An Interview with Author Carol Baldwin

There's a new book in town. Half-Truths. Although it was designed for teens, this novel by Carol Baldwin should be read by every adult in America. It is a powerful narrative of a history that we often push under our carpet of shame. It takes the reader into the Jim Crow fifties of Charlotte and Tabor City, North Carolina. It's the story of my youth, even though I lived through it in another city. After I finished reading it, I told her it could have been named Hard-Truths, because it told facts that were hard to hear.

I asked Carol a few questions, mostly from a fellow author's point of view. Here's our discussion:

Setting is so important to the unfolding of action in Half-Truths. Why did you write about actual towns rather than create fictional ones?

When my children were young, they always asked me if something was "real" in a book they were reading. I think it adds a deeper dimension to a book when the reader realizes that a place or person is "real." Since I wanted to explore what life was like in Charlotte before civil rights, I never thought of placing the story elsewhere. That option was suggested to me but I felt as if it would take away from the reality of what life was like in Charlotte. After that decision, it only made sense that I would find a "real" place where Kate grew up.

And how about the editors of the newspapers? Did I read somewhere that they were real as well?

Horace Carter, the editor of The Tabor City Tribune, was a very real force in Tabor City, NC in the early fifties. A UNC graduate, he started a paper in this North Carolina tobacco town that's across the border from South Carolina. In his thirties he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the KKK.

Speaking of newspapers, the way you start each chapter with a "ripped from the headlines" clip is fascinating. What do you think those add to your story?

Thank you, I'm glad you like them. I actually borrowed that technique from Kathleen Burkinshaw; that is what she did in her middle-grade book, The Last Cherry Blossom. I think it adds another layer of authenticity to the story, mirroring Kate's desire to be a journalist, as well as giving readers a taste of what was reported on and advertised during that period.  

Not all were from glaring headlines. What did you change in those cases?

I wanted as many real headlines as possible but sometimes I couldn't find what I was looking for. That's one reason I would create a headline. The other reason is that I wanted to show how the local newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, reported on social events, like Kate's luncheon or the May Day parade.

You had to have done mountains and mountains of research. Where did you go for your information beyond back issues of newspapers? 

I consulted a lot of books; this is a picture of just some of them.

Since I'm White and was writing about a Black girl who was light-skinned, I read several books about being biracial. I also read several MG and YA books with Black protagonists. You can find a list of my blog posts which include books I read here. I also conducted several books and online articles about Charlotte, the South, goats, tobacco, the KKK and just about everything in the book! I interviewed close to a hundred people who either lived in Charlotte during this time or had family that did. Many of their stories are threaded through Half-Truths.

Much of what you researched must have been hard to read. Did you ever turn away because you couldn't go into that darkness?

No. Some of the books about what Blacks experienced were difficult and painful to read. But I suppose there's a journalist in me, too. I wanted to report the way life really was. 

Did you develop Kate's desire to be a reporter from all your research?

Interesting question. Early on I saw her as wanting to be a photographer for the school paper, but then I realized that I knew a lot more about writing and could write that with more authenticity.  

The goat. I must ask about what part it played in developing your characters. Could the story have been the same with only the dog? 

Ha Ha! In early drafts, I had only a dog who disrupted her luncheon. Eileen Heyes, an author friend of mine, said that everyone had dogs in their stories and I needed something different! I hit on a goat and it fit. Initially, I even named her Eileen, but then I realized that name was too close to Lillian. 

Kate's fellow students in both towns were so real to me. Did you dislike any of them but included them anyway? If so, then why?

Yes, I'm not too keen on Hank and Lola Mae in Tabor City, but I needed to show the atmosphere of the town and how racism had been passed on to young people, too. I'm also not a fan of Kenneth. Many girls have met boys like him. They need to see how Kate's mother says, they can be "loose cannons."  

Authors often slide in a homage to people or events or places from their personal lives. Tell us about something you might have included.

My mother was a painter. I didn't even realize that I had modeled Nora Jean after her until I described the painting she gives Kate. My mother also loved to paint gladiolas! Vermelle, Lillian's mother, is named after Vermelle Ely, one of my Black experts, who although she is blind, was the first to "read" Half-Truths. She had her phone read it to her!

I read that writing this took eighteen years for you to go from day one blank page to publication. How did it change over that time?

Another great question. There were many outlines and drafts. Since the period is the Jim Crow South, I knew there were racial issues that would be addressed. Over time I realized that most of that racial struggle was not my story to tell. As a result, Half-Truths became more about Kate's journey to find her voice as a budding journalist rather than a book about race relations. 

What stories did you uncover that you would like to have written into the book but chose not to?

There are too many to count!

Could those be for future books? Will we see more of Kate or Lillian?

I don't have another book in mind for Kate and Lillian, but you never know. My next book takes place fifty years earlier and it's about Kate's grandfather as a thirteen-year-old glassblowing apprentice in South Jersey.

Oh, my goodness, Carol, that sounds fascinating! I can't wait to read it! I can only imagine the research you have ahead of you. Thank you for taking the time to share a part of your writing process with us. I'm so glad I had a chance to ask questions. I can't wait for everyone to read her book. Half-Truths comes out in April, so please be on the lookout for it. 

If you want to add your name to my drawing for a free book, post a comment below. I will draw the winner on April 12 so please make sure I have a contact email address in case you are the lucky winner of this book.  

Also, anyone who preorders now on Barnes and Noble, can send their receipt to Carol for a courtesy swag! Contact her through her website. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Important to Read

Sometimes books are hard on me as a reader. They bring tears. They cause deep thinking. My stomach churns. Time stops while I digest what just went into my brain and deep into my soul. Two recent books I read set me back a step or two: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and Half-Truths by Carol Baldwin. As with real estate's location, location, location, literature has setting, setting, setting. Both of these books are historical fiction set in a time period that could not have happened in any other era, (please God), France during World War II and North Carolina during segregation. 

This morning I came to the final Nightingale page, in tears I might add. This book is a tale of man's inhumanity to man...and woman. Yes, I had heard of the Holocaust, studied it in a superficial way, read other historical fictions, but not until I read The Nightingale did I really feel the horror on a character level. It was all about women and their resistance to Nazi takeover of their lives. It didn't end well for most of the characters, yet all was well in the end, at least as well as it could be. 

I seek out books about strong women, and the women in this book were indeed strong even though they lived through a starvation that weakened them, or maybe because of it. They stood up to impossible odds and when one particular character was liberated from the evils of a concentration camp at the end of the war, she said something to another that stuck in my mind: "We made it." I've said those words before at the top of a mountain or at the end of a long road trip, but this...this was different. They survived not only brutal, unimaginable tortures brought on them by a merciless invasion, they helped others survive and escape. They hid children. They guided downed British and American pilots to freedom. All while risking their own lives. Indeed, they made it!

I'm an author. I read like an author now, and I wanted to know the back story of this book, how Kristin Hannah came to write such a gripping saga. She told us at the end of the copy I had, explaining her discovery of the part women played in the European War, how it touched her into giving them a voice. She researched. She interviewed. She visited the sites she described and the Holocaust Museum. She turned her findings into a superb book, important to read...lest we forget and repeat.

This could not happen in America, I thought to myself. We wouldn't let people minimize others so much they thought of them as nothings. And then I remembered Carol Baldwin's book about the south during the Jim Crow days, days that I lived through myself. Days that happened on another continent before, during and a decade after the Germans were defeated. Days filled with Ku Klux Klan rallies and lynchings and cross burnings. 

This book had a strong woman, too, except that she was only in junior high school. She was just learning the inequities of Jim Crow and saw what it was doing to the black society that lived parallel to, but apart from her. I had read this book like a writer also. I was drawn to it by the main character, a white girl, who wanted to be a newspaper reporter and tell about what she saw. 

I know this author, Carol Baldwin, so I sent her a list of questions to find the back story of how she came about writing it, how she structured the telling of a very difficult subject. How she herself felt after spending long hours interviewing, researching and uncovering unthinkable actions against fellow humans. Again, important to read...lest we forget and repeat.

Next blog post, I'll share her answers.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen