The Summer That Melted Everything

by Tiffany McDaniel

Hi, Tiffany here. I’m so glad to be able to dig deeper behind The Summer that Melted Everything. While TSTME is my first published novel, it’s actually my fifth or sixth novel written. I first wrote it six years ago during a hot Ohio summer. The novel takes place in Breathed, Ohio. The town will once again be the setting for my upcoming novel, BETTY, which is dedicated to my own mother Betty, and inspired by generations of my family. BETTY is the first novel I wrote nearly twenty years ago and, among other things, BETTY channels my mother’s and Papaw’s experiences with racism. While my own skin is fair, my mother has brown skin, as did her father and his side of the family. Both of them faced racism in the predominately white communities they lived in. The character of Sal in TSTME gave me a chance to explore another side to my papaw’s and mother’s story. I had hoped when I wrote TSTME that times would change for the better. In 2014, when I worked on this novel, Eric Garner was killed as his cries of “I can’t breathe” echoed across this country. When the offending officer was not indicted, we saw yet another instance of injustice within our society and another example of the systemic racism plaguing it. In TSTME, a horrific crime is committed against a young black boy. The reality is that rarely do these crimes go punished when they are committed against persons of color and justice is rarely served for the victim. I wanted my novel to reflect this injustice, but my hope was that progress would be made and stories like that in TSTME would be lessons of the past wrongs in our courts system. Now in 2020, we hear that familiar “I can’t breathe” cry, and our country is reminded of our failures. With Sal’s story, I reflect back on my mother’s and my Papaw’s experiences. I remember those times my papaw was viciously beaten just because he was a different color. Those times he and my mother had racial slurs slung their way. Sal, for me, is a character who embodies those things I love about my papaw and mother. My papaw’s creativity, his storytelling, and his drive to be seen as equal in society. And in Sal, I see my mother’s kindness, her wisdom, her ability to survive. My mother’s and Papaw’s story will be explored deeper in BETTY, but I’m glad to have had TSTME published first. I think I’ll always be discovering my family’s story in one way or another in my work. I carry it with me. And in many ways, I carried it with me when writing TSTME. Below, I look forward to exploring what’s behind these quotes from TSTME. I’m sure not all of my comments will answer your personal questions about the story. In that case, please feel free to drop me a note at my website www.tiffanymcdaniel.com. I welcome reader emails.

Sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs.

The racists in the novel form a cult that feeds the tragedies they have personally experienced. This quote really speaks to that group, which is led by a man by the name Elohim. Through Elohim’s backstory, we learn that his wife had an affair. He uses this as an excuse for his hate. Oftentimes, we see this personality trait with racists. Elohim is someone who refuses to place the blame on his own self. When I was growing up in southern Ohio, and attending church for the first time, I noticed how easy it is for people to form ideas about a certain group. My family wasn’t part of the church, and I had signed up because I was friends with a girl who was, so I was the only one from my family to attend. It was a southern Baptist church, and I was told I would have to sit in the back with the other women and girls. Only the men were allowed to sit up front, and only the men were allowed to preach. Of the things they discussed, they preached that the color of skin mattered. That black men, women, and children were just different and didn’t have the same morals white folks had. They freely used racial slurs. I knew my own mother and Papaw would not even be welcome in that church. I did not return to that place of worship. Their beliefs were not reflective of my own. What I wanted to show in the character of Elohim was how a person can take the bad things that happen in their lives, and not take accountability for those things personally. They place the blame on someone else. And more often than not, they place it on someone who is of a different race, because that then removes even more of the blame from the person really at fault. Elohim placed the fault for his wife’s infidelity on others. Her affair was not what made him a racist. It was his decision to blame an entire race of people for his problems. It was what I witnessed in that church so long ago. Elohim possessed that same hate, venom, and wickedness of using others as a scapegoat for the ills in his own life. As the quote says, “sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs.” Elohim believed these things, not because they were the truth, but because he needed to have something to shift responsibility off his own shoulders.

“The word autopsy is a relative of the word autopsia, which in the ancient vernacular of the Greeks means to see for oneself. In the amphitheater of the great beyond, we all do our own autopsies. These self-imposed autopsies are done not on the physical body of our being but on the spirit of it. We call these ultimate examinations the autopsy of the soul.”

One of the most asked questions I get on the book is the reason for Fielding’s father’s name which is Autopsy. It is a strange name, and when I wrote it, I was of course aware of the meaning of the word “autopsy.” The dead body up on the cold slab, about to be cut open and examined. Then I dug deeper to the Greek origins of the word which means, ‘To see for oneself.’ At eighty-four, Fielding is at the end of his life. He’s climbing up on the cold slab, laying back, and cutting himself open. Him telling this story is in essence him performing an autopsy on himself, so he can discover what exactly has killed his soul.

A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower’s turn to own the name.

In TSTME, an invitation is written to the devil, inviting him to town. When that invitation is answered, it’s answered in the form of a thirteen-year-old boy named Sal. I didn’t want to write the stereotypical devil. One of red flesh, horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. I wanted to present someone who is as unlikely to be the devil as possible, but because of his race, he’s immediately targeted and called “devil.” I remembered back to when my Papaw Landon was called racial slurs, including the devil, by whites in those communities he was trying to live in. But as we learn over the course of the novel that just because someone is called the devil, doesn’t mean he is. On the opposite side of that you have Elohim, which is the name for God in the Hebrew bible. So, you have someone who is called the devil in Sal, and someone who is called God in Elohim. And yet, by the end of this novel, we realize the one who is called the devil does not act devilish, and the one called God does not act godly. It’s about taking those two things and turning them on their heads. And it’s about seeing for ourselves who these people are, regardless of their skin color.

I ONCE HEARD someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface.

I grew up in both south central and southern Ohio, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where I still live. I love the Appalachian culture. The twangy dialect, the long standing traditions, and the sense of myth and legend roaming the hills. Breathed is a fictional name but inspired by my home town. Breathed was born when I first wrote BETTY nearly twenty years ago. Though my mother was born in Arkansas and moved around the country with her family in her early years, they settled in the southern Ohio town. Breathed has become a character itself, and is the setting for the majority of my novels written to date.

If looks were to be believed, he still was just a boy. Something of my age, though from his solemn quietude, I knew he was old in the soul. A boy whose black crayon would be the shortest in his box.

Sal is creative, imaginative, and intelligent. It was also important that Sal take on a role of wisdom, because it had to be left up to the reader as to if this character was really just a little boy, or if he was a fallen angel who had lived since the beginning of time. So sometimes Sal speaks in a way you might not think a thirteen-year-old boy should, but I put my trust in Sal’s ability to be a storyteller, a thirteen-year old boy, and possibly a fallen angel, all at the same time. Much like my mother, Betty, Sal was a storyteller. I saw so many of her qualities in him, and she was one of the reasons why I wanted to have him writing and telling stories. Storytelling has been a tradition in my family on my mother’s side. Both her and Papaw Landon, told stories to steer them on the path forward, and to shield them against the racism they were experiencing. Sal uses storytelling much the same way.

“As I dangled there in the sky from His hand, I knew He didn’t want to let me go. But I also knew that if He did not let go, He would be ruined by holding onto me. So in that choice, I let go of Him. I had to, for His sake. I had to fall as the Devil, so He could stay the God.”

This passage is written at the moment Sal is recounting his fall from grace. When we read between the lines, he’s speaking about his father back at the farm. To a child, the parent is the god. The figure directing their life, sheltering them, educating them. When Sal speaks up at the farm and says he wants a better life than that of his father’s, his mother slaps him and calls him the devil for his disrespect. But Sal’s disrespect is not to say he doesn’t love his father, despite the abuse. And he’s willing to be the lesser one, if it means his father will be able to feel significant. That is the gift from the son to the father. He allows him to remain in charge, the one in the clouds. One of the mysteries surrounding Sal is whether he is of earth or of heavenly charge. And this man and woman back at the farm, are they real? Or are they something more? When I look at Sal and his relationship with his abusive father, I see the father as an example of America. If you’re a person of color, America is something very different to you than it is if you’re white. For Sal, America is a place of abuse. Each strike from the father is the abuse people of color suffer every day in America. In a particular scene in the novel, Sal’s father lays a rope around their house. He says he wants to try to be good. We see this attempt by America every day, promising to be better to minority communities. And yet, every day we see women, men, and children continuously targeted for their race. By the time the father has cut the rope, the fields have dried. As we say in the book, “His American chance was going to grave.” He blames Sal and the abuse continues. This is not far-fetched from the politics of our country. When we feel our American dream slipping from us, there is a tendency to blame someone else for that loss. Sal’s “father” is doing the same. This symbol of the rope goes back to the symbol that became prominent in the 19th century which is that of the black victim with a rope around their neck, swinging from the trees. When I look back at my papaw’s experiences, being a man of brown skin in white towns, I reflect back on that abuse he endured, too, knowing how lucky he was to escape the same fate as Sal.

It was like seeing American flags impaled on white picket fences. He had been red, he had been white, he had been blue and July Fourth. But now, the mythology of him was over. He who was so handsome, as children all the girls thought they would marry him and leave the earth for the stars.

In the novel, Fielding’s older brother is named Grand. And in Fielding’s eyes, Grand is the very definition of his name. Someone who is seemingly perfect. But there comes pressure with that perfection. And for Grand, he is someone who is struggling with his identity. He learns Russian in the novel. This foreign language in the American landscape is his way of trying to come to terms with that which feels foreign inside of him. At the time, being gay in middle American was not widely accepted. This is also on the doorstep of the AIDS epidemic. Grand learns Russian in an attempt to learn and understand himself. It could have been any language. It wasn’t the country of origin that mattered. What matters is this is Grand’s attempt to understand who he is. Fielding is the only other person in the house who attempts to learn Russian as well, and readers eventually learn the foreshadowing behind this. But certainly, Grand is a character who struggling to speak the language that will reveal his true self.

I am for my own teeth. I am for my own stomach. I alone eat myself to the dark.

We see many of these characters are being devoured by something. Aunt Fedelia is being devoured by her anger. Elohim is being devoured by his hate. Grand by his secret and Stella by her fear. Autopsy, too, is being devoured by his faith. From early on, we see fangs. Men who claim to eat only vegetables, but hide dark secrets where blood is masked as barbecue sauce. Cannibalism is defined as the eating of the flesh of one’s own species. And sometimes it is defined when we eat of ourselves. The female characters in the novel fare better at escaping this fate. Aunt Fedelia finds her true path. Stella realizes fear is no way to live. And Dresden learns to dance and love herself. In the female characters, we can see how once severed from those things that threaten to devour us, we can be free. The male characters are not so fortunate.

And isn’t that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?

When I wrote BETTY, I conducted Q&A sessions with my mother about those experiences of racism she faced. She told me how growing up in predominately white communities, she was not seen as significant, important, or as if her life mattered. She recalled how in school she was bullied because of the color of her skin, by not only classmates but teachers as well. When it came time for career instruction in high school, the teachers told my mother she wasn’t going to do anything with her life, and it would be a waste of time for her to participate. Those in the community hurled racial slurs at her and her father. As I listened to her stories and her experiences, she expressed having those feelings that her life didn’t matter. These same feelings I wanted to apply to Sal. Sal is a character who has grown up on his family’s farm. His “father” is struggling to make a life for himself, but Sal doesn’t want to inherit his father’s burdens, nor does he want to inherit the farm. Sal is a reader, and he dreams of being a writer one day. But despite his beautiful gifts and talents for storytelling, he is still not seen by society. Only when he comes to town, saying he is the devil, do people see, hear, and acknowledge him.

“But a girl loses her leg, and somebody gives her a new one. In this world where so few things are given, how can you not be in awe at what you’ve got?”

In the novel, Dresden is a character who happens to have a fake leg. When I was growing up, there was a fake leg left in the old farmhouse from the man who had lived with my paternal grandparents. I would see this leg and hear the stories about the man and his life. It seemed he always had to prove that he could work just as hard as other men with two legs, so I wanted to create a character like Dresden who received much of that same treatment. She receives this treatment even from her own mother. Both Dresden and Sal are victims of abuse. I wanted to show both a white character experiencing this, as well as a black character, to illustrate that childhood abuse does not discriminate. Such abuse happens to children every day, regardless of if they are wealthy, poor, white, or black. And for those in similar situations as these characters, I wanted to inspire those readers to see that the abuse can be survived. Dresden certainly overcomes it to show that she is just as important, strong, and capable as everyone else.

When all my soul, in its smallness and its vastness, would fall face down against the earth from the bliss of my name to the hard crosses I would be handed to bear.

Fielding is our eighty-four-year-old narrator. He’s looking back on his life and on that summer of 1984 when everything changed. I wanted to use 1984, and his age as eighty-four, for a very particular reason. In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, he speaks about the importance of preserving individual thought against the herd mentality. During this summer of 1984, we see this individual thought threatened. Our narrator Fielding is keenly aware of this threat and this quote really represents the effect that summer had on the rest of his life. I often get asked by readers why I didn’t give Fielding a happy ending. But it was important to me that Sal’s murder mean something. That it had lasting effects on the lives of these characters. And even more important that Sal’s life matter, even if it didn’t matter in the court system. Fielding and Sal are more than friends. They become brothers during the course of the novel. When I look at the aged Fielding, I look at a man mourning that loss of his brother. And perhaps if there had been justice for Sal, Fielding’s own life would have turned out differently. But violence affects the whole family, and the ripples of that injustice, though they may fade over time, do not completely disappear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I hope all readers enjoy their time with TSTME. As a thank you to readers of this novel, I have dropped in some familiar names in my newest novel BETTY.First written nearly twenty years ago, BETTY takes place in Breathed, a town inspired by the place my mother and I grew up. I anticipate using Breathed as the setting for the majority of my novels, and by using this setting I got the opportunity to revisit some characters from TSTME. Though they are only brief appearances, I wanted to put a thank you in BETTY to you readers of TSTME. And as you open the pages of BETTY, I hope you find joy in being back in Breathed. Thanks so much for the opportunity to lift back the veil on some of these quotes. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48564330-betty