That is the primary in a sequence of interviews with earlier winners of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature award, for which BookTrib is a proud companion. First offered in 2016, this award honors a piece of fiction from the earlier calendar yr that speaks with an “American Voice” about American experiences. November 1 is the 2024 American Voice in Literature Award Celebration! View the 2024 award lengthy listing right here.
The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award is an annual honor bestowed on a piece of fiction that tells an American story in a distinctly American voice. Supported by the generosity of novelist David Baldacci, and administered by the Mark Twain Home & Museum, the MTAVL awards a prize of $25,000 to the profitable writer. Final yr’s honoree was Jennifer Haigh, for her novel, Mercy Road.
Mercy Road weaves collectively the tales of 4 characters linked in an online centering on the Mercy Road Clinic for Girls’s Well being, a Boston facility that gives abortion companies. The novel’s characters embrace a social employee on the clinic; a religious Catholic who protests there; and a white supremacist on an ominous campaign. The judges on the MTAVL panel praised Mercy Road for its “vibrant” narrative voice, calling it “hard-hitting and grounded within the atypical… a novel that explores a burningly topical American problem with intelligence, sympathy and talent.”
Haigh, 55 and a resident of Boston, is the writer of 5 earlier novels, together with Mrs. Kimble (2003), which gained the PEN/Hemingway Award for excellent debut fiction, in addition to Baker Towers (2005) and Warmth and Gentle (2016), each set within the fictional Western Pennsylvania city of Bakerton. Mark Twain Home Board member Rand Richards Cooper, who oversees the MTAVL Award, just lately caught up with Jennifer Haigh and mentioned her prizewinning novel.
Rand Richards Cooper: Jennifer, we’re so glad to have you ever on board as a decide for this yr’s Mark Twain Award! As we put together to dive into this yr’s wonderful listing of books, I need to look again eventually yr, when your novel, Mercy Road — which I just lately had the pleasure of re-reading — was our winner. The judges discovered loads to admire in Mercy Road. One factor was how deftly you wove into your narrative what appeared like in depth reportage in regards to the each day workings of the Girls’s Well being Middle. Are you able to speak about what went into researching Mercy Road?
Jennifer Haigh: It most likely has the least analysis of any novel I’ve written. The ebook got here out of my private expertise over a number of years of volunteering as a counselor at a clinic that did abortions in Boston, the place I stay. I went via a prolonged coaching, the place I discovered to reply calls on a hotline — as Claudia does within the novel. If a girl needed to make an appointment for an abortion, her first step was to speak to a volunteer like me. I might speak her via the process and reply questions. Manning the telephone strains at this place, I heard so many tales — tales that finally fed into the writing of Mercy Road.
That mentioned, I need to be clear that I didn’t begin volunteering there with the intention of writing about it. It was the final factor I needed to jot down about, as a result of it’s such a polarizing topic. I used to be very conscious that I used to be going to alienate half my readers by writing about abortion rights. It appeared like a loopy factor to do. However after volunteering for some years, I spotted this was probably the most attention-grabbing factor and compelling factor in my life. Writing a novel about something is basically tough, but when it’s not in regards to the factor you care most about, you’ll by no means end it. It was a novel that compelled me to jot down it.
RRC: When was this?
Jennifer Haigh: I lived in Boston for 20 years, and it was in that interval. I’m being somewhat cagey about it as a result of I don’t need to identify the clinic, et cetera.
RRC: Did you are taking notes?
Jennifer Haigh: No, I by no means did. There’s confidentiality at play anytime you’re coping with sufferers. I couldn’t write immediately about any specific particular person I spoke to. The callers within the ebook, these will not be precise calls that I acquired on the middle, they’re invented, however they’re completely impressed by the issues I skilled. Actually, if I had by no means volunteered there, it by no means would’ve occurred to me to jot down this ebook, and I wouldn’t have been capable of do it.
RRC: You talked about how polarizing this subject is. I believe one other spectacular factor is how even-handedly sympathetic you have been. I imply that each within the sense of non-public sympathy, but additionally within the bigger sense of a sympathetic creativeness. Even characters who’re on the opposite aspect of this problem from you, and from most of your seemingly readers — even characters who appeared offended sufficient about abortion that they could in the end do hurt — they’re given their full due as human beings. Are you able to say something in regards to the across-the-board sympathy that the novel embraces?
Jennifer Haigh: To me that’s all the level of writing novels. The novel nonetheless is the most effective expertise we’ve to get inside anyone else’s consciousness. You may’t try this in journalism, you may’t try this on movie. Solely literary fiction can actually get inside one other particular person. Most likely probably the most unpleasant character within the ebook is Victor Prine — a man I might disagree with in regards to the shade of the sky. However in any character, it’s a must to take their aspect, a minimum of whilst you’re writing them, even when they imagine issues that you simply adamantly don’t imagine. Whilst you’re writing the character, it’s a must to make frequent trigger with them and see the world via their eyes. It’s what actors do: you don’t decide your characters, you change into your characters. As a fiction author, it’s a must to do the identical. With Victor Prine, it was made considerably simpler by the truth that he’s from the place I grew up, from Pennsyltucky, in western Pennsylvania. I really feel like I’ve recognized that man my entire life.
RRC: I’ve by no means heard that phrase.
Jennifer Haigh: Pennsyltucky? That’s what we referred to as it in our household. That’s what my dad referred to as it. He was born and raised there, I used to be born and raised there. My mom nonetheless lives there. It’s coal-mining nation, or it was once. There’s actually no mining left. Once I was rising up there, in case you drove 5 miles in any path from my dad and mom’ home, you’ll see some form of handmade anti-abortion register anyone’s yard — “Abortion Stops a Beating Coronary heart,” all these slogans and pictures of fetuses. I grew up surrounded by that. It’s a socially conservative place, very Catholic. I went to 12 years of Catholic college, so I heard all of the arguments in opposition to abortion. I didn’t know anyone who was overtly pro-choice till I went off to school. So once I wrote Victor Prine, it was clear to me that he was from my hometown. I’ve recognized this man my entire life.
RRC: Each ebook presents its personal specific challenges. You’ve written quite a few novels. What was most the difficult a part of writing Mercy Road — and what ended up pleasing you most?
Jennifer Haigh: The toughest half was anticipating individuals’s reactions to it. A whole lot of that has to do with my background, with attitudes I’ve internalized. Abortion was a taboo topic once I was rising up — not simply in my household, however in my neighborhood. I understand how strongly some individuals really feel in opposition to abortion, and I’m certain this ebook dissatisfied and alienated some who’re my readers. However in case you begin excited about that, you’ll by no means write something. I’m fairly good at placing on horse blinders once I’m writing. So I simply needed to energy via.
RRC: Clearly, you couldn’t have recognized that Dobbs was going to occur.
Jennifer Haigh: No. Actually, the ebook is so horribly well timed in a approach I by no means may have anticipated. I spent 4 years writing it, and it was revealed 4 months earlier than the Dobbs choice.
RRC: There have to be some form of schadenfreude-like expression for “reluctantly taking pleasure in unhealthy issues that occur, that coincidentally serve your personal pursuits.” There’s acquired to be some German phrase for that.
Jennifer Haigh: You realize there may be. There’s a compound noun for actually every thing in German.
RRC: Very last thing. I do know you’ve gained lots of awards over time. What are your ideas upon profitable this award? Is Mark Twain an essential author to you? In that case, how?
Jennifer Haigh: It pertains to what I used to be speaking about earlier, this excessive empathy that I believe is on the coronary heart of writing any novel — I believe Twain was the primary author I learn who did that. It’s what I’ve all the time responded to in his work. I significantly love that this award may be very particularly designated for an American voice. Every part Twain wrote was voice-driven, and so is Mercy Road — way more so than something I’ve written earlier than. So I really like that resonance.
RRC: Are you able to inform me what you’re engaged on now?
Jennifer Haigh: I simply completed a brand new novel, Rabbit Moon, which can be revealed subsequent April. It’s a narrative I wrote largely in Shanghai, the place I spent a number of months on a writing fellowship — undoubtedly the good factor I’ll ever get to do as a author. It’s about an American couple, acrimoniously divorced, who journey to China when their estranged daughter, who’s been instructing English there, is struck by a success and run driver. It’s utterly in contrast to something I’ve ever written.
RRC: I can’t wait! In the meantime, thanks a lot for this interview. I look ahead, once we see one another, to listening to in regards to the husband that you simply’ve acquired — I believe pretty just lately, proper?
Jennifer Haigh: Sure, slightly below a yr in the past — so he’s nonetheless underneath guarantee!