It’s sometimes hard to tell when a novelist is working.
Except for the novel she wrote in the mid-1960s, Joyce Allen didn’t have much time for fiction writing while raising six children and during a career managing the student program in the department of epidemiology at UNC from 1974 to ‘95.
Her second novel was published this year, but it came from the germ of an idea that had hatched while her family lived in a house on Chestnut Ridge Road not far from where Cane Creek Reservoir is now, in a house she and her husband built in 1974.
Hannah’s House (Wolf’s Pond Press, 2008) grew from a discovery she made at that home site, where nearby many years prior someone else had built a house and made a life.
“I was fascinated by the remains of the old cabin,†Allen said. “I found the filled-in well. It was a log house with three tiers of logs; a small house. I couldn’t find out anything about the people.â€
But that didn’t stop her imagination from creating a possible life for the people there, and with research she developed Hannah, the daughter of a practitioner of native medicine, who learns her mother’s practices and carries them forward there until the house burns down. Allen juxtaposes Hannah’s story, told in 1892 through her journal, with that of Iris, a modern-day woman who moves into a house in a new development following a divorce and discovers the burned remains of an old house. As she adjusts to her new life, she learns bits and pieces about the “witch-ghost†that, according to lore, still inhabits the home site. Allen weaves the women’s stories together one chapter at a time — back and forth — pulling the reader into each intriguing life with rich details, like this description of a former Confederate soldier who comes to the home of Hannah and her mother asking if he might rest there for a while:
“He had taken off his hat when he reached them, and now held it in his hands. His face was narrow above the beard, and his eyes were light, set deep under brows that shadowed them. He was as clean as a man may be who has traveled a long way on foot, but the skin was dark around his eyes. His hair was silky and hung to his shoulders, and like his beard, was the gold-brown of ripe hay.â€
But what happened during the years between first and second novel?
“I went to short things,†Allen said last week as we sipped tea in her Carrboro living room. Stranger in Our Darkness had been well received; in fact, “several nice things almost happened.†She saw it
almost be selected as a Readers Digest condensed book until the editor-in-chief declined, saying it was too depressing. Redbook almost serialized it, but didn’t for the same reason.
“It sank without a ripple, but it got nice reviews,†Allen remembered.
With few snatches of time for writing, she wrote short stories and creative nonfiction, some of which was published in journals. In the early 1990s, when a friend who taught creative writing at The ArtsCenter could no longer teach, she asked Allen to take over the class. Based on her previous publications, the ArtsCenter also extended the request, where she continues teaching Writers at Work, an eight-week workshop. Similarly, she took the Novel in Progress course through Duke Continuing Education, and when Georgann Eubanks left she asked Allen if she’d be interested in teaching it, which she did for 11 years.
“It was pretty popular, with wonderful, advanced writers,†Allen said.
Now, in her 70s, Allen’s working on a young adult fantasy, the first in a trilogy. She has shared it with her grandchildren (she has eight) of the target age, “who loved it and offered good comments. One of my granddaughters contributed middle school slang,†Allen said.
Hear Allen discuss and read from Hannah’s House at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 21 at the Meet the Author Tea at the Chapel Hill Public Library.
Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekay AT mac DOT com