What causes people to act in extreme ways?
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There are plenty of questions in Edra Ziesk’s The Trespasser, and that’s no accident. Speaking by phone from New York last week, Ziesk explained.
“I definitely mean for people to sit down and think about it,” she said. Ziest’s story of a cultural confrontation gone bad features a violent confrontation early in the book. The event drives the plot but is more of a stepping stone for the reader than a vehicle.
“I didn’t want it to be about the shooting,” Ziesk said. The history of events fascinates the author. “I’m interested in events that are life-altering events, particularly for the community.
“What causes people to act in extreme ways?”
Using backstory, Ziesk treats just that issue in The Trespasser. The whole idea for the story was suggested to her by a story she had read a few years earlier — about a shooting.
Even though she hadn’t been to Kentucky, “I sort of felt like the story chose the setting,” Ziest said. “That’s where it needed to be.” She relied heavily on research, and the end result is remarkably accurate.
“When I’m writing a place, I see a place,” she said. But she admits she had help with that part: “I had people who had lived there — the South — read it.”
What resulted was a book with a strong setting, intriguing plot and Faulknerian abundance of symbolism. “I don’t put symbolism in intentionally,” Ziesk said, “but things take on a resonance.”
There’s one thing she didn’t do. She didn’t try to render the accents of her Kentucky characters. “I hear the way my characters speak in my head,” she said. But she doesn’t want to use dialect in her writing.
“I think that adds to the stereotype. I didn’t want to do that.” So her characters use some archaic expressions and occasionally drop a “g” from an “ing,” but mostly they use standard English. That’s easier to read too.
Ziesk, who has written two previous novels, is at work on her next book, “something very different for me,” and she’s thinking about the one after that, so she has the next couple of years’ writing mapped out.
“I definitely mean for people to sit down and think about it,” she said. Ziest’s story of a cultural confrontation gone bad features a violent confrontation early in the book. The event drives the plot but is more of a stepping stone for the reader than a vehicle.
“I didn’t want it to be about the shooting,” Ziesk said. The history of events fascinates the author. “I’m interested in events that are life-altering events, particularly for the community.
“What causes people to act in extreme ways?”
Using backstory, Ziesk treats just that issue in The Trespasser. The whole idea for the story was suggested to her by a story she had read a few years earlier — about a shooting.
Even though she hadn’t been to Kentucky, “I sort of felt like the story chose the setting,” Ziest said. “That’s where it needed to be.” She relied heavily on research, and the end result is remarkably accurate.
“When I’m writing a place, I see a place,” she said. But she admits she had help with that part: “I had people who had lived there — the South — read it.”
What resulted was a book with a strong setting, intriguing plot and Faulknerian abundance of symbolism. “I don’t put symbolism in intentionally,” Ziesk said, “but things take on a resonance.”
There’s one thing she didn’t do. She didn’t try to render the accents of her Kentucky characters. “I hear the way my characters speak in my head,” she said. But she doesn’t want to use dialect in her writing.
“I think that adds to the stereotype. I didn’t want to do that.” So her characters use some archaic expressions and occasionally drop a “g” from an “ing,” but mostly they use standard English. That’s easier to read too.
Ziesk, who has written two previous novels, is at work on her next book, “something very different for me,” and she’s thinking about the one after that, so she has the next couple of years’ writing mapped out.
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