Book Club Kit
© JP Brandenburg
A Conversation with Jeni McFarland You’re an award-winning writer of short fiction. What sparked the shift to writing a novel? I’ve been nominated for a few awards for short fiction, but I’ve never won any. I feel more at home writing a novel, even if it is a novel in stories. I just feel like I really want to spend time with characters—whether I’m reading them or writing them—so the longer form feels like a better fit for me.
In what ways did your writing process need to change for a new genre? I’m not sure that it did change. It would have been smart of me to start with an outline or something of that nature, to move systematically through this novel, but I really just worked on whatever section or character appealed to me on any given day. I’m sure it made editing more intense later but, even now, as I’m starting a new novel, I can’t seem to make myself follow an outline.
Why did you decide to set your novel in the Midwest? As you’ve also lived in Texas and San Francisco, do you feel your story would be different if it were set elsewhere in America? I think I’m a Midwesterner at heart. I loved Houston, and the Bay Area, but there are social codes that I don’t quite understand in both those places. As I’m answering these questions, my husband, J.P., and I are in the process of moving back to Ann Arbor, and while I’m really going to miss California, there’s something here that doesn’t feel quite like home for me. J.P. and I are hyping ourselves up, remembering all the things that make sense back home.
For instance, in the Midwest, people keep a larger bubble of distance between themselves when they’re talking to someone. Just something as small as how close people stand to you can be very unnerving, especially for a couple of introverts like us. There’s also a kind of Midwestern passive aggression that just makes sense to me, even as I realize how unhealthy it is. This novel wouldn’t be nearly the same book without copious amounts of it. But back home, that’s just a social nicety; you don’t openly criticize people and, if you have to criticize, you do it very passively. So much of the drama between Beth and Linda would be easier to address if either one of them would just come out and say what she’s really thinking.
A small handful of people want to have an excess, regardless of who suffers. So much of our society is built to help that small handful maintain their excess.
The novel’s setting—River Bend, Michigan— is based on your hometown, and the DeWitt house is the home you grew up in. How did it feel to revisit your childhood in this way? Did you need to do any on-site research? I thought about doing on-site research, because there are places (like the restaurant the Hudson House Bar is based on) that I never actually set foot in. But I never got up the nerve. In some ways, the town I grew up in never quite felt like home to me either, and so I’m not terribly keen on going back. I also didn’t feel like research was completely necessary because so much of this book was based on my perception and memories
and feelings about these places, rather than how they actually are. And all these perceptions are colored by my mental state, growing up with undiagnosed/untreated depression. I didn’t really want to see the town and find that it wasn’t what I remembered, because it’s not really about that town; it’s about my experience of it, if that makes sense. River Bend became its own place, even if it has similarities with a real place.
Did the original storylines change significantly as you fleshed out the story and characters? In what ways? They changed a lot, mostly in which characters got attention and how much. I have a very different draft of this bound as my master’s thesis on my bookshelf, and, in a lot of ways, it was a shallower book. It feels to me more like observing rather than inhabiting the characters. And there were more point-of-view characters. Some of them I cut, and some of them my editor, Helen, had me cut (which I was reluctant to do, but she was totally right. I was just attached to those characters, but they weren’t serving the novel).
Your book focuses on the smaller everyday ways we, as you’ve said, “enforce a divide between who is and isn’t allowed to thrive in our society.” Could you elaborate on that? What would help this country acknowledge and stop such injustices? Some people in this country want everyone to have enough, and a small handful of people want to have an excess, regardless of who suffers. So much of our society is built to help that small handful maintain their excess. I think the first step in acknowledging this is to talk about it—all of it. There’s so much we’re supposed to be silent about—how much money you make, for instance. If you do necessary work, you shouldn’t be ashamed of how much you’re paid for it; and if you’re not being paid a living wage, your employer should be ashamed, not you. Keeping silent about how much money you make only helps your employer profit off
you or off someone else who they’re not paying as much for the same work. Our education system, too; it’s so expensive in order to make sure some people can’t afford it. It makes it incredibly hard to work your way out of poverty. So we keep some people—a lot of them people of color, but a lot of them are white, too—in poverty and tell them to be ashamed of their poverty, in hopes that they won’t talk about it and won’t talk about how hard they work for such little money. But we need to talk. Silence only benefits the oppressors, never the oppressed.
You’ve been open about your own devastating childhood trauma, and you even wrote a fictionalized version into a central storyline of The House of Deep Water. Can you talk about how you made the decision to do that? Was there a defining moment when you knew you’d be able to do it? What was it like to write these vignettes? I was in grad school when I started writing this book, and, looking back through my files, Beth and her story were largely absent from those early drafts. Her trauma was my trauma, and I wasn’t ready to look at either yet. I’m not sure when exactly, but, at some point, it just sort of started coming out. I’m sure it was after I started seeing a therapist for the first time and started working through my childhood sexual assault. I hadn’t really processed it before—I never even told my best friend, who I’d known almost a decade. It was just this thing that was bottled up inside me, but when I started therapy, and started talking about it, it was like a dam burst. I couldn’t stop talking about it, couldn’t stop from writing about it. There was never a question of whether I could do it; it was more a question of whether I should. I worried it was indulgent, but, at the same time, it was so cathartic to write about it that I couldn’t stop.
Silence only benefits the oppressors, never the oppressed.
You’ve also shared your personal battles with anxiety and depression. In the midst of those battles, how did you manage a sweeping project like this book? How have these battles shaped your writing? I’m not really sure I can speak to how I manage writing while depressed, mostly because it’s just business as usual for me. I do go through periods when I’m more severely depressed, and I don’t tend to get a lot of writing done then. I read a lot more and take more naps. And I’ve sort of tailored my life around these competing needs: I don’t have a lot of energy much of the time, and so I don’t work full time outside of writing. I don’t know that I’ll ever return to academia, because I know the demands of it—especially if you’re doing the adjunct hustle—would keep me from writing. And, of course, all this shaped the writing in this book a lot: I wanted to give an accurate representation of what it’s like trying to find the energy to go about your everyday life, when your everyday life is blowing up with huge life issues and you barely have energy for the everyday stuff.
If your protagonist, Beth DeWitt, asked you for advice on how to navigate the tough road she faces, what would you tell her? Go get therapy. I wouldn’t just tell that to her, though, but to everyone. If you’re a person alive on this earth, you need therapy. Even if you don’t have huge issues to talk through like sexual assault and depression, this world’s a mess and a good therapist can help you find a way to navigate the messiness to find the beauty that’s still out there, too.
Was there one character that was easiest for you to write? Was there one that was hardest? Did you have a favorite storyline? Did anything surprise you about writing these voices? I think I like writing Derek the most. Even if his circumstances aren’t the same as mine—he’s got a whole different set of issues than I do—there’s something very familiar about writing a character who’s in love with someone who just doesn’t see them. That was always me growing up. I think the hardest to write was Steve. Look, I’m not saying Steve’s based on anyone in particular, but it’s possible that I may have borrowed some circumstances from an ex to write Steve, which made me less inclined to want to get into his head and give him the benefit of the doubt. And then once I did, I was reluctantly sympathetic to him.
The novel is, in part, a portrait of a “modern” family and the ways that family can both damn us and save us. Did you always want to write about family? You capture these dynamics—between siblings, between parents and children, between husbands and wives— with such sharp insight. Were you inspired by people in your own family? I did always want to write about family. Families fascinate me, because you get people who are bound by genetics and love but wouldn’t necessarily choose one
another’s company if they had their druthers. Maybe it’s sadistic, but I love to see people forced into situations they don’t want to be in. I love to see how they’ll respond.
This world’s a mess and a good therapist can help you find a way to navigate the messiness to find the beauty that’s still out there, too. The issues addressed in The House of Deep Water seem ripped from today’s headlines, and the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements underpin its storylines. Was that a goal from the start, or did that emerge in the writing process? I started this novel right around the time that the Black Lives Matter movement started; I actually had a character, Steve and Deb’s son, whose name was Ferguson in an earlier draft, and I had to change it after the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. So I was in the early stages of drafting, and the movement no doubt informed my writing. It was also a period in my life when I was awakening. Where I come from, we don’t talk about race, and, if you do, it means you’re racist. So being in graduate school in Houston, a city that (at least according to its newspaper) is the most diverse in the country, it was an intellectually invigorating time for me. The #MeToo movement, though, I became aware of that when Alyssa Milano first used the hashtag. This was after I was in California already, done with grad school, and I was nearly done with the draft I would start sending to agents. It was just good luck, from a marketing standpoint, that I had a manuscript that was so in conversation with a new (at the time) national dialogue.
What do you hope readers will take from this novel? I hope readers will begin to see the price of silence and will start to open a dialogue about so many of the issues we’re told to be quiet about: sexual assault, racism (even the “benign” type, which I think is a misnomer. I don’t think there is such a thing as benign racism), poverty, mental illness. All of it. Let’s talk about all of it.
Who are your favorite writers/novelists and why? I have a hard time answering this, because it seems like my favorite author changes every month or so. Of course I want to acknowledge my longtime favorites like Octavia Butler and Aimee Bender. I love writing that moves away from strict reality in any way. I’m currently reading Ringworld by Larry Niven, because I went to my husband and said I want a book set in space, and he recommended it. I’m ashamed to say I have never read a sci-fi novel (although I’ve read some short stories), but I’m happily rectifying that right now. But of recent writing, I absolutely adored Ivelisse Rodriguez’s Love War Stories, for her skill in rendering meaningful moments in her characters’ everyday lives. I also read Aja Gabel’s The Ensemble recently and was geeking out so hard I made a YouTube playlist of all the music they played. Oh, and one more! Last winter, my sister-from-a-different-mister recommended Bich Minh Nguyen’s Stealing Buddha’s Dinner. It was wonderful. Aside from the fact that the writing is lovely, and aside from the nostalgia factor (it’s set in my birthplace of Grand Rapids, Michigan), it was excellent seeing the suburbs there from the eyes of another person of color and finding that, no, I’m not crazy; it really was like that.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever been given? Keep going. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was never going to finish this book. I’m glad I had so many people rooting me on.
What advice would you give aspiring writers? I want to say, write the thing you’re scared to write. I spent many years and many drafts dancing around the meat of this novel, because I wasn’t ready to talk about the hard issues. I’m going through that right now, too, with the next novel I’m getting started on. There are some things I’m writing circles around, and I need to just address them.
What’s up next for you? What are you working on now? I’m working on a book that’s a reboot of this character who runs away from home and goes to college. Not, like, enrolls; she’s only sixteen (although I think that might change. She seems younger to me). But she just goes to college and steals enough money to eat and lives in the library and attends classes at random. I started working on this character in undergrad. It’s not the thing I’m “supposed” to be working on—or even the thing I was telling people about when I was querying agents—but I don’t know. Something about this character keeps coming back to me, so I’m going to see where she takes me.
Discussion Questions 1.
Linda, Paula, and Beth all return home to River Bend for different reasons. What are they each looking for? Are there things they don’t find? Were you surprised by who stays in the end? Why or why not?
2.
Did River Bend remind you of anywhere you’ve lived or visited? What surprised you about the town? What would be different about the novel if it were set in a different community? Or a different part of the country? What wouldn’t be different?
3.
How does Gilmer Thurber’s arrest change River Bend? Do the different characters understand the arrest differently? What about the crime? How does this scandal challenge the town’s sense of itself?
4.
Discuss how womanhood is explored throughout The House of Deep Water. On p. 2, we learn: “Sitting anywhere in their houses, the women of River Bend can feel a car running in their driveways, so preternaturally attuned are they to the comings and goings of family, friends, solicitors, neighbors. They feel these arrivals as vibrations in their chests, a skill they developed not for gossip’s sake—or, at least, not solely. Instead, they are primed by an old evolutionary need. Women, especially those of limited means, must learn to read the signs.” Why are these women so attuned to the comings and goings in town? What do these arrivals and departures mean to them? Do you think that River Bend “creates” a certain kind of woman? Why or why not?
5.
On p. 331, Beth reflects on her “bits and pieces that almost resemble a family.” Discuss how “family” is explored in the novel. What makes a family? What do we owe our families? Are there things we should expect in return? How does Beth’s idea of family change over the course of the novel?
6.
How does The House of Deep Water explore racism? Is Beth’s understanding of racism different from Ernest’s? Or Linda’s? How does the “Gaslight Village” play into Beth’s understanding of her hometown? Is River Bend different for Dan and Jeanette than it was for Beth? Why or why not?
7.
How do physical places shape our memories? Discuss how Beth’s time in River Bend changes her over the novel. How does returning to Ernest’s house impact her memories? Do you think it helps to revisit the places that have changed us? Why or why not? Are there spaces in your own life that you would find difficult to see again?
8.
The novel explores the long effects of trauma, both on an individual and on a community. How does trauma shape the narrators of The House of Deep Water? Does it affect some more than others?
9.
Beth thinks that “her own children’s infancies had been the moments of motherhood in which she felt most comfortable. Those years in which her children’s lives were entirely hers” (p. 169). What does Beth mean? Why do you think she feels this way? How does the novel portray motherhood?
10.
Discuss the vignettes from Elizabeth DeWitt. How did you feel reading these sections? Were you surprised to see this side of Beth? How does Beth’s childhood affect the way she grows into womanhood? Why do you think these sections are interwoven throughout the chapters of the novel? Did they change the way you read each chapter?
German Chocolate Cake Ingredients Cake
Frosting
4 oz sweet baking chocolate, broken into pieces ½ c boiling water 1 c unsalted butter, softened 2 c white sugar 4 eggs, separated 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 ½ c sifted all-purpose flour
1 c evaporated milk 1 c white sugar 3 egg yolks ¼ c unsalted butter 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 1/3 c sweetened flaked coconut 1 c chopped pecans
1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 c buttermilk
Directions 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 8-inch cake pans and line bottoms with parchment paper. 2. Put the chocolate into the boiling water and stir until the chocolate has melted; set aside to cool. In a large bowl, beat softened butter with sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in egg yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract and the chocolate-water mixture until thoroughly blended. 3. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. Stir the flour mixture into the liquid ingredients, alternating with buttermilk, in three or four additions, until each addition is just incorporated. 4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold stiff peaks when the beaters are lifted straight up. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter, keeping as much volume as possible. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans. 5. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Allow the cakes to cool in pans before removing. 6. To make frosting, pour the evaporated milk into a large saucepan, and mix in sugar, egg yolks, butter, and vanilla extract. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, and cook until thickened, stirring constantly, about 12 minutes. Remove from heat, and mix in the coconut and pecans, beating the frosting until cooled and spreadable. Frost and fill the cake with the coconut frosting.
Frito Pie Ingredients 1 lb ground beef 1 small onion, chopped 1 small green bell pepper, chopped 28 oz canned tomato sauce 10 oz canned diced tomatoes with green chili peppers 30 oz canned ranch-style beans 14.5 oz canned stewed tomatoes Ÿ c chili powder 1 c Fritos ½ c shredded cheddar cheese, or to taste
Directions 1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir beef in the hot skillet until browned and crumbly, 5 to 7 minutes; drain and discard grease. Mix onion and green bell pepper into ground beef. 2. Mix tomato sauce, diced tomatoes with green chili peppers, ranch-style beans, stewed tomatoes, and chili powder into beef mixture; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until flavors have blended, 30 to 45 minutes. 3. Layer corn chips and hamburger mixture into serving bowls and top with cheddar cheese.
The House of Deep Water
Family Trees Dinah Williams
Steve Brody
Layne Brody
Deborah (Williams) Brody
Kelli Brody
Mandy Brody
Jared Williams’s first wife
Hannah Brody
Jared Williams
Derek Williams
Paula Williams
Linda Williams
Paula Williams’s first husband
Paige Williams
Diane Meyer
Skyla Williams Sage Meyer-Williams Ernest DeWitt
Gretchen Greenwald
Elizabeth (DeWitt) Hansen
Dan Hansen
Greg Hansen
Jeanette Hansen