Bio Three-time
Christy and two-time Carol and INSPY Award–winning author Cathy Gohlke writes
novels steeped with inspirational lessons from history. Her stories reveal how
people break the chains that bind them and triumph over adversity through
faith. When not traveling to historic sites for research, she and husband, Dan,
divide their time between northern Virginia
and the Jersey Shore, enjoying time with their grown
children and grandchildren. Visit her website at http://www.cathygohlke.com and find her
on Facebook at CathyGohlkeBooks.
Welcome back, Cathy. What
inspired you to write Night Bird Calling? Years ago I wrote a number of
short stories based on some quirky characters in a fictional
North Carolina foothills town called No
Creek. I loved those characters, but in order to create a novel, I needed an outside
character who could see both strengths and foibles in my town folk and still
care about them, still want to become part of their community, and who could
tie their stories together.
For many years I’ve also wrestled with the idea of writing
about the racial divide and abuse I saw growing up during years of the civil
rights movement in the South, as well as domestic abuse and church oppression,
things I experienced in my youth and young womanhood. Night Bird Calling is the
marriage of all those experiences and stories.
Night Bird Calling involves
some very challenging topics like domestic abuse, racism, and church abuse.
What motivated you to write on these topics? I grew up mostly in the South
during years of the civil rights movement, where I witnessed segregation,
desegregation, racial oppression, and abuse but also heroic stands against
injustice and some hard-won changes. I learned that attitudes do not change
just because laws change. Transformation of the heart is also needed. That is
as true today as it was then.
As a young woman, I ran away from an abusive marriage and an
oppressive church. My journey toward emotional and spiritual healing took many
years. I want women in similar situations to know that they are not alone, that
God loves them so very dearly and that the condemnations of their oppressors do
not come from Him.
I wrote Night Bird Calling not only for
victims of abuse, but in the hope that readers might gain insight, sympathy,
and empathy for those who’ve been abused or pushed down, that they might better
understand and see creative ways they can help, ways they can be a voice for
the voiceless or those needing someone to walk alongside them.
The novel is set in a
rural community divided by racism, in a country on the brink of World War II.
What prompted you to write about this particular time period and setting? I
see a number of correlations between the years leading up to WWII and our
present day. Economic fears, joblessness, uncertainty about where our world is
headed, questions about our responsibility and ability to help those who’ve
been abused or are in need, and our serious racial divide are all issues people
grappled with in 1941 just as we do today. Sometimes it’s easier to understand
our complex difficulties and find creative solutions by viewing them through
the lens of a historic time frame rather than the busyness and political
divides of modern day. Historical fiction provides that little bit of distance
to enhance our objectivity.
How do you expect the
novel, especially the struggles of your characters, to resonate with your
readers? We all have ingrained in us a bit of prejudice and a hesitancy to
get involved in the troubles of others. We’ve said or done things we later
realized were not honorable or kind and have regretted our words or actions.
Many of us have at one time or another been the victim of abuse or oppression
or at least marginalization. Some of us have wondered if God could really love
us, forgive us, or if we could possibly be welcomed into the church community.
Sometimes we’ve stood as lions against injustice and been that needed voice for
the voiceless. Sometimes we’ve been the accuser. Sometimes we’ve been the
accused. Sometimes we’ve cowered when we know we should have stood strong
against injustice. No Creek is a community that contains all those characters,
with their strengths and foibles. At heart they’re mostly good people who learn
they need to change so they can do better, be better and kinder, wiser. I think
we all relate to those characters, for at one time or another we’ve all been or
known them. I think that seeing ourselves or our loved ones in the shoes of
these characters helps us realize that we, like they, can stand against
injustice and work for change and growth within ourselves and our communities.
The novel is set in a
rural community divided by racism, in a country on the brink of World War II.
What prompted you to write about this particular time period and setting? I
see a number of correlations between the years leading up to WWII and our present
day. Economic fears, joblessness, uncertainty about where our world is headed,
questions about our responsibility and ability to help those who’ve been abused
or are in need, and our serious racial divide are all issues people grappled
with in 1941 just as we do today. Sometimes it’s easier to understand our
complex difficulties and find creative solutions by viewing them through the
lens of a historic time frame rather than the busyness and political divides of
modern day. Historical fiction provides that little bit of distance to enhance
our objectivity.
How do you expect the
novel, especially the struggles of your characters, to resonate with your
readers? We all have ingrained in us a bit of prejudice and a hesitancy to
get involved in the troubles of others. We’ve said or done things we later
realized were not honorable or kind and have regretted our words or actions.
Many of us have at one time or another been the victim of abuse or oppression
or at least marginalization. Some of us have wondered if God could really love
us, forgive us, or if we could possibly be welcomed into the church community.
Sometimes we’ve stood as lions against injustice and been that needed voice for
the voiceless. Sometimes we’ve been the accuser. Sometimes we’ve been the
accused. Sometimes we’ve cowered when we know we should have stood strong
against injustice. No Creek is a community that contains all those characters,
with their strengths and foibles. At heart they’re mostly good people who learn
they need to change so they can do better, be better and kinder, wiser. I think
we all relate to those characters, for at one time or another we’ve all been or
known them. I think that seeing ourselves or our loved ones in the shoes of
these characters helps us realize that we, like they, can stand against
injustice and work for change and growth within ourselves and our communities.
Can you tell us about
the historical research that went into writing this novel? Did you learn
anything new that surprised you? Much of my prior WWII writing has focused
on foreign shores, but for this story I researched the American home front
before and during WWII through books, Internet research, archival film footage
on the Great Depression, Jim Crow laws and their results, the history of
lynching and the KKK, racism and the great migration, and the work of Eleanor
Roosevelt, as well as histories of Wilkes and Surry Counties in North Carolina
and the Appalachian home moonshine industry and its culture. I read about and
visited lifesaving stations on the Outer Banks.
Legal sources were interviewed for information regarding
trusts, wills, and divorce proceedings in 1941. Newspapers archives for Wilkes County
were helpful. I interviewed some wonderful older people who had lived there
during those years and pulled some reallife stories from them, my family, and
my own life, then enjoyed a trip to the North
Carolina foothills and mountains, soaking up its
music and a visit to the church and cemetery where some of my ancestors were
buried. For the Oswald and Biddy Chambers threads, I found wonderful
information in the biography Mrs. Oswald
Chambers by Michelle Ule and in Oswald
Chambers: Abandoned to God by David McCasland, as well as pertinent
passages in My Utmost for His Highest.
I was surprised to learn how close to civilian life the
military in North Carolina
practiced war games as they trained recruits. I can only imagine it was
startling and perhaps frightening to those able to observe.
Stories of racial
division and wartime highlight the difficulty of living in uncertainty and
dealing with the unexpected. How does faith play into this aspect of the novel
and into the novel more generally? None of us know the future. We don’t
control the present. Life—our own and the community and nation in which we
live—can turn on a dime. We all need a source, a touchstone, a safe place that
also presents a moral lens and a high, stable bar. Jesus Christ and faith in
His unfailing love and provision fills all those needs. Lilliana, Celia,
Gladys, the McHones, and others to a lesser extent all learn this lesson and
grow from it.
As an author, what
did you particularly enjoy about crafting this story? I loved writing the
big personalities of small-town characters in No Creek, especially precocious
eleven-year-old Celia Percy. Celia possesses a lion’s heart in a small body and
is ready to rail against injustice and champion the underdog no matter what.
Lilliana, the story’s timid young heroine who flees abuse, grows into the woman
God intended her to be by relinquishing misguided beliefs, trusting in the
Lord’s love for her, and reaching outside herself to help others.
The town is peppered with courage, love, and kindness, as
well as prejudice, meanness, and oppression. Such a diverse and racially
divided town is a microcosm of our world. Only by embracing the worth of others
while acknowledging the “beam” in their own eye could change come to No Creek.
That is true for each of us. I love the parable in that.
Night Bird Calling presents intriguing and lovable characters in heartbreaking
and challenging situations. Did the journeys of any of the characters surprise
you as you wrote? Marshall, the fifteen-year-old nephew of Olney Tate,
descendent of slaves, surprised me.
Marshall was
sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Mercy and Olney Tate, after his father
was murdered in
Georgia.
Though
Marshall
could barely read or write, he had a keen eye and a thirst for learning. I knew
Marshall was a
hard worker and an honorable young man, but I did not anticipate his excelling
so quickly or that he would develop a passion for healing and a desire to
apprentice himself to Dr. Vishnevsky—a desire cut short due to the dangers of
racism in No Creek. But it is in leaving No Creek that
Marshall finds his future—a future that will
be explored in my next book.
Opening a lending
library from their home to everyone in the community, regardless of race, was a
radical move in 1941 Appalachia. What inspired
this? Sometime after fleeing my abusive marriage as a young woman, I bought
an old trailer in a run-down neighborhood—a far cry from Garden’s Gate—but the
best I could afford at the time. Children in that neighborhood ran as wild and
untended as weeds in a garden run amok. I befriended many of those children—or
they befriended me—bought a used bookcase and books at yard sales, and opened a
lending library right there in my trailer. Children came for hours sometimes to
color pictures, read or be read to, enjoy glasses of milk and homemade bread
with jam, and just talk, asking questions about life and God and prison (where
one of their fathers served time)—everything imaginable. Parents often took
advantage of their community’s new “free” babysitter, but those were precious
and healing days for the children and for me. Years later I remarried and bore
my own precious children. When they were old enough, I worked as a children’s
librarian in a school. Those memories became the inspiration for Aunt
Hyacinth’s lending library in Night Bird Calling.
Is there one
character whose experience you especially identify with or one whose story grew
out of lessons you learned in your own life? I identify closely with both
Lilliana and Celia, for different reasons. Like Lilliana, I ran away from an
abusive marriage and oppressive church as a young woman. It took many years to
work through the issues surrounding that and to find healing, to believe that
God could really love me. Helping others in need (by opening the lending
library and offering literacy help to the community, opening her home to the
Percys, and doing what she could to rescue Ruby Lynne, a girl with similar
problems to her own) was important on the path to Lilliana’s healing. Reaching
out to help others in need has been a help to me, too.
Like Celia, I was the creative child with big ideas, a
strong sense of social justice, and a determination to speak out against
injustice no matter the consequences that my mother didn’t know what to do with.
What did you learn by
writing this novel, and what lessons do you hope your readers take away? Night
Bird Calling is fiction, as are its characters, though parts of
Lilliana’s escape from an abusive marriage and her challenged growth into
believing that God really loves her and has a plan for her life were drawn from
my own life. I found the dredging up of memories I’ve wanted to forget and the
necessary baring of my soul to write this story emotionally challenging, yet in
the end I also found it freeing. Shame loses its hold once confessed. It is
truly a gift if that confession helps free others. Abused women are often told
not to tell of their abuse and are threatened with dire consequences to ensure
their silence. Often they are filled with shame that they cannot stop the
abuse, cannot change their abuser, and feel helpless to change themselves or
their circumstances. They believe their situations are unique, that no one will
believe them, that they are truly alone. I hope that in writing Lilliana’s story,
other women will realize those things are not true, and that abuse does not
come from God, no matter what their abuser or oppressor insists. I hope women
realize their value lies in the very life God has given them and that He is
above all the Husband who never fails us, never hurts us, the One who loves us
and always wants a strong and healthy relationship with us. He wants us to be
whole.
What upcoming
projects do you have in the works? Our country’s racial divide and its
demand for both justice and mercy is not new. As I wrote Night Bird Calling, I
realized there was a fascinating Civil War history for the characters in No
Creek, both black and white, as well as changes bound to come as a result of
those families’ participation in WWII. Intriguing parallels in the long ago and
more recent past captured my imagination. The more I thought about it, the
greater potential I saw to weave story threads with a hint of mystery and a
long-standing issue of injustice through generations. I’m writing a stand-alone
time slip novel between the American Civil War and WWII and its aftermath for
many of No Creek’s characters that I love and with whom I wrestle—as well as
some new faces. My working title is A
Hundred Crickets Singing—but we’ll all learn the final title when it
releases in 2022.
Thank you, Cathy, for
sharing this new book with my blog readers and me. I’ve loved every book of
yours that I’ve read. I’m eager to read this one. My blog readers will be, too.
Readers,
here are links to the book.
https://amzn.to/3pTeSR2 - Paperback
https://amzn.to/2L5YspF - Kindle
https://amzn.to/2XaKOnQ - Audiobook, Hardback also available
Leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book.
You must follow these instructions to be in the drawing. Please tell us
where you live, at least the state or territory or country if outside North America. (Comments containing links may be subject
to removal by blog owner.)
Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the
number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of
eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any
pertaining local/federal/international laws.
The only notification you’ll receive is the winner post on
this blog. So be sure to check back a week from Saturday to see if you won. You
will have 4 weeks from the posting of the winners to claim your book.
If you’re reading this on Goodreads, Feedblitz, Facebook,
Twitter, Linkedin, or Amazon, please come to the blog to leave your comment
if you want to be included in the drawing. Here’s a link: Http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com
