Interview with author Rebecca Elswick

Appalachia seems to have a way of nurturing the creative spirit and providing inspiration for so many writers, painters and other artists. One good example is award-winning author Rebecca Elswick. Her book “Mama’s Shoes” set in an Appalachian coal mining town during the 1940’s and 50’s, is the story of a troubled young mother, Sylvia Richardson and her daughter Sassy. Their hopes, dreams and struggles are expressed in their own words, as each takes turns narrating the book.

So, what does Rebecca Elswick have to say about “Mamas Shoes”?



Q: Most writers say they find inspiration everywhere. Is this true for you or do you have a particular source of inspiration for the majority of your work?

A: Inspiration is all around me. I find it everywhere – eavesdropping on two elderly gentlemen talking at the doctor’s office, a phone conversation with my eighty-nine-year-old mother, and of course, reading a good book. I don’t believe you can be a good writer unless you are an avid reader. For years I have kept an “idea” file where I record everything from dreams to interesting names I come across.

I also spend time with other Appalachian authors. Appalachian authors are different from any other authors I have encountered. We are like this huge family, and going to workshops is like going to family reunions where everybody sits around and talks about stories and writes. Appalachian authors are accepting and nurturing of new writers.

Q: You describe yourself as a child of Appalachia. How has your environment influenced your work, in particular “Mama’s Shoes”?

A: I’ve always wanted to write a book about the Appalachia I know - a book that dispels the negative stereotypes about Appalachians. We are an intelligent and hard-working people who are family orientated to the point of being clannish, which I believe comes from our Scott-Irish heritage, or in my case, Welsh heritage. One of the themes in Mama’s Shoes is growing up in the coalfields of Appalachia. I wanted to portray the hard-working women of Appalachia who accomplish so much with so little. The only thing many of them ever did for themselves was go to the beauty shop and get their hair done.

Appalachian literature has a wonderful sense of place that gives it this amazing flavor. Southern Appalachians are so tied to their part of the country that you can’t tell a story without telling about where the people come from. Farming and coal mining are such parts of life here that they help define who we are.

Q: Do you personally identify with the characters in your stories? If yes, do you identify more closely with Sylvia or Sassy in “Mama’s Shoes”, and why?

A: I was born and raised in a coal mining town, like Coal Valley, where I still live today. My father and grandfather were coal miners. There are bits and pieces of me in all of my stories, and this is true for Sassy and Sylvia. I was a shy child whose best friends were books. I was that little girl who helped out at her Mama’s beauty shop, and my Mama was a beautiful, auburn haired beautician.
I identify with Sylvia’s postpartum depression, having experienced it myself after the birth of my twins. It was important to me to portray this in the book, especially how doctors in Sylvia's day did not see this as a true medical problem. I think it’s safe to say, that sadly, that is somewhat true today.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish with “Mama’s Shoes”?

A: My journey to publication is a bit different –entering contests are to thank for my getting Mama’s Shoes published. It actually began in 2003 with a contest in Writer's Digest. It was an opening line contest – write an opening line for a novel based solely on the picture provided. The picture was a pair of flip flops on the beach with the water almost touching them. I had read the magazine for years, but never thought about entering a contest, but something about that picture haunted me. I found myself thinking about it all the time. Then one day it came to me: Mama always said you could tell a real lady by the shoes she wears, but then nobody ever accused Mama of being a lady.

I entered the contest and was runner-up! That planted a seed for a story. I eventually wrote a short story and showed it to a friend of mine. She kept urging me to write more of Mama's story, but I put it away and didn’t think about it again until 2006, when I studied with the Appalachian Writing Project. I dug up the story and started working on it again, expanding the idea from a short story to a novel.

In 2008, I applied to the Hindman Appalachian Writer’s Workshop. My submission was the first 30 pages of Mama’s Shoes. I continued to work on it and in 2009, I returned to Hindman with the novel almost completed. I revised and revised and starting looking for an agent until March of 2010 when I discovered another contest, again sponsored by Writer’s Digest. The grand prize was a publishing contract. The contest was called Pitch2Win. The object of the contest was to pitch your novel on Twitter, which limited the pitch to 140 characters. I read though hundreds of entries already posted and found that most of them were basically the same "My book is about..." So I tried a new approach. I went back to the line I'd used in 2003 and tweeted - Mama always said you could tell a real lady by the shoes she wears, but then nobody ever accused Mama of being a lady. They called me the next day and wanted to talk about my novel.T wo weeks later I was notified I was one of fifty finalists. I had to submit a synopsis and biography and wait. Then I got the phone call! I won the grand prize, a publicity plus publishing contract with Abbott Press, a subsidiary of Writer’s Digest.

Then in January, I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. Mama’s Shoes made it all the way to the semifinals which were the top 50. The contest began with 5,000 so even though I didn’t make the top 3, I feel really good about it.

My ultimate goal is a publishing contract.

Q: The characters in “Mama’s Shoes” are very vivid. How did you achieve this? Were they based on real people or do you just have a good technique for characterization?

A: My mother was a beautician and I grew up in the midst of the beauty shops where she worked. I have vivid memories of “the shop” as my mama called it. I especially remember the smells – a combination of the chemicals and the clouds of cigarette smoke that was ever present. She always gave me little jobs to do like emptying the ashtrays and folding towels, and I would listen to the customers talk while I performed my tasks. The women were so used to me that they talked like I wasn’t there, so I heard some real “good” stories and unfortunately for them, I remember many of them! I also had two older sisters who were always fixing their hair, putting on make-up and nail polish and generally being “girly” girls.

My father was a coal miner, but in his younger days, he was a bus driver. I remember riding the bus with him when I was a little girl and speaking to the passengers. He was a World War II veteran, and I used his path through the war for my character Gaines Richardson, but unlike my character, my father survived the war. For example, my father was General George Patton’s driver, a fact I didn’t know until I was married. My father never liked to talk about the war, but one day we were watching television with him when the movie “Patton” came on. My father casually remarked, “He was a bigger SOB than anybody knows.” Stunned, I asked, “How do you know?” That’s when he told me about it.
It seemed natural to weave my characters into the world I knew so well.

Q: You mention your Welsh ancestry in your author’s bio. As a fellow Welsh girl I have noticed that writing and storytelling seem to come very naturally to the Welsh. Is writing or storytelling a part of your own heritage?

A: I come from a long line of story tellers. My daddy loved to tell stories about growing up in southwestern Virginia; in fact, his favorite television show was “The Waltons.” He said it portrayed what life was like when he was a boy. My maternal grandfather was also a big story teller. He used to tell me about working in the coal mines when they used a pick and shovel and had ponies to carry the coal out of the mine. He was a miner when they carried canaries underground with them. I followed in their story telling footsteps, only I decided to write down my stories.

Q: There is a quote from “Jane Eyre” at the beginning of “Mama’s Shoes”. Have you been influenced, as so many female authors have, by the work of Charlotte Bronte?

A: Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books. Perhaps, my love of strong women protagonists comes from it. All of the books that Sassy reads in the novel are taken from the books I read and loved at her age. I still read Anne of Green Gables over and over and claim it as my favorite book. Also, when I was a little girl, I remember waiting for the book mobile which was a traveling library. It came to Grundy once a week because we didn’t have a public library, and I was allowed to borrow one book. I remember vividly, borrowing Jane Eyre. It was a brand new book and the title was written in gold. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen!

Q: “Mama’s Shoes” is narrated by both Sylvia and Sassy. Do you find it easier to write in the first-person or did you just think it would be more effective for this book?

A: I wanted to tell their stories and I wanted “them” to do it. The author Lee Smith is a friend of mine and she read an early draft of the novel. She loved it as a first-person narrative. Lee is from my hometown and has been a wonderful mentor to me. My book’s cover boasts a glowing review from Lee and the author Amy Greene, who is a dear friend and mentor.

Q: Two important themes from “Mama’s Shoes” are struggle and hope. When you first started working on this book was it your intention to try to inspire hope within the reader?

A: When I started writing Mama’s Shoes, I wanted to write the kind of book that I liked to read. I adore stories that are uplifting and that make me think. I like a little mystery, well-developed characters, and of course, conflict.

I think of Mama’s Shoes as a story of redemption – how love redeems us. It’s a story of relationships – between mother and child, relatives, and those people who are not our blood kin but are our family none-the-less. I wanted to show that even though Sylvia did a horrible thing by giving her daughter away, she was able to seek forgiveness, and ultimately, forgive herself.