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Archive for Sunday, January 20, 2008

‘Bleeding Kansas’ author Sara Paretsky tackles Midwest mores in latest novel

Special to the Journal-World. Enlarge photo.

Novelist Sara Paretsky will visit Lawrence on Tuesday to promote her latest novel, "Bleeding Kansas." Paretsky is an alumna of Lawrence High School and Kansas University.

By Terry Rombeck

January 20, 2008

Audio Clips

What: "Why I Write the Books I do," discussion and book-signing by Sara Paretsky

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

Free books: A complimentary copy of "Bleeding Kansas," Paretsky's latest novel, will be given to the first 100 attendees. There will be a limit of one book per household.

Age: 60

Residence: Chicago

Education: Graduated from Lawrence High School in 1964; graduated from Kansas University in 1967 with a degree in political science; doctorate in American history and a master's in business administration, both from the University of Chicago.

Novels: 12 books in the V.I. Warshawski mystery series; newest work is "Bleeding Kansas."

Honors: Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement from the British Crime Writers Association; former visiting scholar at Oxford University and Northwestern University.

Sara Paretsky remembered this story when writing her first novel based in Kansas.

It was about a decade ago, in the hot Kansas summer sun, when her mother was gravely ill. She was walking from the Eldridge Hotel to Teller's for dinner, and she encountered white-shirt-clad Christians trying to sell her on the Bible.

It's worth mentioning here that Paretsky is Jewish.

"One of them grabs me by the hand and tries to bring me to Jesus, and I'm thinking, 'I can't take this in the heat,'" Paretsky recalls. "So I just pretended like I didn't speak any English. It worked. I pretended I only spoke French, which I don't speak very well. But I figured she probably didn't speak it at all, so it worked."

Paretsky, a Lawrence native, may have avoided that religious confrontation. But she hit another head-on in her latest novel, which she'll be talking about and signing copies of on Tuesday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

"Bleeding Kansas" (Penguin Group, $25.95), which came out this month, examines issues of religious freedom and homosexuality in her home state.

It's a departure from her award-winning series of 12 mystery novels featuring female detective V.I. Warshawski.

"It was a stretch for me to do a book that was in the third person, a book that wasn't a crime novel," Paretsky says. "But it was a book that I'd wanted to write for quite a long time."

Complex state

Paretsky, 60, came up with the idea for "Bleeding Kansas" when walking the Kansas prairie while both of her parents were ill a decade ago.

The scenario for the book: Two farming families with long-standing roots near Lawrence are continuing their generations-old feuds over issues such as how to raise children or how to properly pray. Thrown into the mix a woman - a lesbian and practicing Wiccan - who moves to the area seeking a private space to practice her religion.

"Kansas, on the political maps, is always painted as a red state," Paretsky says. "But I don't think it's that simple. People make fun of us over evolution, but it's a volatile issue in many places, even California. And it just gets writ large here.

"To me, to write a book about the way in which some of this ideology is driving American life, to write a novel, to play that out with some real families and real characters, Kansas is kind of a natural place to do it, even if I wasn't an expatriate Kansan."

The novel comes a year after Paretsky published "Writing in an Age of Silence," a collection of essays on political topics. She's known for her left-leaning views on issues such as the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq.

'Passionate attachment'

Paretsky is a graduate of Lawrence High School and Kansas University. While in Lawrence, she learned some about issues of religious intolerance. Her father was the first Jewish professor at KU, and a fellow student she tutored - a Christian - once told her she was going to hell because she was Jewish.

Still, she admits that "Bleeding Kansas" is a bit of a caricature of her home state.

"I think all of my books, things are exaggerated to some degree," she says. "I don't know if it's because it's fiction or because my imagination is a little over the top."

Paretsky fell in love with Chicago - the city where she's spent her adult years - while doing volunteer work on the city's south side at age 19. But a soft place in her heart remained for Kansas.

"I guess I just have a passionate attachment to the place, both the beauty of the place and the history of the place," Paretsky says. "I do get tired of people thinking it's just this place with wheat in the middle of the country, and this place to drive through as fast as you can to get to the Rockies."

Paretsky, who makes it back to Lawrence three or four times a year, says her publisher signed on to "Bleeding Kansas" with the assumption she would then write another book in the V.I. Warshawski series.

For now, she's just glad she got to describe a place she loves to an audience that might not appreciate Kansas.

"It may not be the most spectacular landscape," she says. "It's not got mesas or mountains or oceans. But it has an extraordinary beauty I wanted to describe if I could."

Discussion

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20 January 2008
at 7:43 a.m.

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redmoonrising (Anonymous) says…

I lived in a scholarship hall with Sara Paretsky when I was a freshman at KU. Of all the women living there, she is one of the few who stands out in my mind from all those years ago. A bubbly girl with curly blond hair, so smart it was scary, she was one of the kindest people I met there. Oh, her tongue could be barbed by wit but her heart was always large. I am going on memories over 40 years old now. But the success of Sara has been no surprise to me and I'm glad she took her life where she wanted it. Good going Sara! And her mother was a great inspiration to my children with her quiet kindness.
20 January 2008
at 6:28 p.m.

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OldEnuf2BYurDad (Anonymous) says…

“she encountered white-shirt-clad Christians trying to sell her on the Bible”

White clad? I'm thinking not Christian, but Mormon. But, that's only a guess.
20 January 2008
at 7:41 p.m.

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Dominic_Sova (Anonymous) says…

I thought Mormon was a type of Christian
20 January 2008
at 9:38 p.m.

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hujiko (Anonymous) says…

all the same ignorance to me
20 January 2008
at 10:26 p.m.

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tashtego (Anonymous) says…

Once characterized as “the most Republican state in the country”, Kansas is now at least purple. And on Friday night's PBS show, “McLaughlin Group”, the moderator had it listed as a BLUE state. We've had some Democratic governors and congressmen, but I cannot recall a single Democratic senator. Bill Roy almost made it in 1974.

Of course Nancy Kassebaum would probably have to be a Democrat today.
20 January 2008
at 10:45 p.m.

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jubydoo (Andrew Juby) says…

Mormons are Christians in the same way that Christians are Jews.
20 January 2008
at 11:34 p.m.

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kwjayhawk (Anonymous) says…

That's not the best picture that the LJ world could run… very piercing eerie stare..

21 January 2008
at 6:13 a.m.

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BigPrune (Anonymous) says…

Downright scary.
21 January 2008
at 7:46 a.m.

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justthefacts (Anonymous) says…

Bravo! I can't wait to read the book and meet her. Lest anyone think this kind of religous encounter is no longer in fashion, just last week I watched (in horror) as a perhaps well meaning Christian woman who was leading a prayer before starting a group project aimed that prayer at the two Jewish people in the mix - praying their blindness to the truth be removed, but only suceeding in moving one of the young people to tears over the attack on her.

When will people of all faiths realize that the quickest way to turn people away from your brand of religion is to treat them badly?