Guest Interview: Jeannie Mobley on landscape and her second novel SEARCHING FOR SILVERHEELS

We are thrilled, once again, to have Jeannie Mobley here with us, this time exploring her second novel, Searching For Silverheels. 

Set in a small Colorado town at the dawn of World War I, the story centers around Pearl, who helps her mother run the family café. She entertains customers with the story of a legendary dancer name Silverheels who nursed miners through a smallpox epidemic. Her neighbor, Josie, makes fun of her though, and challenges Pearl to find proof that Silverheels was, indeed, such a saintly person or…help Josie pass out her suffragette pamphlets. As Pearl searches for the truth about Silverheels she discovers more about her town than she bargained for. History, romance and intrigue are woven together in this beautiful story!

Jeannie is one of my favorite people in the world. As I found out the last time I interviewed her, we share a deep appreciation for landscape and the stories it holds. We are lucky to have her back here.

Tam:  Welcome back Jeannie! I am going to just jump right in!  I know from our last interview about your debut, Katerina's Wish, that landscape is really important to you; that you are able to center yourself and rejuvenate when you are in a quiet space in nature. You spoke about that Buddhist concept of distracting the senses in order to free the subconscious (I love this); that nature does that for you. Has this shifted at all? Changed? Deepened?  

Jeannie: Sadly, in the last few years, I haven't gotten out into nature much. I've been busy, preoccupied… I'm not exactly sure what I've been, life just somehow gets diverted and you don't realize how. 

Tam: I can relate to that…

Jeannie: But I still seek out nature in what little ways I can. I walk along the canals that run through town and enjoy the little micro-environment there, and I do most of my writing in my sunroom or on the back patio where I can at least look out at grass and trees, squirrels and bunnies. What I crave, though, is that quiet, alone time in nature. It's no coincidence that the idea for Searching For Silverheels came to me while driving alone across the state of Colorado, a 9 hour drive from the southwest corner to my home in the north central part of the state. Most of the drive is through rural, wild mountain areas, and on back roads instead of the interstate. And I can tell you exactly where on the drive the key ideas for the story hit me, the connection between the place and the story were that strong. Not long after it came to me, I actually pulled over at a rest stop on La Vita Pass, and sat out among the golden aspen trees (it was early October, and the peak of the fall color). 

Tam: Why?

Jeannie: I'm not sure if I did that to give thanks or to think. Mostly I just sat and gave myself over to the moment. I just needed to be in nature as a part of the process.

Tam:  Pearl is the main character in Searching For Silverheels. What does landscape mean to her?

Mount Silverheels

Jeannie: Pearl lives in the shadow of Mount Silverheels, in the small mountain town of Como, Colorado, which in 1917, when the story is set, was one of the biggest towns in Park County, with a whopping population of nearly 500. In other words, she is definitely a rural kid.  She doesn't spend a lot of time pondering landscape, but there are many little things in the story that show her connection to this place she lives in. She notices the fancy shoes of the city folks that come through on the train, and how they look like they've never stepped off pavement in their life. She wonders how tourists can worry about bears and wild animals as she rides out of town at twilight and feels soothed by the quiet of nature and the mother deer with their fawns in the meadows. She looks up at the bright sweep of the Milky Way at night (if you've never viewed the night sky at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea level, in a place with no city lights, you really should put it on your bucket list!) and she reflects on the beauty and comfort of her world. And most definitely, she notices the changing moods of the mountain peaks around the town. She's a Colorado country kid at heart - just as I am.

Tam: Can you speak a little about the legend that Searching for Silverheels centers around?  The one about Mount Silverheels and the dance hall girl it was named after?

Jeannie: Silverheels was a dance-hall girl during the gold rush era in Colorado (the 1860s), famous for her beauty. In the harsh winter of 1861, she was in the town of Buckskin Joe when a smallpox epidemic hit. Doctors from Denver could not reach the town, and many of the healthy fled, but Silverheels stayed to nurse the sick and dying miners. Eventually, however, she contracted smallpox herself. She survived, but her face was badly scarred, and her legendary beauty ruined. The miners took up a collection for her, but when they took it to her cabin, she was gone. They searched, but found no trace of her, so they named the nearby mountain after her to show their gratitude.

Tam: Does the legend have any truth to it?

Jeannie: As for the truth behind the legend, that is uncertain. Different version put her in different towns, and various speculations have given her various real names (several of which appear in my story.) There is no independent historical record of the smallpox epidemic. Whether or not Silverheels herself was real, however, there are many well documented cases of dance-hall girls and prostitutes becoming nurses during epidemics in the west, so it isn't particularly improbable that the story is true. But like all good legends, it's probably been embellished as well.

Tam: In our last interview you articulated how being in a place that has a rich history makes you listen to the landscape. Have you been to the place where Silverheels is set? Did you do that there? Listen?

Jeannie: Yes, South Park, (the real South Park, where Como is found, not the TV version) is a place that I have loved all my life. My family traveled and camped there, and I've had so many amazing experiences there - watching golden eagles hunt, clambering around on mountainsides, stumbling blindly onto unique historical tidbits. So much to see, so much silence to listen to, such a deep yearning inside me. One place that I kept coming back to in my mind, a place where the silences are full and deep and saturated with stories, is the old cemetery at Como. In the story itself, Pearl and Frank visit the cemetery at Buckskin Joe, and I have been there too. But the way I describe it in my book is really more like the cemetery of Como, because  that place draws me in. 

Tam: When were you there?

Jeannie: I don't know when I first explored that cemetery. For a long time, I remembered it and thought about it, but didn't know where it was, it was just a memory that was so old, the kind of memory that you think sometimes might just have been a dream, strong, and ultra vivid, but disconnected from other memories. 

Tam: Yes!  One of those memories!  I've had those…

Jeannie: But the moment I stepped again into the Como Cemetery, I knew it - strong and familiar. 

Tam: Is the cemetery haunted?!

Como Cemetery

Jeannie: All old cemeteries are haunted - if not by ghosts, then by the memory of sadness and loss and love. You cannot read a headstone that gives the age of "3 months and 1 week" and not feel the pull of a mother's love and loss at your heart. Nineteenth and early twentieth century mountain cemeteries are especially poignant that way. It was hard to give birth and keep babies alive at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea level, and the many graves of young wives, babies, and children attest to those struggles. 

But there is something comforting too, in the Como cemetery. The aspen trees create a rich, golden light, and nature is taking back over graciously, with tall grass, and wildflowers, and a gentle dappling of light and leaves. I think I'd rather be part of nature fading comfortably back into beauty when I die, rather than a stiff, mown lawn and sprinkler system. 

Tam: Duly noted!

How did you manage to create such a rich, true landscape when it is not here today for you to go visit, and research?  How did you gather and then articulate the details of this landscape? I asked this about Katerina's Wish, and I am curious about it with Silverheels too…

Como

Jeannie: I did less archival research with Silverheels than I did with Katerina, because the town of Como really hasn't changed much since Pearl's childhood. Also, my dad was an old railroad buff, and through him I already knew a lot of the history of Como and the railroad hub that existed there. I did, however, look at some historic photos of the town, and at some census data to get a sense of its size. But mostly, I gave Pearl my childhood love of the mountains and turned her loose in them, just as my parents turned me loose. Pearl is much more my childhood me - day-dreamy, romantically minded, and a bit afraid to stand up for herself - than Katerina is. That said, I also didn't try too hard to portray Como exactly as it was. I fictionalized the town to make it what I needed it to be. I wanted to be true to it in spirit, but not necessarily in the geography or layout of the town. So I was amazed (and a little weirded out) when I discovered that the building across from the train station really had been a lunch counter that served people off the train in the 1920s. I had just made up the café and the idea that that was how they got their main business, and then it turned out to be accurate.

Tam: I can totally picture that café and train station. And I want to picture more… Thank you for taking the time, Jeannie, to explore both your and Pearl's relationship to landscape, and for whetting our appetites with this teaser of a description of Como…

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Stay tuned! Next week Jeannie will take us on a tour of Pearl's world.  Don't miss it!  And don't miss a chance to win a copy of Searching For Silverheels either!  Just post a comment below (or next week) for a chance at this giveaway!

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Jeannie Mobley writes both historical and contemporary middle grade fiction. Her debut novel, Katerina’s Wish (Aug 2012, Margaret K. McElderry Books (S&S)), won the 2013 Colorado Book Award in Juvenile Fiction. It is on the William Allen White Award Master List, and was selected by the Library of Congress to represent the state of Colorado at the 2013 National Book Festival.  Her second novel, Searching For Silverheels, released September 2, 2014. When not writing or reading fiction, Jeannie is a mother, wife, lover of critters, and an anthropology professor at Front Range Community College, where she teaches a variety of classes on cultures past and present. Jeannie is represented by Erin Murphy of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

Interview with debut author Jeannie Mobley

We are thrilled to have debut author Jeannie Mobley here today, along with her brand-new middle grade novel Katerina’s Wish. I couldn’t put Katerina’s Wish down while I was reading it, and about a third of the way through the book I figured out why: the story, more than any other that I can recall, evoked memories of reading as a child…of that very specific phenomenon of feeling a book transport and hug, all at the same time. Jeannie’s writing is magical like that.

I am lucky to be able to call Jeannie my friend. She is truly one of the warmest, funniest, smartest women I know. What I didn’t know, until I interviewed her, was how much landscape resonates for her. I feel even more connected to Jeannie after having this conversation.

KTE: Hi Jeannie!  Thank you for coming on over to Kissing the Earth to chat about Katerina’s Wish. First, what does landscape mean to you?

JM: Landscape is very important to me. I have always been a person who is rejuvenated by quiet space, and nothing does that for me like nature. So not only have I spent a lot of time outside, but I have also always sought out the quiet, peaceful places in the landscape to think, take comfort, relax, and connect. Even as I write this, I am sitting outside, and a breeze is singing thought a cottonwood above me.

KTE: Can you describe how, exactly, landscape is important to you?

JM: Nature is a very visceral experience for me. When I am outside in a beautiful place (and I find many kinds of places beautiful) I feel like my senses are more awake to everything. There is a concept in Buddhism of distracting the senses in order to free the subconscious, and I think that is what nature does for me. I feel hyper-aware of detail in the world around me, and less aware of myself. It is simultaneously calming and exhilarating.

KTE: I love that!  Boy, does that idea of being hyper-aware of details and thus less aware of self really resonates for me.

What does landscape mean to Katerina?  I am thinking, especially, of the juxtaposition of that magical place just over the hill and the coal mine.  As we talked about earlier, there is such a stark difference between the two.

JM: Because I seek solace in the quiet places of nature, that is what I wanted for Katerina too. I don't think it ever occurred to me to have her find comfort in any other way. It seemed very natural to me for her to find a quiet, natural place, away from the frenzy of the world she dislikes. And for me, water and trees are in the places that comfort me most, and so that is what Katerina experiences.  For Katerina, though, I added another layer, one that I haven't experienced. Because she is an immigrant from north-eastern Europe, I think the landscapes of Southern Colorado would be so starkly different, and it would be hard for someone from the green mountains of Bohemia to see beauty there in the best of times.

The tree that Katerina finds is a cottonwood. Cottonwoods have always been a special tree to me, because in the arid landscapes of the southern Colorado, they feel so out of place. They are truly oases, with their huge trunks and their huge, shady rustling leaves.  They seem to shout of something lush and green and cool, right out of the hot, dry, brown world. It was the best way I could think of for Trina to have a poignant reminder of home.

cottonwood

KTE: What does the landscape in Katerina's Wish, especially, mean to you?

three generations of the Mobley family exploring

JM: I grew up camping and traveling in the west, and my family explored many old ghost towns in the Colorado Rockies.

an ancestral Pueblo structure in southwest Colorado,
returning to earth after about 800 years

 When I am in a place where people have lived in the past, whether it is an old cabin, or an archaeological site left behind hundreds of years ago, I find myself listening hard.

It's not something I consciously do, in fact, I didn't realize that was what I was doing for a long time. But when I am exploring a ghost town with family or when I am working on an dig with a whole crew of archaeologists (the 

day job), I find myself seeking out chances to get away from people and to find a quiet place to listen.

KTE: Are you able to articulate what you hear in a place like this?

JM: There is something different about the silence of a space where people have been, and where the memories are slipping back into nature. It is a deeper silence, one that calls me to strain to hear it. The lives lived in a space become part of it somehow, in a collective memory of the ordinary. It's not as if great deeds have been done there. In fact, I often don't have that feeling at a place commemorating great deeds. Great deeds speak for themselves. But landscapes seem to absorb the essence of ordinary lives, the sacred spark of lives lived for the sake of living. That is what I strain to hear, that calls to me. That seems to be a layer of story embedded in the deeper silences of places people once lived. Its as if the living and the dying there has changed the place. Even as nature takes it back into itself, those places never seem to go back to being just nature. They remain different.

None of which exactly answers your question of what the landscape of Katerina's Wish means to me.

KTE: That’s okay!  I am still buzzing with this: The lives lived in a space become part of it somehow, in a collective memory of the ordinary… Its as if the living and the dying there has changed the place. Even as nature takes it back into itself, those places never seem to go back to being just nature. They remain different. Oh man…what a gorgeous, true statement.

JM: I suppose the landscape of the book per se means nothing to me, in that it is a fictional landscape that I have not been in myself. But the reason the landscape exists at all, is because of the time I have spent walking, sitting, and listening in the abandoned coal mine country of southern Colorado, with its ugly coal tips, it's arid, brown landscapes, its empty houses, and its silence, asking to be listened to, with a tangle of ordinary struggles flowing through it.

KTE: So you have, in fact, listened hard enough to hear the voice--in this arid, brown place--of Katerina. An ordinary girl with an ordinary struggle, but then you, Jeannie the writer and artist, have elevated her with this remarkable story.

southeast Colorado

KTE: Katerina's Wish is, of course, historical. How did you manage to create such a rich, true landscape when it is not here today for you to go visit, and research?  How did you gather and then articulate the details of this landscape?

JM: I do quite a bit of browsing through historical photos, because they capture the ordinary details of lives—the laundry, and picket fences, smoke and litter. Also, because I love browsing through old photos and it is a fun way to blow an entire morning when I don't feel like writing. Although I read history books, oral histories, and other primary documents, my greatest inspiration comes from visual sources.

But really, what I try to capture is the feeling that a landscape gives me, and this draws on my years of collected memories in those places, and the wanderings of my imagination.  In the case of Katerina's Wish, I had been in that area not long before I decided to set my story there, so I could draw on the feelings it gave me. I drew on it barren, dry, dead places and the sense of desolation they would give a Czech immigrant. 

             

The town would have been in an area like this, which once held the town of Ludlow. These are the old company stores and offices…

And these are some of the few miners' houses left standing…

And then there is the mine. The hoists and shaft housing is all gone, but left behind, the piles of waste…

 And shells of unpicturesque concrete buildings.

This row of coke ovens would have kept the air constantly full of coal smoke. Note the black, barren earth in the foreground. Coal dust and debris still leaves it nearly sterile, decades later.

And yet, amidst this all, just a few hundred feet from those coke ovens, a quiet little haven, under a cottonwood tree. (This picture was taken in October, when the stream had dwindled almost to nothing.)

After visiting these places, they stayed with me, but as feelings and impressions as much as visual experiences. So of course, that's what I set about trying to capture in my writing. It is an illusive thing, and I feel like I never quite capture it, which keeps me striving to do better next time. But, one early reader of my ARC told me, "I had to put your book down for a little while. I was so overwhelmed by a sense of homesickness from my childhood when you described that tree and pond, that I couldn't keep reading."  So I guess I got something right.

KTE: Ummm...yeah. You got a lot of somethings right. Thank you thank you thank you, Jeannie, for all of this. 

With gratitude,

Tam

Jeannie Mobley is a third generation native of Colorado on her mother’s side, while her father comes from a long line of yarn-spinners out of Arkansas. So really, it was inevitable that she would turn the histories of her home state into stories. In addition to letting her imagination run wild, Jeannie teaches anthropology in northern Colorado, enjoys as much sunshine as she possibly can, and talks in baby talk to her kids and animals, even though they are all grown up. Katerina’s Wish is her first novel. You can learn more about her here.