I’m happy to welcome novelist Phyllis Gobbell back for a new interview! Today we’re talking about her new southern literary fiction, Prodigal.
Our prior interview focused on Notorious in Nashville and you can read it here.
Bio:
Phyllis Gobbell writes a little bit of everything—mysteries, true crimes, short stories, creative nonfiction – and now a Southern literary novel, Prodigal.
Her award-winning stories have appeared in 2 Bridges Review, Bellevue Review, Zone 3, Well Read Magazine, Red Mud Review, Coastal Shelf, Tetrahedra, and HomeWorks. She received Tennessee’s Individual Artist Award for Literature. Treachery in Tuscany, the third book in her Jordan Mayfair Mystery Series, won a Silver Falchion Award for Best Cozy Mystery, and Notorious in Nashville, most recent in the mystery series, was a top pick in the Silver Falchion Awards for Best Cozy.
Other books in the mystery series are Pursuit in Provence and Secrets and Shamrocks.
Before she began her mystery series, Gobbell co-authored two true crimes, An Unfinished Canvas and Season of Darkness, based on two high-profile murders that have become part of Nashville’s history.
An English professor for twenty years, she served on the faculty at Nashville State Community College, where she taught composition, literature, and creative writing and edited the college’s literary journal. Recently she has taught creative writing in Lipscomb University’s Lifelong Learning Program.
Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Phyllis. Please tell us about your newest release.
It’s the Fourth of July, 2000. In a small Southern town, fireworks light the sky above the City Park, while down the street a smaller flash of light changes everything for 19-year-old Connor Burdette. He has just lost the girl he loves. Now, buying beer at the Back Home Market, he becomes an accomplice to a shooting. Out of desperation, he runs. It will take ten years and a death to bring him back.
But it’s so hard to come home. The town still blames him for his part in the convenience store shooting. His wealthy grandmother’s will, leaving her fortune to Connor, only causes tension in the family. The Burdettes are caught in the fierce push and pull of loyalties and deception. And like the gun that washes up in a rainstorm, family secrets won’t stay buried.
Nikki, who is married to Connor’s brother, Russ, has kept the most powerful secret of all. Connor has to face his past, his cowardice at the convenience store, and his betrayal of his brother. At the Back Home Market, where it all began, Connor is given one last chance to redeem himself, to be forgiven and to forgive himself.
Prodigal is a modern-day retelling of an age-old story, unique in the context of a Southern family. Told by multiple narrators, Prodigal is about forgiveness, redemption, and the sacrifice that love demands.
What inspired you to write this book?
During COVID, I took a break from my mysteries that were set in Provence, Ireland, and Tuscany, because I could not travel, and wrote Prodigal, the book I had wanted to write ever since I read William Kent Krueger’s Ordinary Grace. His novel is set in the Midwest, but I loved the small-town setting and characters that could have been my neighbors as I was growing up in a small town in the South. I wanted to write a book like that.
In Prodigal, Connor Burdette is involved in a shooting at the Back Home Market on the Fourth of July, 2000, and he disappears for ten years. After the shooting scene, there is a long passage about the small town that ends with this, before we skip to 2010:
Excerpt from Prodigal:
That day had all the makings of a small-town, old-fashioned Fourth of July, time-honored traditions that carried on without much change in the years to come. As time passed, no one could quite remember which year it was that the mayor, Grand Marshal of the parade, fainted from heat, and paramedics arrived, but on his orders took him to his house for shade and sweet tea. Or which year a rainstorm blew up out of nowhere and upended the 4-H Club’s float, and a goat ran free through the streets. But always, as the town walked itself home in the dark after a day of celebration, someone would bring up the shooting at the Back Home Market. And though memories faded, like one of the old Polaroid photos that has lost its sharp colors, Montpier remembered which year it happened. For the first Fourth of July of the brand new century to be stained, like blood on the wall of the Back Home Market, it seemed like a bad sign.
And the memory was still a raw, open wound for the Burdettes, Connor’s family, who hung on to the notion that somewhere he was alive and might eventually come home, though years passed without a word from him. Daniel, the Baptist preacher, feared he’d been too hard on his son when Connor began to stray from the straight and narrow. And Kitty, Connor’s mama, wouldn’t think of letting their new cell phones replace the landline, because that was the number her boy knew like he knew his own birthday.
Russ, his brother, didn’t like to imagine the terrible things that could’ve happened to Connor, but anger was a stronger force than worry. Anger that a brother would vanish like that, like he’d never felt a thing for the blood and love between them.
Russ’s wife Nikki tried not to think of him at all, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. She thought of how broken he was, and she thought she was the only one who knew why, but she could never say.
Connor’s sister Ivy, who knew he understood that she would keep any secret, kept thinking that of all the family, she would be the one her little brother would reach out to, somehow he’d contact her, just to let her know he was alive, he was all right. But he didn’t.
And then there was Lady Burdette, the mighty matriarch of the Burdette family. No one who knew her could have imagined how often disturbing visions of her grandson visited her in the blackest hours of night, how she longed to find him, and how, toward the end of her life, she resolved, I’ll do it, by God. I will.
What’s the next writing project?
I have finished a draft of The Princess of Almost Alabama. It’s women’s fiction/ literary and I draw even more from my own experiences, growing up in a small town, than I did with Prodigal. My protagonist struggles with dyslexlia and extraordinary loss, but I promise it is uplifting, as she is saved by her writing, which has been her great struggle.
What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)
Once I have a story in mind, there are challenges, yes, but I can deal with those. In Prodigal and in The Princess of Almost Alabama, I looked for a story with great emotional impact. These novels are different from mysteries, but even with mysteries, I don’t type the first word until I think I have a compelling story that will grab readers. With all the books and all the plots out there, this is a challenge!
If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?
In my mysteries, I spent time visiting in the exotic settings and that was where I got my inspiration. With Prodigal, I was relying on my memories of growing up in a small town. But, yes, I had to do research. In this case, I am deeply indebted to Dr. Jim McFerrin for giving me so much information about traumatic brain injuries and blood matches. The plot hinged on some of that information. Also, Sheriff Ric Wilson in Waynesboro, where I grew up, told me what I needed to know about law enforcement in a small town. Working with people like that is the kind of research I like to do.
What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.
My house is a kind of tree house, way up in the woods, and I have an office that looks out on the surroundings. When I’m at work, though, I am not paying much attention to the trees or the woodpeckers that are making noise on my windows. I could be anywhere with my laptop.
What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?
When I just want to escape, I read all books published by Tana French, Elizabeth George, Barbara Kingsolver, Lee Smith, Sara Paretsky, Robert Parker (and others who continued his Spenser books), John Grisham, and I think I’ve read all of Sue Grafton’s books. With every book I read, I learn something that makes me a better writer. I don’t usually read nonfiction, but I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story. She is an extraordinary historian and writer.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?
I would just say that readers may think books that are highly acclaimed, on the best-seller lists, are the only ones that are worth reading. That’s not always true. Sometimes it is a book by a small publisher that will speak to you. I hope Prodigal will be one of those books.
Links:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Amazon author page
Thank you for coming back to Reviews and Interviews!