Author Spotlight: An Interview with Leo Daughtry

 

What inspired you to write “Talmadge Farm?”

I lived through changing times, particularly the 1950swhen there was

nearly complete segregation in the South, especially inrural areas.

Sharecropping was common, and women did not divorce inthose times

because it was considered demeaning, a failure. Then inthe 1960s,

everything began to change. Sharecropping disappeared,birth control

entered the picture, and women could live life with morefreedom and less

dependence on men.

 

Can you tell us more about your family history and itsconnection to

North Carolina and tobacco? How did this environmentinfluence your

writing? Beyond the direct associations with tobaccoand North

Carolina, are there more subtle aspects of yourupbringing and family

history that influenced your writing?

 

Tobacco was king in North Carolina. People practicallyworshiped it. Where

I grew up, it put food on the table. Cotton was more upand down, but

tobacco provided financial stability, not just forfarmers but for the whole

community. My family grew tobacco, sold fertilizer andseed, and managed

a tobacco auction. It was our whole world.

 

You have had a successful career as a lawyer and anAir Force

Captain before that. What prompted you to pursuewriting fiction? 

I always had the idea for this particular story in myhead. The 1950s and

1960s were two decades that changed the world, and a farmwith

sharecroppers is a bit of a pressure cooker environment.You have the

farm owner’s family – in many cases people of wealth andentitlement –

living just down the driveway from the sharecroppingfamilies. The

sharecroppers were poor and had limited options, so theyfelt stuck living

on a farm that didn’t belong to them doing backbreakingwork with no way

out. It’s a situation that lends itself to drama:families with major differences

in class/race/socioeconomic status living in such closeproximity to one

another.

 

How has the landscape of tobacco farming changed, andhow did you

incorporate those changes into the plot of “TalmadgeFarm?”

 

Probably the biggest change was the shift fromsharecropping to migrant

workers. Today, tobacco farmers are large corporationsthat use migrant

workers as laborers. But in the 1950s, farming reliedalmost completely on

sharecropping, which was a hard life. Tobacco farming isphysically

demanding work, and sharecroppers needed the help of allfamily members

to complete the various steps – planting, seeding,suckering, priming,

worming, and cropping – of harvesting the crop.Sharecroppers at one farm

would help sharecroppers at the neighboring farm becausethey did not

have the resources to hire extra people. In the 1950s,sharecroppers were

unable to get credit anywhere but at the general storeand maybe the feed

store. They truly lived hand to mouth all the time, onlyable to pay their

debts after the tobacco auction in the fall. Hence thephrase “sold my soul

to the company store.” Sharecroppers often turned tomoonshining as a

way to make extra money. 

As I describe in the novel, sharecropping began todisappear in the 1960s

as children of sharecroppers started taking advantage ofnew opportunities

that the changing society offered. Migrant workers tookover the labor of

farming. In addition to labor changes, new machineryimproved the

industry. N.C. State was instrumental in developingadvances in the

farming world. Legislation changed and farmers wereallowed to have

acreage allotments outside of the land they owned. Itouch on all of these

changes in the novel.

 

Are any of the characters in your book based on realpeople?

 

Not really. The closest characters to real people in mylife are the

characters of Jake and Bobby Lee. Jake is a Blackteenager who wants to

escape farm life and ends up running away to Philadelphiato become a

success. Bobby Lee is a young Black soldier stationed atFort Bragg. On

the farm where I grew up, there was a Black sharecroppingfamily with four

sons, the youngest of whom was my age. We were very goodfriends. All of

the boys were bright and athletic, could fix anything,yet were limited in

their opportunities. They didn’t have a school to go toor a job to look

forward to. Their only options were to stay on the farmor join the army. The

character of Gordon, while not based on any one person,reminds me of a

lot of men I knew who did not treat women well, who wereracist, who

enjoyed the status quo and were resistant to anythingthat threatened their

way of life. 

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In addition to the changing tobacco farmingmethodologies, the 1950s

ushered in a period of profound social change, markednotably by the

introduction of credit cards. How did these outsidefactors impact

farming, and in what ways did they inform thedevelopment of the plot

in “Talmadge Farm?”

 

In the novel, Gordon is the president of the local bank,yet he resists the

advances in the banking industry, including credit cardsand car loans and

the incursion of national banks into rural communities.Gordon’s father, who

founded the bank, was a brilliant man adept at navigatingthe bank through

changing times, but Gordon simply doesn’t have the smartsto see what’s

coming, and no one can get through to him. He’d ratherplay a round of golf

than look at the balance sheet. So between the changingfarming

landscape and the evolution of new banking practices,Gordon is getting

squeezed from both sides of the ledger as it were. Itproves to be his

downfall. I think that’s one of the great strengths ofthe plot – how

everything is tied to everything else.

 

How did other social changes – including racerelations – impact the

tobacco industry and your writing?

 

In the 1960s, the minority labor pool available to farmtobacco began to dry

up as kids started moving up north or joining the army.We see this in the

novel through the characters of Jake and Bobby Lee. Ellais another

example. She’s the Black teenage daughter of asharecropping family, and

she hates farm work. She ends up enrolling in asecretarial program and

getting a job at the county clerk’s office, opportunitiesthat were unheard of

in the 1950s.

 

The Surgeon General issued a groundbreaking report 60years ago on

the harmful effects of smoking. How did this pivotalmoment influence

your approach to writing? What firsthand impacts didyou observe

while coming of age among the tobacco farms of NorthCarolina?

 

Most people where I lived didn’t believe the SurgeonGeneral was accurate

in that report. Most everyone smoked. People viewed it asthe government

coming in and trying to tell us what to do. A prevailingtheme was that the

government was trying to get rid of tobacco but wasn’tdoing anything

about alcohol. One notable exception I remember is thatgood athletes in

the 1950s were discouraged from smoking, so maybe thecoaches were on

to something that the rest of us weren’t ready to hearyet. In the novel, we

see Gordon’s constant frustration at what he views asinterference from the

government, while other characters, mostly ones involvedin the medical

community, begin to appreciate that smoking was bad forone’s health.

 

How did you address the plight of women in the novel?

 

In the 1950s, women were very limited in theiropportunities. There were

very few professional opportunities for women outside ofteaching, nursing,

and working as a secretary. Divorce was scandalous andunheard of in

those days. We see lots of examples of this in the novel.But of all the

characters, it’s two of the women who have the clearestmoral compasses:

Claire, Gordon’s wife, and Ivy, the Talmadges’ maid. Bothof them see

more clearly than anyone else where Gordon is going offthe deep end, but

they are nearly powerless to do anything about it.

 

The novel touches on themes of privilege, racialinjustice, and the

struggle for autonomy and dignity. How did younavigate these

sensitive topics while crafting the narrative, andwhat challenges did

you encounter along the way? 

I lived through this time, and I witnessed first-handpeople who enjoyed

privilege that was unearned as well as racial injusticesthat denied Black

people access to the same opportunities as white people.And yet most

people – white and Black – were simply striving to make abetter life in an

honorable way. I tried to infuse all of the characters in“Talmadge Farm”

with dignity and humanity, even Gordon, who finally getshis comeuppance

in the end.

 

The novel is described as a "love letter to theAmerican South." Can

you expand on this sentiment?

 

As I look back on my childhood, in many ways it was awonderful time to

grow up. It was safe. We never locked our doors. Ourwhole life existed just

in that area; it was a long trip traveling to Raleigh,which was only 60

minutes away. There was a strong sense of community, ofchurch, of taking care of each other

 

Ultimately, what do you hope readers will take awayfrom “Talmadge

Farm?”

 

I mainly hope they will be entertained by a great storyabout three families

who called Talmadge Farm home during the tumultuous timesof the

1950s-1960s.

 

What impact do you aspire for the book to have ondiscussions about

history, identity, and resilience in the AmericanSouth?

 

We have now moved on from the post-Civil War time and theJim Crow

period to a place where we’re beginning to find ouridentity as a state and

region. In the 1950s, North Carolina was one of thepoorest states in the

country. Our economy was dependent primarily on tobaccofarming but

also textiles and furniture making, none of which paid aliving wage. 

Segregation was rampant, and minorities had fewopportunities to improve

their lot in life. Our university graduates who studiedcomputer science and

technology ended up leaving the state to find jobs inthose industries. That

all began to change in the 1960s with the enforcement ofdesegregation,

the advent of birth control, and changes in farmingregulations and

methods. 

Another major turning point in our state’s economy waswhen

Governor Hodges convinced IBM to move from New York toNorth Carolina

as part of the development of the Research Triangle Park.A large number

of technology and pharmaceutical companies followed suit,and there was

a ripple effect that extended across the state, even toareas like Hobbsfield,

our fictional town in “Talmadge Farm.” My hope is thatreading this novel

will help people understand how we got to where we aretoday.