Douglas Armstrong used his elderly mother’s feisty personality and vivid recollections from her childhood growing up in Humboldt to shape the character Emma and setting in his first novel, “Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows.”
Armstrong set his story of a young girl growing up in the 1920s in the fictional town of Cornucopia, Kan. Many scenes occur along the banks of a river, the Neosho.
Armstrong will discuss his book at 7 p.m. Monday at the Funston Meeting Hall, 207 N. Jefferson.
In a telephone conversation Wednesday from his home in Milwaukee, Wis.., Armstrong said he at first was intimidated to write from the perspective of a six-year-old girl.
“But my mom has such a distinctive voice and a colorful way of talking that it was surprisingly easy,” he said. “Her ability to recall things from her youth was amazing. It just spilled out.”
The mother and son exchanged “140 emails” in the information gathering stage of Armstrong’s project.
He also was surprised by the tenor of much of her recollections, including a prurient interest in sexual matters.
“It shocked me,” he said. “I think we underestimate all the under-currents of youth,” no matter the era. “So much was swept under the rug in those days. You didn’t talk about sex, but it was there.”
The book’s setting in the early 1920s is also a history lesson.
An excerpt reads:
“The skies over Cornucopia, Kansas, turned slate gray on schedule that November as the winds blew bitterly out of the North. And, on schedule, Mama dug out the long underwear and ugly black wool socks. We hated this stuff. But matters got worse this time because she introduced an obnoxious new weapon in the fight against the winter elements — a stink bomb in a tiny cloth bag that was fastened to a loop of string.
“Eeew,” Eileen complained. “What is that?”
“It’s an asphidity bag,” Mama said.
“More like an asphyxia bag, you ask me,” John B. said, backing away.
Mama smiled. “This one’s your, Johnny. Go on, take it. Now put it around your neck and tuck it into your shirt.”
“What the Sam Hill for?” he demanded, holding it at arm’s length.
“It wards off humors and miasma,” Mama said. “It will keep your well.”
In a quick search on the Internet, the pungent asphidity bags contained gensing and goldenseal roots and were purported to fend off the deadly flu virus of the times.
ARMSTRONG, 66, is a former reporter, columnist, editorial writer and film critic who worked for 33 years at The Milwaukee Journal and later the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“I wrote a little fiction on the side,” he said, and had pieces published in the magazines Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and Boys’ Life.
He left his career in journalism 10 years ago to put his full focus on fiction.
It was obviously a good decision. “Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows” was named Best Novel of 2010 by the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
The book reads much like Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
“It’s true,” Armstrong said of the similarities of the somewhat naive children affronted by life’s realities in an otherwise bucolic setting.
It’s also told in the same manner, the back-and-forth between an adult recollecting events and a young child’s active voice.
The dialogue has a Southern flair. Lots of double negatives and colloquialisms.
“Part of my mother’s youth was also spent in Missouri and Enid, Okla.,” Armstrong said. “I tried to stick as closely as I could to her mannerisms. She picks up things she hears and holds on to them,” he said. “She loves to talk in a colorful way.”
Now 95, Armstrong’s mother lives in Minneapolis.
His mother’s volatile personality played perfectly against his father’s staid manner, Armstrong said.
“He was a businessman with General Mills,” whose moves up the corporate ladder took his family “all across the country.” Armstrong was born in Wichita and lived there until he was 5.
THE BOOK’S cover is a slightly fuzzy picture of a young girl with a solemn, but yet mischievous, expression. Her hair is cut in a pageboy style, without the flair. Slightly crooked bangs. And sides that come midway down her face instead of curling around her chin.
It’s his mother, Emma Starkey.
“Mom objected to using the photo,” Armstrong said. “She screamed, ‘It’s horrible!’ but the minute I knew it was perfect.”
It wasn’t until Armstrong had completed writing the manuscript that his sister had unearthed the photo in a box stowed away in her mother’s attic.
“What’s amazing, is that that is how I described Emma, without even knowing. That’s the first picture I had ever seen of my mom as a young girl.”
