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Wednesday, June 17, 2009 6:11 PM Shivers to read from her new book By Antonio Velarde | Times Staff Writer SNOW HILL -- Greene County has always loomed large in author Louise Shivers' mind. Shivers' father was born outside Snow Hill, and ancestors of hers called the rural county home. She also references the county in her two acclaimed novels "Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail" and "A Whistling Woman." Shivers, a Wilson County native and writer-in-residence at Augusta State University, in Georgia, has chosen Greene County as the setting of her new novel and will be reading it here tonight. Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Greene County Museum, 107 NW 3rd St., Shivers will read portions of "Leaving Cold Harbor," which tells the story of several Greene County natives fighting in the Civil War. She will also answer questions for the audience. The novel is expected to be released next spring. Shivers came to prominence after publishing her first novel, "Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail", in 1983. It garnered favorable reviews in The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. The novel was later made into a movie, "Summer Heat," starring Kathy Bates. "A Whistling Woman" followed a decade later. Shivers, who has two other unpublished books, said in a phone interview this week that eastern North Carolina has always been the central subject of her work. Many of her works contain strong historical and nonfiction elements, and she sometimes uses her own family history as a starting point before fiction takes over. For instance, in "Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail" memories of her father's funeral home business influenced the story, about an unhappily married daughter of a town undertaker. And a scene in "Leaving Cold Harbor," that takes place at a Confederate Memorial Day parade in Wilson, is influenced by her own childhood memories of attending the parades. Shivers also heavily researches each novel, learning the history of the land and its people until she can almost picture it. Eastern North Carolina, she said, has become almost an obsession to her. "You have to love the subject, or you will get so tired of it," Shivers said of researching and writing a novel. That passion factored heavily in the writing of "Leaving Cold Harbor," which Shivers said she researched in similar fashion, plotting the marches of troops. The novel took five years to write. "I've recreated it down to the earthworms," Shivers said. She said inspiration from the story came partly from family members interested in genealogy, who told her an ancestor of hers had died in Elmira Prison in New York. Her great-great-grandfather had left behind a child in an orphanage, she said. It was a compelling history, she said, and fed the imagination. The novel begins when a Civil War widow, an orphan, is at a Confederate Memorial Day parade in Wilson, with the story being told in a flashback. Shivers said of writing the book, and of writing novels in general, that it is a discipline that takes great patience. And time. All of her novels are written in longhand, and she sticks to a strict five-hour-a-day, five-day-a-week regimen. "I don't have a number of words or pages or anything like that," Shivers said. "But by Friday, I have to make myself say I've done a certain amount of work that week." But still, it's worth it for Shivers, who said she loves writing, and living in that dream world that so many other authors lose themselves in. "Writing a novel really is like writing down a dream," she said. avelarde@wilsontimes.com | 265-7868 |
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