ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book’s 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM’s webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
This is Chapter 47 (day 1):
AMERICA Written by Paul Simon Performed by Simon & Garfunkel Recorded at Columbia Studios, NY, NY 1968 Drummer: Hal Blaine
And so they journeyed home together…. They drove through a summer when men would walk on the moon and kids would throng to a farm near Woodstock, New York, and Wavy would be there telling them, “What we have in mind is breakfast for 400,000!” and people of all colors and shapes and identities would march against injustice of all kinds in an effort to bring down the established old order and re-establish the ideals of liberty and justice, equality and opportunity, safety and kindness for all. The future of America drove home.
Without giving away just who drove home, you know that they do go home, and the circle completes itself, although our characters are much changed… and, perhaps, so are readers, for that is the magical, mysterious quality of art. And of America.
ANTHEM is love letter to America, in all its shapes and forms, all its people, and all its incarnations, trouble and good times alike. At our best, we are one nation, indivisible, and that’s what I wanted to explore.
I wanted to take readers through the time that… well, as Gail Zappa puts it in ANTHEM’s last scrapbook: “In 1965, half the population of the western world was under 25. You have an evolution and a revolution in consciousness when you have a situation like that.”
But that was then, this is now, I hear you say. So to Gail Zappa’s statement, I added one from Little Richard that ends the book: “It’s not the size of the ship; it’s the size of the waves.”
So I leave you with Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.” Substitute friends for lovers, and you’ve got, “Let us be friends, we’ll marry our fortunes together.” Yes. That’s what I want for America. And that’s ANTHEM’s over-riding theme. We’ve all come to look for America.
Here are a few more stills from ANTHEM’s scrapbooks that highlight our struggles and our triumphs as a people… work that continues today, work that we are lucky to be engaged in, in a country where we can still make change. Where we can still demand the best for America.
.
.
.
And a last still that will lead us to the next book, KENT STATE, which publishes in April 2020:
Chapter 47. Of 47 chapters. Thank you for coming along. Publication day is tomorrow! xoxoxo Debbie
ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book’s 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM’s webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
This is Chapter 46 (day 2):
BEGINNINGS Written by Robert Lamm Performed by Chicago Transit Authority Recorded at Columbia Recording Studios, NY, NY 1969 Drummer: Danny Seraphine
Cars rolled past them on the quiet street. The morning was bright and cool. The fog was burning off. It would be a good day for a journey. “Music is the rhythm of our humanity,” said Eddie. “It’s the soundtrack of struggle and peace, birth and death, love and war, joy and pain. Music is the heart you open and the family you choose.”
When I hear “Beginnings” now, I think of the many 2am mornings I sat here trying to finish ANTHEM, trying to get this chapter right, trying to sum up the themes, characters, plot lines, symbolism, you name it… trying to get it right. Trying to touch what I’d wanted to say about 1969, and about the Sixties Trilogy as a whole… about the Sixties, about my own young life in those years, and about the nation as it struggled through those days.
“Beginnings” is what came to me. “Only the beginning/ only just the start.” Exactly. That was where to end, at the beginning, as storytellers know, as life shows us, too. Each ending is a new beginning.
As Molly and Norman come to the end of their journey — the beginning of the next trip — they gain a new rider for the miles home, along with a new understanding of who they are, what they mean to each other, and how they want to think about the world they are inheriting.
I wanted to include Chicago in ANTHEM, with their brassy, jazzy, upbeat sound… they were just getting started on their own journey in 1969, and bands everywhere would soon want to include horns in their line-up, including my husband’s… he was the self-proclaimed band geek who played the sousaphone in the St. Andrew’s Parish High School marching band in Charleston, South Carolina, and the trombone in concert band, and he was my inspiration for Norman. No wonder I love Norman so. I used to go to Friday night football games just so I could watch Jim in the band.
We have one ANTHEM chapter left, a very short one, and I’ll blog about it tomorrow… then it’s pub date for ANTHEM, and I’ll catalog all these song/chapter posts at the ANTHEM webpage.
If you are local to Atlanta, you might come on Tuesday night, October 1, to ANTHEM’s book launch, hosted by the Georgia Center for the Book and DeKalb County libraries, 7pm, at the Decatur Library at 215 Sycamore St., Decatur. I’ll be there and would love to see you.
All three Sixties titles will be available to purchase, thanks to bookseller Little Shop of Stories, and of course they will be at your local library as well.
The Sixties Trilogy turned into an 11-year project with Scholastic Press… what a risk they took, to being these documentary novels to readers young and old, everywhere. I’m grateful to them for their support, and for three gorgeously beautiful books. Phil Falco’s design wizardry and David Levithan’s editing skills created something special out of the stories I wanted so much to tell.
The end of the Sixties Trilogy gives us a new beginning as well… Kent State will be published in April, 2020… more about that book soon. Meanwhile:
ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book’s 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM’s webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
This is Chapter 45 (day 3):
PIECE OF MY HEART Written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns Performed by Janis Joplin/Big Brother and the Holding Company Recorded at Columbia Studios, Los Angeles, CA and NY, NY 1968 Drummer: Dave Getz
Molly glanced at Norman. “Where are we going?” “Fillmore West,” Norman told the driver. “Corner of Market and South Van Ness.” “What’s happening?” Molly asked. Norman rummaged in his pocket. “I bought these today,” he said, “at a pawn shop. The poster was in the window.” Molly snatched the tickets from his hand. “Iron Butterfly! You love them!” Norman almost laughed. Someone excited for him. It was a good feeling. “Barry would love this,” said Molly. “Turn around!” she told the driver impulsively. “Norman you should take Barry!” “Never mind,” Norman told the driver. “To the Fillmore, please.”… “Norman, really…” said Molly…. “No.” Norman gritted his teeth. “I don’t want to do anything with Barry right now. Maybe never…. I want to take you… We’ll have this to talk about for years and years…” “We’ve already got a lot to talk about. A lot. For years and years.” “I want this, too. One day I might have to go to war. If I’m drafted, I will go. And I don’t want to sit over there thinking about how I could have taken you to see Iron Butterfly in San Francisco but instead I took Barry, who didn’t care two hoots about me….” He’s selfish. I appreciate you, Molly. Come to the concert with me.”
Hearts are breaking everywhere in Chapters 44 through 46. When I was trying to write LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, my first novel, my editor, Liz Van Doren, at Harcourt Books, kept saying, “Let her heart break.”
It took me several drafts to take her advice to heart (ha) and do that. It opened up the story. We hate to break our beloveds’ hearts, and yet that’s what fiction is about, isn’t it? Let’s see characters in impossible situations, physical and/or emotional, and let’s see what they do, how they fall apart and put themselves back together, and thereby create a roadmap for us to do the same thing in our own lives, with our own heartbreaks.
In A LONG LINE OF CAKES, the fourth Aurora County book, which was published last year, I did such a good job of letting Emma’s heart break that my editor (David Levithan at Scholastic) asked me if I wasn’t going to put that thing back together that Emma tore up, so readers could see it at the end?
Well… no. Because Emma could put her heart back together emotionally by that point, and the physical didn’t matter as much. And that’s what’s happening here, with Norman, as he begins to determine he’s not going to spend any more emotional energy on Barry.
Norman is waking up to what’s right in front of him, the cousin who traveled across the country with him, who navigated them to San Francisco, who is a royal pain in the neck as well as –who knew? — suddenly, a fierce and loyal friend. Let the record show that Norman’s heart breaks, and he lets it. And he makes the decision to move forward.
“Piece of my Heart” and Janis were important to include in San Francisco chapters of ANTHEM, as Big Brother et al were a San Francisco band and I wanted you to hear that San Francisco sound, along with “Evil Ways” and Santana (Chapter 43), and, early-on in ANTHEM, CCR and “Bad Moon Rising” (Chapter 4).
You’ll also find, as we hurtle to the end, a repeat of Chapter 2’s Iron Butterfly and “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” in Chapter 45, which serves as Norman’s theme song in ANTHEM. Norman finally gets to hear the Butterfly live — remember the drum solo? Watch what happens. I’m bringing it around full circle for Norman.
Iron Butterfly did play Fillmore West in late June 1969, on the very date I have Molly and Norman there. It’s details like this that delight a researcher when she’s trying to make a story come together and be true to actual events. Far out. Or, as Norman would put it, “Groovy!”
Fillmore West 1970 — the research on Bill Graham and the bands who played the Fillmore — and its locations — was its own amazing rabbit hole…
ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book’s 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM’s webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
This is Chapter 44 (day 4):
DAZED AND CONFUSED Written by Jake Holmes Performed by Led Zeppelin Recorded at Olympic Studio, London, England 1968 Drummer: John Bonham
NORMAN:
“I’ve lived without family for over a year,” says Barry. He stabs a noodle roll. “It’s not so bad.” Molly looks stricken. “You don’t mean it.” “It was pretty bad for us,” I say. “I don’t care if I never go back home,” says Barry. I can feel Molly steel herself across the table. After a leaden pause, Jo Ellen asks Barry, “Did your attorney tell you about your draft notice?” “Who’s being drafted?” asks Colonel Chapman. “I am, evidently,” says Barry. “Yeah, she told me.” “Your physical date is July second,” I say. “I don’t plan to report,” says Barry. Molly has taken a sip of her soup. She chokes on it. “It was Mom’s idea to bring you home,” she says, coughing. “She said we would figure out what to do as a family.” “No way am I going home to let Dad scream at me again!” Colonel Chapman leans his elbows on the table. “I personally know young men — or knew them — who would be happy to have their parents scream at them again, if they could be here, on this planet, alive.”
This scene goes on for another two pages. It was a pleasure to write. Dinner-table scenes are full of possibilities. Get everyone around a table, talking and eating, airing their grievances, pressing their points, and move the story forward.
I learned to do this with EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. I had an ensemble cast for that book, the largest I’d ever created at that point, and I needed a way for them all to be heard in conversation. A dinner table — or, in the case of THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, a ball field; or in the case of A LONG LINE OF CAKES, a gathering at an old man’s house and an impromptu picnic — accomplish so many storytelling tasks.
The dinner table scene in COUNTDOWN, where Uncle Otts waves Life Magazine and says, “We won’t have another Thanksgiving if we are all blown up!” or the dinner scene in REVOLUTION where the reader understands Memaw’s character and Uncle Vivian’s politics, and suddenly the relationships between all the characters and Sunny, our hero, comes into view…
These scenes contain a ton of dialogue, and dialogue accomplishes three major tasks in a story: 1. It provides information. 2. It characterizes. 3. It moves the story forward.
Even a small scene, like the one between Sunny and Laura Mae, the hired help, gives us so much information, and provides all kinds of emotional resonance, whether they are in the kitchen alone or sitting in the back of the car and suddenly, gazing out the window, Laura Mae reminisces about Emmett Till. Dialogue is rich territory.
So in Chapter 44, sitting at the big round table at Sam Wo’s in Chinatown, it all comes together. They process what happened earlier in the chapter, secrets are revealed, personalities are confirmed, backstory is given, exposition is laced in, and resolutions are begun for characters who are about to exit the stage.
There is so much confusion, and Molly is certainly dazed by now, but at the same time, this confusion is making a path for clarity… that’s how it works. Dinner-time (or gathering) scenes are big payoffs for the reader. Nothing is so rewarding to write in a novel as dialogue.
As for Led Zeppelin and “Dazed and Confused,” the song title was perfect for what I wanted to accomplish in this chapter. Led and I (hahaha) were never close, but I knew the song, and knew how crazily-right it sounded for Molly with its psychedelic-rock overtones that mimic the Hendrix that Barry so loves. Molly is at a crossroads, just as the country was, in 1969. So much was being born:
ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book’s 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM’s webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
This is Chapter 43 (day 5):
EVIL WAYS Written by Clarence “Sonny” Henry Performed by Santana Recorded at Pacific Recording Studios, San Mateo, California 1969 Drummer: Mike Shrieve
NORMAN:
Barry’s letter sticks in my craw like a swallowed chicken bone I can’t dislodge. I might choke on it. His tone is so cavalier, just like he always is. He expects me to say How high? Every time he says Jump. All my life, I looked up to Barry. I wanted to be like him. I would do — and did — anything for him. But when I wanted him to help me recruit members for my band, he was too busy. When I wanted him to put together a band and put me in it, he forgot about his promise and said he wasn’t interested in a band. When he wanted me to keep quiet about his whereabouts, or even the fact that he was alive, I did it. Molly is right; I should have told her. I helped break her heart by not telling her he was safe. Barry left her without a good-bye. Because that’s what Barry does. He does as he pleases. Has, all his life. Why do we let him get away with that?
Things are coming to a head in San Francisco, and it’s a toss-up as to which way they will go. “Evil Ways” highlights Norman’s dawning awareness of who his cousin is, and why his family has treated him as the golden child for so long.
And, in this chapter, Norman is a stand-in for the American people who were increasingly coming awake to what they saw as the evils of the war in Vietnam, and to those who wanted to right wrongs in other ways as they worked for equality and justice in America, as Jo Ellen does. (She has come a long — and unsurprising — way from her college days in COUNTDOWN, yes?)
No spoilers here, but a couple more stills from ANTHEM scrapbooks as we hurtle to not only the end of the story, but the end of our #47chapters47songs. (We cut the first photo, but I love it so much, I want to include it here.)
MFA in Writing, Vermont College, I have taught teachers at Towson University (“Writing Techniques for Teachers,” ECED 422), and have taught in the MFA programs at Lesley University and Vermont College.
Pioneer of the Documentary Novel containing scrapbooks with primary source documents — photographs, song lyrics, newspaper clippings, etc., and opinionated biographies alongside the story/narrative, mixing fiction, non-fiction, and biography in one book/story in a trilogy about the 1960s. COUNTDOWN 1962; REVOLUTION 1964; and ANTHEM 1969 (to be published fall 2019)
* * *
I’m a Southerner born in Mobile, Alabama, where I lived until I was five years old. My parents were Mississippi born and bred, and I spent most of my childhood summers there and grew up in Mississippi and all around the world as an Air Force dependent.
I’ve lived in:
Mobile, Alabama Jasper County, Mississippi Honolulu, Hawaii Washington, D.C. Prince Georges County, Maryland Charleston, South Carolina Clark Air Base, Philippines Northern Virginia Cherry Point, North Carolina Millington, Tennessee Frederick, Maryland Atlanta, Georgia
After living in the Washington, D.C. area (Frederick, MD) for 25 years, where I raised a family, I moved to Atlanta 14 years ago, and now live in a little house with a purple door in a little woods. I married musician/composer Jim Pearce 12 years ago. You can hear Jim profiled by Susan Stamberg at NPR right here.
Where to find me online:
I use Pinterest as a visual resource for my books. You’ll find primary source material for my books archived here, including playlists for COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION.
