Years ago when I was sharing a flat in San Francisco, I answered a phone call from an artist trying to reach one of my housemates. After we had talked for a minute, he said he was a psychic. Although I didn’t audibly scoff, I was skeptical. This man, who had never met any of my housemates or been in our house, said he “saw” me standing in a brilliant patch of sunlight in an airy room. He was right, but I discounted that observation. For all I knew, the man could be standing outside looking in. But then he went on to say he saw a river running through me. I almost gasped. I’d just returned from a weeklong trip to an Ozarks river with my family and yes, I’ve long felt that Ozark rivers do flow through me. To this day I’ve no idea how the man on the phone could have known that, but I took it as a sign that the universe approved of my love and appreciation for the Ozarks.
Oh, the Ozarks, a place where gorgeous trees enclose the cool, clear rivers that thread through the Ozark hills, the woods shimmer green in summer, and the autumn blazes with color. They are so much a part of me, those rivers, that I’ve returned almost every summer to float them, to be soothed and inspired.
For years I’ve wanted to set a novel in the Ozarks. I wrote one and started another, but neither worked. Then a friend who runs a canoe business asked if I would interview some elderly Ozarkians because he didn’t want them to die without passing on their stories. I did, interviewing maybe a dozen people. I was enthralled with their tales about Ozarks childhoods and quickly learned that many were romance novel devotees. Those interviews gave me the idea to write a book that revolves around five women who begin a romance novel book group and explore how those books change their lives.
The idea for Tulsa, a strong, independent young woman who is disdainful of romance and romance novels, just popped into my mind. I knew, too, that Tulsa would live with an elderly grandmother who avidly reads romances and who starts the group in an effort to open Tulsa to love. I knew I wanted both Tulsa and Ruby to have a friend her age in the group. Knew, too, that Tulsa had a half-brother named Guy and that his mother would also be a group member. But I didn’t know much about any of the characters until I plunged into reading romances. What a fruitful and mysterious experience that was!
As I read, I found myself almost instantly responding to passages in the books as my characters would respond. I scribbled notes in the margins about how characters felt about certain passages: Tulsa thinks this, Ruby thinks that, etc. That’s how I came to know my characters. The book just seemed to emerge naturally from reading the romances, even though not all of the women’s journeys concern romantic love.
In years of writing, I’d never experienced anything remotely similar to the way the characters and story so quickly evolved. The river really ran through me as I wrote the pages. Indeed, maybe that caller all those years ago was a true psychic.