she’s always write about when something is off, then by the time you know, we are there, then it doesn’t need much more than then copy editing some line. And then copy editing. I need a lot of copy editing. No, that’s what I need.

Everyone needs a copy editor. I don’t care who you are.

Yeah, I need I need heavy copy editing. I mean, I probably need more line editing. And then copy editors willing to do that. And okay, but I just value you know, any time you’re not alone, when you’re writing stuff, it’s so great. Any time you have help, like, it’s such a joy to get assistance, you know, and my agent is very helpful.

He also writes novels to which I’m not sure how you have time.

So you know, it also means you can’t complain to them about how hard it is. I can’t complain to them. Like, oh, it’s so hard to be a writer because they’re like, Yeah, I’m a writer, and I have a full time job.

So but you also teach and you’ve taught for quite some time.

I’m not teaching right now. I’m just seem to be doing other things like fixing up houses. So you know, everything got neglected for so long, right? In the last couple of years, my husband and I have just been doing home repair. And that actually takes up a surprising amount of time.

It also seems like time to think though, and I’m thinking there’s some inspiration that comes out of it that.

I realized what I’m really good at is cleaning up messes, right? I think what I do with my books is horrible mess, right? And then I clean it up.

But also it sounds to me that community, I mean, having read all of your books, actually, community has always been the thing that comes first I mean, community and character and, and the story you just told me I mean, the fact that you and your husband, were willing to invest in your own backyard that way, there are easier ways to help make changes.

I know, after we made like a little bit of money. And then it was like we kept saying to each other. We don’t, we probably made minimum wage doing this. And we probably could have just gotten jobs, but it’s better, the neighborhood is better.

That seems to be the more important piece and that compassion, and that empathy runs through The Waters. I mean, you have some characters in this book, where I think some of us might be happy to have not met them necessarily. And humans are messy and complicated and very, very imperfect. I think everyone’s a little feral, even if you’re brushing your hair. And I mean, I just I think it’s part of being human, right. Like all of the people who are kind of like, well, I do the thing, and I show up and you know, whatever. But I think we’re complicated. I think we’re messy. I think we’re imperfect. I think we do the best we can.

It makes it fun. And you wonder and sometimes people are surprised that you know, “you write about such wild characters.” And I kind of think I think that too, like, aren’t we all kind of wild? And don’t we all resonate a little bit with the wilder characters. I mean, why do we like to read wild characters? Because there’s part of us, you know, I can remember when I first read, like The Beans of Egypt, Maine.

The Carolyn Chute.

I remember that. My eyes were open, like, Wow, here somebody is showing this thing. And these kids, they don’t go to school, they dig holes in the ground and live in the underground.

Remember rabbit on the doorknob. She leaves the package on the doorknob for the new guy.

Yes, right. And it was like she thought he should be so touched that she was giving him rabbits and dead rabbits. I just, that that book just opened, just blew the world open for me. And I always hope that like there’s a way of showing that wildness, but you know, the truth is, probably that book is not for everybody.

You know, I guess possibly I felt the same way though about Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. Yeah, I really like that the language in that book was electric and some of it is very hard to read. I’m not going to pretend that some of that book is not very hard to read. And same Beans of Egypt, Maine. I flew through that book the first time I read it. But same thing. There are moments where you’re just you realize what you’re reading. And it’s not the easiest thing, but the language and the story and the humanity and the people. And it just it breaks the world wide open. I think a lot of readers had that experience too with Demon Copperhead, the Barbara Kingsolver. That was just out in that voice of that kid, right? Like, yeah, and big book flies, though, because you’re just not…

How smart was she that she had her architecture all made for herself. Yeah, that was so smart. She got to focus on the characters and on the settings, like what a smart thing to do.

But speaking of smart things to do, I’m going to shift for just a second because you brought in a lot of The Wizard of Oz books, and I had him I knew I needed I’m looking at my notes. I’m like, I have to ask about this. Both Rose and obviously donkey, and I will say Donkey’s name is Dorothy but we call her Donkey. Wizard of Oz. Was that the book as a kid where you were just like, Uh huh, this is it. I’m a reader I’m all in or is it just…

I wasn’t really a reader as I am. The thing is, I think that the Oz books were the only books, my mom read them to us. And I think they were the only books that were read to us. I’ve recently found all the old versions of them. They’re just torn to hell, like we really read them. And I don’t know, I wish I had been more of a reader as a kid. I read comic books Little Lulu comic books. That was my favorite thing to read.

That’s funny. Pete Hamill was a big comics reader and Charles Frazier was a big comics reader too. I mean, I think whatever gets you into story.

I just like watching people. That’s all I was doing as a kid. I was watching people like these adults, like, just like, configure out what are they up to? I’m still trying to figure out what they’re up to these adults.

I think the adults are still trying to figure out what they’re up to.

But yeah, the Oz books. I think the nice thing about those and it’s a shame that we have recently discovered what a bad character Frank Baum was. It’s really heartbreak. I mean, Louise Erdrich brought it to everybody. How unfortunate that he was so shall we say, a xenophobic, or whatever. The odd thing is, he created these diverse characters, how could he be as horrible as it turned out? Well, maybe there’s that difference in his soul. He was creating these awesome books filled with diversity, but some logical ego part of himself, was writing these horrible, you know, newspaper articles about Native Americans. So how can we even square those things, but he I feel like he wrote the books he needed to write that say wonderous things about the world?

Well, and I mean, you’ve wrestled with this with Flannery O’Connor too, who’s a little bit of an influence for you. I mean, I think problematic. I think we all do, right. Like, I mean, the stories are great. And then you meet Flannery, and you’re just like, Oh, you are a person of your time.

I didn’t realize that. Even the letters are very much sanitized. Yeah. You know, that’s what I’d heard. Maybe it’s maybe it’s for the best, so we can still love her. But I meant for also this book to be more than my other stories, a book about books. I mean, there really are I mean, Donkey has her math books, and Rose and lives for these odd you know, her goal is to go away have adventures come home and reread all the Oz books, right? No, that’s even as an adult. That’s what she wants to do. And I let all these other books pass through Donkey like she gets handed all the standard reading. And it was kind of fun to have that happen. We get to see her character react to these various children’s books. And I kind of enjoyed seeing that how they do work and not work for kids. How The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe can just be scary to somebody who’s not a Christian kid, you know? And Pippi. Of course, yeah, if she reads Pippi. She’s going to try to sleep with her feet on the pillow. Of course, you will. Gotta try it.

Watching Donkey tried to build a world when she’s surrounded by women who don’t necessarily want a conventional life. Even Molly, to a certain extent does not want to conventional life. I mean, yes, she’s a nurse, but she lives her life the way she does. And yes, there are many, many cats.

She doesn’t want to marry that guy, she doesn’t want to marry her boyfriend. She doesn’t want to have kids. You know, there are some things about her she would kind of like her family to behave and not be so much trouble. You know, she’s kind of worried about their welfare. But yeah, I think you know, she’s very eccentric. You know, she doesn’t think she is.

But here’s this kid who’s pulling from books, she’s pulling from her family and she’s pulling, I’m kind of fascinated about who Donkey is going to become as an adult, I mean, especially now that I’ve met Margo from Once Upon a River as a young person, I’m like, okay, Donkey, where are you going? What’s going to happen? And I mean, I’m hoping you’ll do a little more, but have you started the next thing?

Well, first of all say about what I do like to do with these young women as I do I guess all women, I like to give them a superpower. You know, for Margo. Her superpower is her ability to shoot like Annie Oakley, you know, she really consumes and that’s a superpower that gives her confidence. And for Donkey, mathematics is her superpower. So when all else fails, she can count and calculate, and she can come up with an equation that will always be true, no matter what. And so that gives her a little edge in the world, I guess Rose’s superpower is that she knows how people feel, you know, I mean, that’s not to be discounted. I mean, that’s something that a talent that a lot of women have that they don’t even think is a talent, they have that and just they suffer for it and don’t even realize that’s a superpower. And of course her mean is pure superpower. You know, what I’ve always wanted is to have action figures for my characters. Like to me, my characters are so bigger than life. Like, you know, I definitely wanted a Margo Crane action figure. And, you know, I haven’t gotten one yet. So maybe, maybe I’m gonna have to do on my creative myself.

I really like that idea, though. I really, really like that idea of a Margo Crane action figure. I know I just mentioned Flannery O’Connor, but there is a bit of a gothic to The Waters, right. There’s a little bit I mean, yes, there’s fun and there’s joy and there’s the feral women.

And I mean, I guess you could say grotesque but more Gothic. And I mean, there’s, there’s dark secrets. Yeah. You know, there’s family secrets. There’s family stories. And you know, the men are, even when they’re not there. They’re there.

They are. They really are. Grotesque. I don’t think I think Gothic really is the word. We’re looking forward to describe The Waters. But it does seem like you pull, I mean, obviously, we’ve just talked about Flannery O’Connor. But there’s a little Faulkner happening as well, like you’re pulling from the southern traditions, right? Like we think of the Southern Gothic, especially in sort of American literature. Right? It is it is a cornerstone for American literature. And you’re a Midwestern writer, essentially. But the overlap is pretty significant.

I’ve always felt connected to the Southern Gothic writers. And I don’t know if that’s because we’re both, it’s a certain sensibility. They are writers who are writing small towns and rural situations. But yeah, my sensibility does lie there. And there is something about Michigan, Michigan is very much populated from the south, right? Because people came up from Kentucky and Tennessee to work in the auto plants. And so a lot of the population, kids I went to school with we’re, you know, we’re from had Southern accents, you know, and they were from those areas. So I think we and even our food, I have a friend who’s a foodie, and she always complains that the southern influences ruined our potato salads. In the south, they put too much salad dressing and she felt that that I mean, like if you go to the grocery store and get salads and stuff, they’re kind of a southern, we have kind of a southern sensibility for. So I think I do think Michigan has been influenced by the South, so maybe not my family in particular. But I think there’s some of that here. But yeah, those are definitely my people. I have to say Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, definitely my people.

I can feel both of them in your work. Without a doubt. You sort of hinted that there’s a story collection coming and I just I’m a fan of your short stories as much as I’m a fan of the novel. So yes, no, maybe.

Well, I almost finished with a collection of short stories about you know, I’ve done mother’s and I’ve done American Salvage all about man and this is about fathers and daughters. Father daughter relationships. So you know, I was surprised I never set out to write a collection until I look and see there’s a preponderance of stories and you know, I kind of think some of that happened because of a little bit of what happened in The Waters there’s some odd ball father daughter relationship issues. So I started looking at what I had nice think so hopefully within a year of this one out hopefully we’ll have that that

Sounds really, really excellent. I cannot wait to read it. Bonnie Jo Campbell, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over The Waters is out. Now if you haven’t somehow read Once Upon a River yet go back and also American Salvagereally is the standout story collection for me until this new one arrives. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, thank you so much. Miwa, it was great to talk to you.