The first pick for Wyoming Public Radio’s quarterly book club is “The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree” by Casper’s India Hayford. It’s set in rural Arkansas mostly after the Vietnam War.
As Hayford puts it, it’s a story of a woman with a wide-ranging life who returns home mostly out of curiosity, only to discover family still there and how she deals with a difficult situation because of that. Also, she can see and talk to ghosts and has a special relationship with most snakes.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Ivy Engel sat down with Hayford.
Editor’s note: this conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
India Hayford: That book started with the words, “I like graveyards. I like cemeteries.” And that was the original opening of the book. But I wrote, “I like graveyards,” because it's true. I like cemeteries. I go to southwestern Arkansas, I go to all the old cemeteries, I go and visit the swamps.
And I got to thinking, too, that some of those great big slabs, well, they'd be pretty good to sleep on because they'd be up out of the snakes and off the wet ground. And what kind of person would sleep in graveyards, as a matter of course? And just gradually came in with the character that eventually became Genevieve.
Ivy Engel: Let's start out with the question that I'm sure many people are thinking: Why snakes? And what's the significance of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, ’cause that's not native to Arkansas, where this book takes place.
IH: No, it's not. Why snakes? Basically because I really like snakes. Rattlesnakes are my thing. I think they're one of the most fascinating creatures on the face of the earth. In some cultures, rattlesnakes are looked upon as something that protects the sacred. And I kind of took that into consideration.
The eastern diamondback rattlesnake is not native to Arkansas. It's not native to the part of Alabama where the story took place. I did that very deliberately so that people would understand that it was an exotic species that did not belong there, and therefore represented something other than just a rattlesnake.
The grandmother rattlesnake in the story, the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, represents Nemesis in the story. She represents retribution. In Greek legend, they talk about “winged Nemesis.” Well, in my case, we have fanged Nemesis. She's Nemesis for some, and a guardian spirit for others.
IE: Sticking with the snakes for a second, some characters have snakes show up amid traumatic memories. This book talks a lot about mental health and touches on PTSD, psychosis and hearing voices. What got you interested in telling these kinds of stories, and how did you make sure that you handled them with care?
IH: My dad was a veteran of World War II. He was in law enforcement as well, and I grew up seeing in him symptoms of PTSD. We didn't call it that then. We didn't know what it was. He was a very stoic individual, a very organized and strong individual. But sometimes it was difficult.
And, once again, it's something that I grew up with and that I never gave a lot of thought to until I was in college, and we started getting a lot of men and women back on the GI Bill, going to college, who were veterans of Vietnam. I had friends and boyfriends, and a lot of my friends had been in Vietnam and had these problems. It's just something that has been so much part of my life that I didn't have to think about including it. It was just there.
As to how I handled them carefully, to tell you the truth, I don't know if I did or not. I wrote down what I thought was the truth, and a story from my understanding and from my experience.
IE: There's a lot of abuse that happens in this book in the name of religion and God, but the book isn't explicitly anti-religion. Why did you pick that path, and how did you strike that tone?
IH: One of the things I've always been curious about is people who follow religious leaders who are not wholesome. Jim Jones immediately comes to mind. That guy in Utah who ran his family and basically kept the women and gave children to men as wives. Aimee Semple McPherson, she wasn't quite as unwholesome, but she was -- she had some interesting viewpoints. But people will follow these people without question. They will attach themselves to them and do what are, to me, remarkable things.
And so I was thinking of a small group of people who followed a religious leader like that, and what it would be like, what it would be like to try to break away. It's not anti-religion. In reviews, people will point out, “Well, that's not real Christianity.” Yeah, that's kind of the point of it, folks. I say nice things about the Baptists in there.
But that was my line of reasoning: What compels people to follow leaders like this? What compels people to stay in these organizations? And a lot of that ties into abuse and into mental illness. And I don't like to be graphic. I'm more of ‘the scene shifts away as the curtains blow through the window’ kind of writer.
IE: Last but certainly not least, is there any kind of lesson or idea or something that you're hoping people take from this book?
IH: I'm always interested in what people got out of the book. I write the story, I suit myself, I put it out in the world and then I listen to people tell me what I was doing in the book. What they think this meant, and what they think that meant, and the significance of this scene, and the significance of that scene. And I'm a lot better off just keeping my mouth shut and finding out what people think of it, and what they took from it and what affected them.
You can join us to discuss the book and meet Hayford at the Albany County Public Library on Sept. 29 and virtually on Sept. 30. Visit our book club page to learn more and RSVP. Next quarter’s book pick is already there, too.
