From her Q & A with Caroline Leavitt:I always want to know what sparks a book? What was haunting or obsessing you at the time that made you feel that this was the book you absolutely had to write?Visit Val Brelinski's website.
My family’s strict evangelicalism has colored absolutely every part of my life, so it was very natural that when I finally began to write at age 40 (!), thoughts about my unusual upbringing poured out of me and onto the page in a nearly effortless stream. My novel is a fictional account of one girl’s adolescence that very closely resembles my own. I felt so very strongly about this female and her family and their agonized interactions because they are essentially me and my sisters and my parents, only slightly rearranged.
Your novel is so soulful and so spiritual, as it tackles big questions of faith and family--both of which can help us and offer comfort, or they can destroy us. Can you talk about that, please?
I know that my parents believed utterly that their faith and the choices they made because of it were in their daughters’ best interests. They genuinely worried that my sisters and I might go to hell if we didn’t follow their fundamentalist dictates—a problematic situation because I was...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue