美国国家公共电台 NPR Family, Death And A Road Trip In 'Ashes To Asheville'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Some books can sweep you away in the first sentence. Sarah Dooley's new book "Ashes to Asheville" begins with a riff that includes sisterhood, death, cute pets and saucy¹ widows. Let's get the author to read it.

SARAH DOOLEY: (Reading) Right before my sister Zany steals our dead mother off the mantle², I'm trying to decide which sock to stuff in haberdashery's mouth to shut him up. He's barking every five seconds - yip yip yip (ph) - all shrill³ like a smoke detector⁴ with its batteries low. It's a wonder Mrs. Madison hasn't come downstairs in her slippery cheetah⁵ robe waving Mr. Madison's ancient handgun. She keeps that thing in her purse, says a widow as pretty as her needs protection, especially with, what she calls it, her assets. I thought she was talking dirty the first time I heard that till momma Shannon explained she meant money.

SIMON: And Sarah Dooley, who's written several bestselling novels for young adults, including "Free Verse" and "Body Of Water," joins us from the studios of West Virginia Public Radio. Thanks so much for being with us.

DOOLEY: Thank you for having me.

SIMON: The death of a parent, and I will even say a mother, might be the saddest event that can happen to a child. I wonder if you hesitated before opening a book with a mother and ashes on the urn⁶?

DOOLEY: I definitely did take a few minutes pause to think about that. But the story that Fella and Zany had to tell about their - not only the mother they lost, but the mother that they still have was so important that it overrode⁷ any doubts that I had.

SIMON: Let's explain Fella, OK? We need to do that with the name, I guess, anyway, don't we?

DOOLEY: We do. So Fella is the narrator she - her name is Ophelia, and she goes by the nickname Fella. She's 12 years old, and she's the one telling the story. And she's hitting the road with her 16-year-old sister Zoey Grace who goes by Zany.

SIMON: Yeah. And they can't stay, as you put it, with the mother they've known - why is that? - after their mother dies.

DOOLEY: Because of the laws in place governing the legalities of same sex marriage at the time that Fella and Zany were growing up, which was the early 2000s, their mothers were not able to be legally married. And so when Mama Lacy passed away, her biological child Fella, who's telling the story, was sent to live with Mrs. Madison, her grandmother.

Zany, on the other hand, stayed behind with their other mother because she was biologically related to Mama Shannon. So when they lost Mama Lacy, which they couldn't have foreseen, their family structure was shaken, not only by the loss of one mother, but by Fella then losing the only other mother she knew as well as her sister and having to go live with a virtual stranger.

SIMON: What's the road trip that Fella and Zany undertake?

DOOLEY: Zany shows up in the middle of the night to sweep Fella away, along with Mama Lacy's ashes. She wants to celebrate Mama Lacy's birthday by scattering⁸ her ashes in the last place that they ever felt at home as a family together, which was Asheville, N.C.

So they're going from the Beckley, W.Va. area to the Asheville, N.C. area. And they think they can make it there and back before anybody wakes up in the morning. Of course, they've never gone on a long road trip alone together, so they don't know what's lying in wait for them.

SIMON: Yeah. And, boy, are things lying in wait for them. I think it's safe to say it's a basic property of storytelling that any book that opens with an urn on the mantle, you know, something's going to happen to those ashes, don't you?

DOOLEY: That's right.

SIMON: Do you hope youngsters might - youngsters? - young adults, young readers will read about Mama Lacy and Mama Shannon - the happy couple we learn about, one of them now gone at the at the center of the story - and learn something about love, getting along?

DOOLEY: I like to think so. I been asked a lot of times why I chose to write about a nontraditional family or a family that was different, but Mama Lacy and Mama Shannon are such typical parents. They fight. They argue. They tease each other. They embarrass their children in public. They struggle with finances.

And they struggle with household decoration and car repair and just all the little details that make a family typical and that make up a life together. And so I hope that readers can take away from the book that no matter what your relationship looks like, there's a lot more that make people the same than that make them different.

SIMON: Yeah. Why do you think you became a writer?

DOOLEY: (Laughter) I grew up with parents who modeled storytelling as a way to deal with hardship. So if we were struggling to find a place to live or struggling to pay the rent or struggling to deal with any number of issues that you run into growing up poor in Appalachia, my family modeled storytelling as a way to navigate⁹ that world.

So it's not just that something's wrong, it's what is the story and what is the uplifting twist to the story and what is the end of this story? You're going to move forward through the tart¹⁰ - the hard part, and you're going to end up at the happy ending. So I had storytelling modeled to me from the start.

SIMON: Did you find a lot you could relate to in children's literature when you were growing up?

DOOLEY: I did, and I do. I still read a lot of children's literature. I think there are some amazing voices. I read and re-read books like "Homecoming" and "The Outsiders" by S. E. Hinton. And those are books that I can pick up and go home to again as somebody who moved a lot and didn't have necessarily a childhood home to go back to. Those books are my childhood home.

SIMON: And you wanted to write stories like that?

DOOLEY: I did. I wanted to write stories for kids and about kids who didn't necessarily know the path that they were expected to take, and so we're forced to find their own path. Those are the kids who I think have the best adventures.

SIMON: Yeah. Sarah Dooley - her new novel "Ashes To Asheville." Thanks so much for being with us.

DOOLEY: Thank you so much for having me.

1 saucy   

adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的

参考例句：

• He was saucy and mischievous when he was working.他工作时总爱调皮捣蛋。
• It was saucy of you to contradict your father.你顶撞父亲，真是无礼。

2 mantle   

n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红

参考例句：

• The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green.大地披上了苍翠欲滴的绿色斗篷。
• The mountain was covered with a mantle of snow.山上覆盖着一层雪。

3 shrill   

adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫

参考例句：

• Whistles began to shrill outside the barn.哨声开始在谷仓外面尖叫。
• The shrill ringing of a bell broke up the card game on the cutter.刺耳的铃声打散了小汽艇的牌局。

4 detector   

n.发觉者，探测器

参考例句：

• The detector is housed in a streamlined cylindrical container.探测器安装在流线型圆柱形容器内。
• Please walk through the metal detector.请走过金属检测器。

5 cheetah   

n.(动物)猎豹

参考例句：

• The cheetah is generally credited as the world's fastest animal.猎豹被公认是世界上跑得最快的动物。
• The distribution of the cheetah ranges from Africa to Central Asia.印度豹的足迹遍及从非洲到中亚的广大地区。

6 urn   

n.（有座脚的）瓮；坟墓；骨灰瓮

参考例句：

• The urn was unearthed entire.这只瓮出土完整无缺。
• She put the big hot coffee urn on the table and plugged it in.她将大咖啡壶放在桌子上,接上电源。

7 overrode   

越控( override的过去式 )； （以权力）否决； 优先于； 比…更重要

参考例句：

• The chairman overrode the committee's objections and signed the agreement. 主席不顾委员会的反对，径行签署了协议。
• The Congress overrode the President's objection and passed the law. 国会不顾总统的反对，通过了那项法令。

8 scattering   

n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散

参考例句：

• The child felle into a rage and began scattering its toys about. 这孩子突发狂怒，把玩具扔得满地都是。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The farmers are scattering seed. 农夫们在播种。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 navigate   

v.航行，飞行；导航，领航

参考例句：

• He was the first man to navigate the Atlantic by air.他是第一个飞越大西洋的人。
• Such boats can navigate on the Nile.这种船可以在尼罗河上航行。

10 tart   

adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇

参考例句：

• She was learning how to make a fruit tart in class.她正在课上学习如何制作水果馅饼。
• She replied in her usual tart and offhand way.她开口回答了，用她平常那种尖酸刻薄的声调随口说道。