INSIDE VOICES

INSIDE VOICES

Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce James Wade

James Wade is the award-winning author of Beasts of the Earth, All Things Left Wild, and River, Sing Out. He is the youngest novelist to win two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and the recipient of the MPIBA’s prestigious Reading the West Award. James’s work has appeared in Southern Literary Magazine, The Bitter Oleander, Writers’ Digest, and numerous additional publications. James lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and children. His forthcoming novel, Hollow Out the Dark, releases August 20, 2024.

Inside Voices (Jeffrey): Hollow Out the Dark, your fourth novel, is described as a gothic adventure set against a Depression-era landscape. Would you set the novel up for us?

It’s a bit of a classic setup with two mostly decent men on either side of the law, and both facing desperate circumstances. A bootlegger and a Texas Ranger, each trying to steady a moral compass that seems to always be spinning.

I’m sure whatever the marketing folks wrote on the jacket copy sounds a lot more appealing than anything I have to say about it, but behind all the plot stuff this book is– at its heart– a meditation on responsibility and where our moral obligations to our families and our society begin and end. That’s what the two protagonists are facing, these moral dilemmas that seem to question where their priorities lay. And like all good moral dilemmas, there isn’t really a right or wrong answer. It’s the old train track scenario of one hundred strangers being tied to one track and one person you love being tied to another. You’re operating the switch lever. What do you do?

Jesse Cole and Amon Atkins, our two primary characters, are both incredibly loyal and honorable men, albeit in different ways. Family is everything to them. They both live by a strict code. But in the novel they’re both asked to do things outside of that code in order to protect the people they love. And the further they get down this rabbit hole of criminals and corrupt officials and businessmen who prioritize profits over humanity, the more they find themselves at odds with the world around them. So then the central question becomes, what are they supposed to do about it? And I think that question is as relevant as it has ever been. Every day we’re inundated with the woes of the world and that same question is asked–either explicitly or implied or even just in our own minds for those of us who harbor any sort of love for our brothers and sisters–what are we, what are you going to do about it? What are you doing to help make the world a better place? And how does that coexist with your responsibility to your family, to yourself, or even just to paying your bills? That’s what Amon and Jesse are trying to figure out, but because of the nature of their circumstances, their decisions are likely to have deadly consequences for themselves and others.

And then the secondary theme, which plays off the title, deals with what happens in the aftermath of a loss-of-innocence. Plenty of stories take us through the boy-to-man narrative. But I wanted to see what happened in the years after the innocence was gone and the reality set in. If the world is truly a much darker place than we imagined when we were young, how do we cope with such a distressing fact? Do we turn a blind eye to the horrors that are all around us? Do we let those horrors overwhelm us– curl up, catatonic like? Or is there another path forward– one in which we acknowledge the calamity of the wide world but still find our own space to perhaps live proudly if not peacefully within that darkness.

Inside Voices (Robert): Loss of innocence is a theme shared within your first three novels. With Hollow Out the Dark, through Jesse Cole, what did you set out to address in the human condition?

Jesse deals with a lot of the same issues as most of my protagonists, what with the loss of innocence, questioning of faith, etc. When we meet Jesse he has already been to war, lost his brother, and already seen how brutal men can be. So we’re getting to see the life he has created in the aftermath of some terrible things. We get to see how he has chosen to cope. But then as the novel unfolds he is given this opportunity to reclaim if not his innocence then at least his passion. He is thrown back together with his first love and in her he sees this glimpse of the man he used to be–the man he wanted to be. As readers we see him begin to reclaim some of the optimism, some of the zest for life that he had when he was young. The question then becomes what is that worth to him? What is he willing to sacrifice to actually hang onto it this time?

Inside Voices (Jeffrey): Faith, longing for it, losing it, finding it. It’s a leitmotif throughout your writing. Will you tell us more about faith as a theme for you?

Cormac McCarthy famously said he is only interested in work and in writers that deal with life and death. I very much agree with that. Not that there shouldn’t be escapism fiction or beach reads or any of that, but it’s not what excites me as a reader or a writer. Life and death, especially in the south and in the rural areas I write about, are seen almost exclusively through the lens of faith. It’s only natural that the characters have feelings about their own faith or lack thereof. It’s also something that I’ve struggled to understand– faith and religion– in my own life and in the world at large. I was raised Southern Baptist but in my own coming-of-age I distanced myself from religion and faith; and yet that distance only increased my fascination with these concepts. There has been no greater force in the history of civilization than religion. It is the closest thing man has to a “cure” for death– a shelter against the unrelenting cold of existential dread. I find myself constantly torn between accepting my own agnosticism and also being wildly envious of those who have that unshakeable faith in something greater. What a comforting thought–that when your heart stops its pumping and the neurons in your brain cease their firing and your body is no longer animate, your consciousness (or some version of you) lives on in a greater, more ethereal realm. You see loved ones again. You meet and are embraced by a compassionate creator. Jimi Hendrix is playing the national anthem, and so on. And yet, with all we know of science and history and psychology, with all of our myriad religions (both current and historical), with all we see of needless sorrow, with all the moral hypocrisy written into religious texts, the notion of faith becomes much less like a proud pillar of humanity and much more like a comfort blanket of denial. And yet there is no denying the power it has. It can do great good or great harm, but either way it has such a hold on civilization. And again, in our country, particularly in rural southern settings. So my characters often find themselves similarly afflicted in terms of being caught between belief and blasphemy. But more so than wanting to know the answer to black and white questions like “does God exist,” they long for an explanation for the pain of living–an understanding of their own suffering and the suffering of those around them. That is the longing that drives many people toward faith, not away from it. They are pacified by the idea that surely there is a purpose for all this hurt and all this sadness.

Inside Voices (Robert): New York Times bestselling author, William Kent Kruger, says this: “James Wade is a poet of the dark. With Gorgeous lyricism, he writes of men and women caught in the bleakest of circumstances and the choices that must be made when desperate times require desperate measures.” I am a great fan of authors composing dark themes lyrically. Were you always this writer? Or did your voice develop over time?

I think, like you, I was always drawn to darker themes, especially if they were painted with a lyrical brush. There’s something so beautiful about facing down the darkness of the world and saying, “I see you. I know you. I will turn you into poetry.”

Inside Voices (Robert): Secrets, revelations, and sinewy twists of plot abound in Hollow Out the Dark. I read in another interview that you have outlined everything you have ever written, and yet, you have never followed an outline. Talk about that.

Well, it’s not on purpose. I’d love to plan a novel and then actually write that novel, it just hasn’t worked out that way yet. Usually I start writing and the characters or the narrative or something about the theme starts to shift in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. At that point I can either fight against the current or let the water take me and try to make the best of it. So far I’ve only done the latter. And I don’t mind it. I’ve said before–probably in the interview you read–that outlines are like bones and bones can certainly break.

Inside Voices (Jeffrey): I understand you had a career before your writing took off. I believe you worked as a journalist in East Texas, were a legislative director at the Texas State Capitol, and spent some time lobbying on behalf of water conservation in Texas. What parts of these do you call on to shape and influence your writing?

As a reporter I had a front row seat to fatal car accidents, meth lab busts, murders, child abuse, and just about every terrible thing you can think of. I saw the heart of darkness that beats in all men. I also saw the goodness in people. Educators, child advocates, communities that rally together and the like. Politics was similar. People did awful things and wonderful things. I draw from my past for things like dialogue and culture and all that, but the primary lesson from my experiences in the world is that people are complicated. Very few of us are all good or all bad. So I try to mirror that with my characters. Especially with a book like this one, because nobody is really innocent, but almost everyone has something about them that you can sympathize with.

Inside Voices (Robert): What has Hollow Out the Dark, or your writing in general taught you?

Oh Lord. Patience? Discipline, probably. Maybe. Writing is tough. I love it more than just about anything but that doesn’t make it easy. You’re sitting alone with the entirety of your being– there’s no buffer there, it’s just you and your thoughts– and you’re asking yourself to mine some of the deepest parts of yourself. That’s a delicate prospect. Sometimes a terrifying one. But I guess what writing has taught me is that it’s better to face those fears than to let them move freely in your subconscious.

Inside Voices (Jeffrey): What is next for James Wade?

I submitted a manuscript just a couple of weeks ago to my editor and publisher and hopefully they like it enough to move forward. Since then I’ve just been catching up on emails and getting things scheduled for the Hollow Out the Dark tour coming up. But within the next week or two I’ll pull out the notebook and start slowly sketching out some ideas for what the next novel might look like, and then it will be back to work. Reaching inside and seeing what I can pull out.