What was your inspiration for the novel?

You know, sometimes the stories that we end up telling, aren’t the stories that we intended to tell. That certainly happened when I sat down to write my second novel. I spent about two years working on a book that Ballantine decided it wouldn’t publish. It was a hard time for me. The next summer, I was at the beach looking at the manuscript that wouldn’t become a book, trying to figure out what happened. I figured Ballantine was through with me and I’d have to start from square one with my career in publishing. I figured it would be just like I never published anything, and I really wondered if I ever would publish a second novel. When the Finch Rises had been such a wonderful experience and I guess I thought I’d always be with Ballantine and I would always publish whatever I wrote. Well there I was at the beach trying to figure all this out, what went wrong and what I was going to do next when my agent got a hold of me and said Ballantine was still interested in something new. So I figured I’d try to give them something, just enough you know to get them to say yes to a book idea and then I would figure out what I was going to write for them.

The place I go to write at the beach is not some deserted, out-of-the-way place where I’m alone and surrounded by silence. It’s a beach south of Myrtle called Garden City Beach, just like in the new book, right there along Murrells Inlet marsh, and it’s loud, filled to the brim with families and teenagers, surfers and retirees. Any and everybody you can imagine are in the mix down there. There are fireworks going off all the time, night and day, and many times during the night, the little silence that’s offered is broken by the sound of Harleys cruising Atlantic and Ocean Avenues. It’s not a hidden-away type of place at all. It is a family vacation spot, pure and simple. It’s the kind of beach I remember as a child, full of noise and Painters Ice Cream, fireworks and beach music floating out of the arcades and from down off the pier. It’s my beach, and it’s where I find the most concentration when I have to write.

So I’m down there, surrounded by the familiar, and my agent is asking if I have anything else in the works. Well, next door to the condo where I stay, there is a fire station. And periodically, the crew will take a call, and they just happened to be taking one while I talked to my agent. For some reason, I had been thinking about Larry Brown a lot lately too. Wondering what he would tell me about the publishing nightmare I was going through at the time. Larry was very important in my publishing career. I read him very early on and became friends with him even before I was published. I would talk to him from time to time, and he was always so gracious with his words. When he died, it was just devastating to me as it was to many others. So I was sitting there in that condo in Garden City Beach, South Carolina and the fire truck siren was piercing the air and my agent was saying, “They want to know what else you are working on.” I was pretty beat up about the rejected novel and my future, but then I was thinking about Larry and how he had been a fireman years ago. I had recently re-read his memoir On Fire and for whatever reason, all those thoughts and impression coalesced into one at that moment and I thought, What the hell, at least Ballantine is still asking.” So I told my agent that I was working on a story about a fireman. I asked her to give me a week and I’d send her something when I got home. And that’s when I started writing The Fireman’s Wife. It came out of a great confluence of emotion and need, of failure and desire to begin again. It was found amid the rubble of my writing life, there in Garden City Beach, a man named Peck who wanted to tell me a story. That was the seed, but of course there was much more.

My inspiration to write this novel grew from within the story. As I worked on it, my excitement for the book grew. As I healed from the rejection of my earlier work, I found a new life in Peck and Cassie Johnson, two good people who decided to spend the next two years of their lives with me and offer up this wonderful story. That’s was where it came from and how I started writing The Fireman’s Wife

Do you feel like you chose this story and these characters, or did they choose you

I always feel like the characters choose me. Peck was the first to come on board. He found me down there at Garden City Beach, beat up and needing rescue. Cassie came a bit later. She was the hardest to understand. Maybe it’s because she's a woman and I’m a man and it was harder to communicate, I don’t know. As I said earlier, I started with Peck’s story and as I went along and Cassie began to trust me more, the story really became hers. And, of course, that’s the way it should be anyway. Cassie is the unhappy one; she’s the character in transition. She’s changing and in that change lays the conflict, I think. Peck’s story is about other folks’ disasters and how he tries to help the victims survive. He’s a fireman and firemen rescue others. Cassie, on the other hand, is in trouble. She needs rescuing and so therein lies the conflict. I just didn’t know it early on. I thought I was going to write about a fireman and how he deals with the disasters around him, at home and at the station, but Cassie came in and turned the tables on that. She pretty much demanded that her troubles be front and center, so I think this becomes a story about Cassie and how she is trying to right a wrong life. Her choices are certainly suspect, but the attempt is true and real. Peck is there to support as well as he can and to give her room to breath. He’s a good husband and a good fireman. He loves Cassie and wants her to be happy, though it is hard for him to let her go. But, of course, he has no choice and so he spends his days at the station or surfing. He finds his own peace while Cassie attempts to find hers

What prompted you to write this novel from both Cassie and Peck’s perspectives

That’s a good question. I wanted to explore both sides of this issue. When there is conflict in a relationship, what I have always noticed is that people take sides. What we forget is that there are always two sides to any problem and usually both sides have a degree of validation to them. I’ve had good friends break up in the past and I haven’t wanted to take side because I could see reasons on both. When I started looking at Peck and Cassie’s life, I wanted to make sure I did both of them justice. I wanted Peck to be a strong man who understands, to a certain degree, what his wife is doing. But I also wanted to paint Cassie in a sympathetic light as well. I wanted her to have validity as well, though I also wanted to plant some kind of seed of being a bit out of control, unsure to a degree of what the consequences of her actions would be. I am not trying to say either one is wrong or right. I wanted to explore the idea of a relationship caught in the tides of change. It is 1970 and women’s lib is pretty intense, so I wanted there to be an undercurrent of that running through the book, and I wanted to explore the confusion on both sides of the relationship in that context. Look, Cassie got pregnant at eighteen, lost her chance to go to school, was kicked out by her father and has lived the last fifteen years of her life in an area of the country that she doesn’t really understand, the low country of South Carolina. We have to be in her head to understand why she becomes so restless, and we have to be in Peck’s head to watch as he tries to understand and do the right thing. It was just apparent early on that I would have to look at this story from both characters’ points of view. It made the book tough to write because I always had to be thinking from both perspectives. It took longer to process information and character motivation, but in the end, I think it worked well

Was it difficult for you to slip inside the voice and viewpoint of a woman

It was more difficult to slip from one point of view to another and keep the story moving forward, but if I have to answer that question, yeah, it was harder because I’m not a woman, never have been one, never will be, so I had to consider my own sensibilities and filter them with extreme care to make sure I found the right voice. In some ways, human nature and emotions, both male and female are the same. But actions and thought is in stark contrast. I had to imagine how I might, as a woman, consider certain issues. Cassie takes time to react, to make her own moves, while Peck moves quickly, decides and takes action. Cassie spends lots of time deciding on things, is careful with her words, and moves quietly to begin her journey to self-discovery. Peck isn’t like that at all. He will make pronouncements, move quickly without too much thought because Peck knows who he is and how he needs to react. Cassie is finding herself, and that makes for contradictions at times. She will trip over herself, where Peck usually moves through the story with confidence of where he is going and how he is getting there. To juggle those two patterns of thought and behavior was difficult, but I enjoyed Cassie the more I got to know her. She became a strong character in me, especially after I spent some time outside Highlands and Cashiers, North Carolina. Once I understood her terrain, the geography of where Cassie grew up, then she was much more authentic and real to me. I was able to write her the

Did you do anything specific and intentional in order to shape-shift into a woman’s point-of-view

It’s funny, but early on, I wrote Cassie’s story without the use of contractions. I wanted her thoughts and her dialogue to seem more proper in a way. It gave me a starting point for a voice. I found pictures of women who could have been Cassie, thought about the type of clothes she would have worn, her skin type and such as that. I listened and observed my own wife, thought about her language patterns and behaviors, watched my daughter and noted her body language and behavior around the house. Madison is younger than Kelly, but she’s entering that stage of her life that I think is timeless, that teenage period where she’s too cool to be a fool. I was fun to watch her and it was fun to think about my wife, and put her in Cassie’s position. She helped me a lot in mannerism and dialogue, how to write it so it sounded and felt real. She’ll be surprised to hear this, but it’s true. And, of course, Deb was one of the first to read it and if I would have missed Cassie at all, I would have known about it immediately

You do something very brave in this book; you detail an issue that is present in the lives of many women but is hardly ever spoken about. Cassie resents her daughter. What is the source of the resentment? Do you believe her resentment is justified or do you see Cassie as a flawed and perhaps even bitter woman

I think Cassie is a woman in transition. And people in transition sometimes do things that appear crazy and inappropriate to others. It’s part of the transitional stage of change, I think. We go crazy for awhile and then the ship rights itself and we go on with our lives like nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. Cassie has been coming to this moment in her life for a long time and now will not let anything stand in her way, or at least that’s what she wants us all to believe. As you read the book, you come to understand, I hope, that Cassie cannot let everything go for the sake of her freedom. She loves her daughter even though we watch her use the girl in some ways to attain her goal of getting away from Peck. From a distance we might see her as a bad mother, but I don’t think that’s true. In Cassie’s mind, Kelly and Peck stand in the way of her freedom, not freedom from responsibility, but freedom from her real life, that life she left behind when she got pregnant and had to get married. She wants to get back to what she believes is her true life’s road and to do that, she will have to let some things go like Peck and Kelly, if necessary. Of course it becomes a life completely rearranged in a way Cassie never envisioned. Does Cassie resent Kelly? Probably on a real silly, immature level, but deep down, she’s a mother and a good one at that. Just look at Kelly, she’s an amazing young lady, I think. Cassie had a lot to do with that. If she resents her, it is only because she is immediately in her way. The resentment is not hatred and it is only superficial and temporary. I think Cassie is bitter, yes, and flawed. Her life, in her estimation, has been one of captivity. Like she says, when she returns from a visit to the mountains, she feels like she is a cornered animal. All human beings need to feel the possibility of growth in their lives. If we lose that, I think we lose the will to live. Cassie is fighting back, albeit in a way that is less productive than she hopes

Cassie is resentful of Clay, saying that “Sometimes Clay will just take over” yet she leaves her husband for him. What does Cassie truly want?

I think Cassie just wants to be herself and she is struggling to find who she is as long as she feels trapped in the low country of South Carolina. I also think Cassie wants to be able to see her father again and have one final chance to understand why he did what he did those many years ago when he made Cassie leave home disgraced and marry Peck. Clay is a means to getting out, and as the book begins, we get that strong impression that Cassie knows that going with Clay is just “trading a fireman for a fireman,” but she has no other way to do it, and so she sticks with it. But interestingly enough, she really can’t completely go with Clay. As she begins to free herself, she drifts further from Clay, and in some twisted way, I guess, she begins to understand her love for Peck. I think as Cassie gets further away from Peck, the more she begins to understand him and what her life with him really means. Of course things happen and it’s not easy to just say, “My bad” and go back to normal. Actions have consequences, and Cassie’s actions bring about consequences that have devastating results. She learns a very hard lesson before the book is through. And though she was looking for this rearranged life, in the end, the completeness of that change is incredibly powerful, life altering in a way she never imagined

When you were a little boy, did you want to be a fireman when you grew up

I think all boys pretend to be things like firemen and soldiers. I don’t think I particularly thought I would ever be one, but I certainly romanticize that type of character. When I was growing up, I remember visiting fire stations, and I remember listening for the fire siren that always announced where a fire was burning. There was a page in the back of our telephone book that had all these fire codes, and when the fire horn would blow, it would send out a series of blasts that would correspond to a three number code in our phone book. You could look that code up on a map of Lexington and find where the fire was burning. I remember once, when fire struck Dixie Furniture, the local furniture factory where many in Lexington worked. It was a huge and expensive fire, one we all drove downtown to watch. We had heard the fire horn and then looked at the map and realized it was the Dixie on fire. It is a memory deep inside me that I have never forgotten. Also like I said, the early ideas of this book came from being at the beach and hearing a fire engine go out. And then there’s Larry Brown and my impressions and thoughts about him. Of course there is 9-11 and all the firemen lost in that event. But one moment that affected me in writing this book came in the summer of 2007 when nine firemen lost their lives in a blaze in Charleston, South Carolina. Ironically, I was back in Garden City beach with my family on vacation, taking a break from writing, when the news of this huge fire came on the television. I sat there and watched the news scroll roll at the bottom of the program my father was watching. It was mostly information about what streets were blocked and where the fire was located, and then suddenly the program ended and we were live on scene watching from a helicopter camera and there were early reports of firemen trapped. As we watched, the number of firemen grew until the news began to report that nine had died when the roof collapsed. It was the worst fire disaster since 9-11. I found it terribly poignant that I was writing a book about fireman in South Carolina, and here in Charleston nine lives were lost on a summer evening while we were all enjoying the summer beach. It left it’s impressions on me and colored the thoughts Peck had about summer vacationers at the beach and the type of calls his crew eventually went out on.

The firefighting information is so real and detailed. What kind of research did you do in order to achieve the level of verisimilitude that is present in the novel

Well, here you go. I wish I could say that I was a fireman for a month, that as research I fought fires alongside my brother firemen as we walked through flames together. It would be nice to at least say that I am a volunteer fireman or something like that, but alas, I am not. My father was not a fireman. My brother is not a fireman. I know a couple of friends who are firemen and I’ve been to a fire station with my son’s Cub Scout troop. Having said that, I will tell you that I did a lot of research on fires and firemen. I read tons of material on the internet and out of books until I felt comfortable enough to write about it. It was all researched and then written and rewritten until I felt I had accomplished an authentic feel. For me, the story must feel real. There must be a feeling of truth no matter that it is a work of fiction. If you felt the story was authentic, then I accomplished what I was after. In my other book When the Finch Rises I had a character that was bi-polar, and so I had to arrive at a degree of verisimilitude before I felt like I could believe in her disease. In The Fireman’s Wife the same bar of authenticity had to be reached or else I could not have written the story. Of course, my worst nightmare is that some fireman will read this book and say, “That’s not the way it happens at all.” My only retort to that will be, well, maybe that’s the way they did it in 1970! It helps to write in a time well past, but it also presents its own set of problems. You have to know what was available at the time, and how procedures worked nearly forty years ago. But it also helps to ease the reality of the moment. I hope I have connected in a real and authentic way. I think I have

Are you a surfer

Yes! Now I can say I am. I learned this summer. It’s the one thing I always wanted to try, and I think I need to thank Peck for giving me the incentive to try. I was a snow skier, but I haven’t been on skis since 1992. The one thing I remember about skiing was how free I felt sliding down the mountain. It’s something that would stay with me even after I came off the slope and went to bed. I loved snow skiing, but I am transfixed by surfing. It is so much more a self-contained sport. You don’t need a ski lift to get you to the top of a wave. You just need to paddle out and wait. And then the motion, the drop off the lip of a wave and skimming along the trough just seems like the most organic activity in the world. I liked surfing as a metaphor for Peck—this idea of being one with the ocean, one with the low country seemed fitting. It was the perfect sport for Peck too because it gives him a sense of being a bit alternative. At first, my editor didn’t like that Peck surfed and smoked pot, but as I showed her drafts of the final story, she bought it totally

Setting in the novel is very important. You quite successfully juxtapose the opposing nature of mountains and beach. In what ways are these symbolic of Peck and Cassie as opposites

Setting is always preeminently important to me. When I write I have to have three elements available to me in order to really get going on a story. First is character. I have to have a strong believable character that will trust me with his or her story. Second there must be conflict, and third but equally important for me is the need to have a strong setting, or as I like to call it, strong sense of geography. And of course in this story, the geography is almost a character itself. I have juxtaposed the mountains and its feeling of a lush wetness against the low country and a hot sandy dryness. I think the contrast speaks for itself.

As far as a symbolic representation regarding characters, both geographies have dual meanings, I think. For Cassie, the mountains represent her childhood, and John Boyd Carter and all that she endured during those dark days, but it also represents all that she lost, the opportunity to go to college and accomplish something with her life. The mountains, especially Whiteside Mountain, represent something that is old and transcendent, something that is a part of Cassie forever, a hardness, a resolve to fulfill one’s life. Cassie needs the mountains to complete her. She needs it for internal strength, and she needs to be in the mountains as a way of fulfilling her life, taking off where she left it fifteen years earlier. But of course it never works out that way, does it

For Peck the mountains represent a place that is foreign to him, a sense of being land locked. Even when he is up in the mountains, he isn’t familiar with things, can’t pick out the nuances that Cassie can see from high above the cove on Whiteside Mountain. It represents a threat to him as long as Cassie feels the need to stay in the mountains and not return to him. Still at the same time, he recognizes the mountains in Cassie’s life much the same way she recognizes the low country in his

For Peck, the low country is life as he knows it. The marsh and the beach are the marrow in his bones. He participates deeply in the life of the land, the marsh and the strand where he surfs and takes care of the vacationers. He sees the intrusion of the visitors as just that, an intrusion and yearns to be on the water with his surfboard. It’s as if the board and the waves complete him. For Cassie, a fair skinned woman who doesn’t understand the flatness of the marsh, the low country is like a desert to her. She no more feels at home in Garden City Beach than Peck feels at home in Whiteside Cove. For each, the other’s geography imprisons. For each, their own geography is freeing. Each is unable to remain in the other’s land, even though Cassie has lived for years along the marsh. She has never claimed it as her own and the alienation felt has provided her the distance she needs to allow her this moment in time when she decides she can leave Peck and go back home to the mountains and attempt to start her life over again.

How is finding the deed a form of redemption for Cassie?

One of the subplots that drive the story is the land deal that has gone bad for Cassie’s mother. When I discovered this in the story, I had no idea what it meant, but as I wrote more, I realized that the deed and the problems surrounding it is really a metaphor for Cassie’s battle with her dead father. In When the Finch Rises, it was the photograph of the lynching that became the symbol of struggle between father and son. In The Fireman’s Wife, it’s the deed which brings out the struggle between Cassie and Parker. It is also the vehicle that helps Cassie understand herself, a way of finding her own inner strength. It is the accomplishment of finding the deed and the way she resolves the issue with John Boyd Carter that helps Cassie grow into her own. It is an outward conflict that helps to resolve an inner battle she is having with her self-esteem. In the end, she resolves much in her life through the discovery of the deed.

What does fire represent in the novel?

For Peck, fire and the way he confronts it becomes a metaphor for his life and the way he lives. Fire is what has given Peck wisdom in his life and it is the element he battles, no matter the cost, when he is called to duty. Peck respects fire, has a healthy fear of it, but also understands it and knows that he has a responsibility to fight fire on its terms rather than to try and make up his own. Clay likes to think of himself as a “thinking fireman,” but Peck understands the raw nature of the beast and always is prepared. Fire burns and changes everything it touches. In The Fireman’s Wife fire touches Peck and Cassie’s life in unimaginable ways. It defines their lives forever, teaches lessons and is unforgiving and unapologetic in its actions. I think fire is very important in Cassie and Peck’s lives.

It seems to me that Peck is surrounded by death and, early in the novel, he is particularly surrounded by the death of young people. How does this proximity with mortality effect Peck?

I think Peck sees his own life in the victims he has to confront. Like I said about fire, the effect of flame and the resulting death caused by flame or accident teaches Peck a life lesson. He sees the results of accident and death and can understand the possibility of such a thing happening to his own family. I think death builds a strength and understanding of the human condition in Peck that allows him to continue to try with Cassie. He sees her flaws. He sees his flaws and because of it, I think he’s more patient with Cassie and her behavior. His work preoccupies him because of the danger and death that is always present, and that probably works against him at home. But it is something that makes Peck the man that he is, the man, I think, that readers will love.

Cassie’s father cast her out of the house and church when she got pregnant out of wedlock. It seems to me that this exile was deeply wounding to Cassie and may be at the crux of her general resentment. How do you view this banishment in Cassie’s life?

Well, when I started working with this part of Cassie’s life, I was afraid of cliché and the type of character that ends up being too much of a broad stroke and not subtle enough to feel authentic. I think though that Parker comes off pretty real and I’m happy about that. I also like the idea that John Boyd Carter is involved in the banishment. I think it deepens the divide between Cassie and John Boyd when we get into the land deed battle. Of course the banishment is the seed of Cassie’s problem. I mean, without Cassie being cast out of church and home, and without being forced to marrying Peck and moving to the low country, the story becomes something entirely different. This is the most important back story material in the book. It sets up Cassie’s struggle with her father, with John Boyd and eventually, with herself. I worried that it might come off as anti-religious, but I don’t think that’s the way it looks now at all. I was trying to make a subtle suggestion about the restrictiveness of this type of religion, but mostly I wanted to place John Boyd in the picture to give him a historical presence in Cassie’s life. And when she is sent away, well her life in unalterably set to move toward this moment in 1970 with the need to regain her life as she once knew it. Of course in the end, we all know that we cannot go home again, so for Cassie the moment of banishment is directly connected to the moment of return when she leaves Peck. It all culminates into a revelation for Cassie. The problem is that in doing this, Cassie sets in motion a series of events that will eventually bring her to her knees. It’s all part of the same thing, the full story, if you will, that begins the day she finds out she’s pregnant and then is banished for good by Parker.

I see this novel as deeply religious on many levels. Are the religious themes intentional or do they simply flow from your own experience and convictions? If you are familiar with my first book, you know that religious themes are important to me. They are intrinsic to the story and I am always conscious that my characters in the end are on some sort of theological journey. After all, I think we as a human race are seekers. We want to have answers or maybe we want to avoid the answers to the questions that have always been there. What is the meaning of our existence? Is this really all there is? What is my destiny? Simplistic questions really, but questions that have in one way or another defined us in our lives’ journeys, so having said that, my characters embody this idea always. Whether they are kids in 1968 or Peck and Cassie in 1970, they are characters who are trying to find out about life, what it means and how it is that they fit into it. Cassie is the most obvious here. She is the one stepping out onto the metaphorical tight wire when she leaves Peck. She is the one who believes her life was unalterably changed when she became pregnant. And really, when you look at the story, it’s Cassie who has had to make all the major sacrifices. She is the one who moved away, changed her life so completely, that it’s almost unrecognizable to her until her father dies and she begins to return to the mountains. I think it’s during the early trips that Cassie begins to understand that there is something more for her out in the world. She begins to imagine more, and to get to it, she comes to believe she must leave Peck. There’s a little prodigal son metaphor here, and a bit of the idea of costly grace. A type of understanding, if you will, that only comes to us through great sacrifice and suffering. Cassie is on that road and it is a road that has to be taken, if she is to find herself. The problem with her journey, of course, is that there are dire consequences that she cannot imagine, consequences that change her life forever. In that regard, the story is like a biblical parable. Or at least, that’s the way I see it. I didn’t start off thinking about this stuff, but it comes through. I try to show a theological journey while at the same time take a look at the darker side of organized religion, or maybe I should say the more complicated issues of organized religion. I don’t want to condemn or take a negative look at religion, but with Parker, Cassie’s father, I wanted to show that religion isn’t always clean, that sin and redemption are messy sometimes. What Parker participates in might seem criminal to most, but I love the way he looks at the issues he is dealing with. When Cassie reminds us what he feels he is providing his congregation when he has Meemaw take those young girls back into the mountains for abortions, we can understand more clearly what Parker feels is his battle with the devil. It’s complicated, and it’s uncomfortable, but then many stories in the Bible, when they aren’t sanitized or “child proofed” are uncomfortable. I think I’ve gone on too long here.

When you started the novel, did you know what Peck’s fate would be? If not, when did it become clear to you?

I did not have any idea what his fate would be. I thought I understood Cassie’s fate for a long time, but of course I didn’t know that either. When I started this book, I knew Peck much better than I knew Cassie. When I wrote Peck, it felt much more authentic, and it made the Cassie chapters feel pushed and inaccurate. And because of my comfort level with Peck, I always figured Cassie would die. I thought she would have an affair, get pregnant, go for a back alley abortion and then die. I started the novel with that idea in mind, but as I continued to discover Cassie’s character, I started liking her. I started doubting the idea that she would die. Then my daughter and I went to Tallulah Falls right before New Year’s Eve 2006. It was then I discovered that Karl Wallenda walked the gorge in July of 1970. At the time, the novel was set in 1972 in order to allow credence for a back alley abortion, but as soon as I learned of Wallenda’s walk, it was almost as if Cassie spoke up and said, “Hey, you can’t kill me because this is where I end up at the end of the story. I’m still alive.” And I knew then that Cassie wouldn’t die and that I would have to figure out the issues between Peck and Cassie if the novel was going to work properly. Now I know that my answer seems to have nothing to do with Peck’s fate, but in reality, it has everything to do with it. What I came to realize was that I needed to understand Cassie and her fate before I could realize Pecks. In fact when Peck finally revealed his fate to me, I couldn’t buy it. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t want to write it. But I learned with When the Finch Rises that I don’t have a lot of control over what my characters tell me. When Palmer Conroy brought back that picture of Raybert’s father at the lynching of Rodney Small, I was shocked and dismayed to the point that I spent two weeks trying to write that idea out of the story. I failed miserably, thank God, and that image remained and became what I think is a very important line of tension between father and son that would have been missing in the book, if I would have taken out what Palmer gave me that day when he pulled the picture out of that envelope. Peck’s revelation to me about what would happen to him and Cassie hurt as well, but I knew immediately I would have to write it and let it stand. I won’t lie. I cried my eyes out at the end of the book. It was so hard to carry out Peck’s orders to me. But I did and the story is more powerful because of it.

The Great Wallenda plays a quiet but important role in the novel. How do you see his importance in Cassie’s life?

Well, as I have just mentioned, when I discovered Wallenda’s walk across the gorge during a visit to Tallulah Falls, I learned that Cassie wouldn’t die, that she would live and be there when Karl Wallenda did his thing. It also became a wonderful metaphor for Cassie’s own life, the idea of walking her own tight rope of life as she tries to find herself and deal with leaving Peck and somehow remaining a mother to Kelly. The last chapter where Cassie is there at the gorge watching Wallenda on the tight rope brings the whole novel into focus for me. The frail acrobat moving through great danger, balanced there a thousand feet above the gorge, walking toward safety on the other side is precisely Cassie’s life. It is the story that we have just read.

Peck says, “I never thought about it before, but being a parent is a lot like being a fireman.” How important is it to the larger issues in the novel that Peck is a fireman?

I think Peck’s being a fireman is very important to the story. I think we have lots of empathy for him because he is a public servant doing the public good and seeing his own family through the eyes of a person who deals with human trauma and death. He’s also salt of the earth. Peck Calhoun Johnson is blue collar. He’s everyman doing an everyday job with everyday people. We can all relate to him and we can all root for him because he is kind and considerate. Also, regarding the larger issues in the book, I think Peck as a fireman reassures us that he can handle these problems. He is confident in his work, yet we see he understands, almost from the very beginning of the book, the danger and the need to be prepared when he goes on a call. His caution and expertise in his profession, helps us see his vulnerability in his personal life, how such caution and expertise doesn’t exist when it comes to love and family. It helps highlight Peck’s journey, a confident fireman who is confused and fragile as a husband and father. Makes for good story, I think.

I think Cassie’s great peccadillo is her ingrained resentment. What is Peck’s?

Ah, her “peccadillo.” I like that word, but better it might be asked as her greatest sin or transgression, only to keep up with the theological ideas that we have talked about earlier. I don’t know about Peck. He’s just a great guy, isn’t he? I think what makes Peck so endearing is his ability to take it, to still love Cassie no matter how bad she has been. He’s perfect, I think. But really, if you want an answer, a serious answer, I think Peck’s peccadillo, his sin, is his inability to see Cassie’s suffering for what it really is. He’s so busy with his life as a fireman, he can’t see what Cassie’s unhappiness is doing, really doing to the relationship. I think Peck feels deep down that Cassie will always come back because she always has. He’s guilty of letting things get too far out of hand and not seeing Cassie as someone who needs to have her own life and her own identity in that life. It was something that happened to a lot of women in the 70’s, and as a product of that time, I saw many of my friends’ parents, those who were important role models in my life, get divorced and move on into new and different lives. It was unsettling to me at the time, but I came to understand what was going on, how women were subjugated in their lives, and I think that has happened to Cassie. Peck is responsible for much of that subjugation, but only in a naive sort of way, because Peck too is a product of the same generation as Cassie. He’s living the only way he knows how. Toward the end, I think Peck makes headway toward understanding what he has done to Cassie and her life. When he is with her at Western Carolina, he sees what she missed, and understands, I think, his responsibility for some of Cassie’s loss.

Peck comments that Cassie has lost her soul. What does he mean by this?

Well, when Peck says this, he’s back up in the mountains with Cassie and he understands now, if he didn’t before, that she is searching for something that was lost in her life. I think people lose their souls sometimes, not in some horror movie way, but in a real way where they have a hole in their life that they can’t fill, can’t really even describe to anyone with words. They walk around feeling empty and lost, nothing around them feels right. Everything is foreign to them. They isolate themselves from the world and sort of become invisible. In some ways, that's exactly what Cassie’s done over the years living in the low country. She lost who she was when her father sent her away and she married Peck. Over the years, the hole has grown so big, it is unavoidable. When the novel begins, Cassie is a complete lost soul. She can’t see what’s right there in front of her and the only thing she can go is leave. She is searching for herself, searching in many ways for her soul. The old gospel song, “Amazing Grace” comes to mind here. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. I think this story is about amazing grace, and in the end, Cassie sees her life, finds her soul, but the cost is great. It’s a costly grace for sure.

I think that one of the things a novelist has to do is love their characters—even when they are dastardly. Was it easy for you to love Cassie or did you have to work at it? Or perhaps the better question is do you love Cassie?

I do love Cassie. I love her so much that I couldn’t kill her when I thought she would certainly die in the story! That sounds funny, but it’s true. I will have to say though, my love for Cassie came gradually, not that I hated her or thought of her as dastardly. I never thought what she was doing was wrong in an evil sense. Cassie is human, just like the rest of us, and human’s struggle with life and love. Cassie is struggling. She is a seeker looking to find herself again, and when we participate in such a life’s journey, someone is always going to get hurt.

As I said earlier, I didn’t really know Cassie very well until I spent some time in the North Carolina Mountains where she grew up. While I was up there, I talked to people, hiked some beautiful country, saw the church that I imagined Parker preached at while Cassie grew up. I could see her on the land and I could feel her presence there with me, especially in the eyes of the folks I talked to while I did my research. Cassie is very much alive and real to me when I’m in Highlands or Cashiers, North Carolina. And I came to understand her journey as being the lifeblood of this book. She is a fighter, just like Peck, and they compliment each other very well. I think Cassie comes to understand that at the end of the book. She is authentic, and yes, I do love her.

Writing a novel is such an organic process of discovery. What discoveries did you make while writing this novel that surprised you?

I’m always surprised at the fragility of the story, how, if you are not careful, you will miss things that are vital to the success of the story. In Finch, it was the photograph of the lynching and a section I put in very late in the revision process where I explained the return of the finches to Finch Creek. Without that, I think the book misses a very lyrical moment, and a thread that pulls the novel toward its conclusion. In The Fireman’s Wife, it was discovering the story itself, how it moved from being Peck’s story to Cassie’s and how Cassie came alive to me over a long period of time. As I discovered her story, I discovered her. If I hadn’t been prepared for anything, if I hadn’t been sensitive to the story changing in mid-stream, then I might not ever have finished it. It sort of oozes out, and what I have learned is that it is a 24/7 job. I have just started to rest and let go of the intensity involved in telling this story. I’m not looking for pennies anymore! If you haven’t read the book, that last comment will make no sense whatsoever.

The other thing that surprised me about this book was how hard it was to write it. I mean, it’s been five years since When the Finch Rises came out. I wrote a second novel that did not get published, questioned myself as to whether or not I would ever publish again, flew through editors like a hot knife through butter until I finally landed on a good one, wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote until I couldn’t write anymore and finally, after it was all done, I looked up and a book was waiting at the end of this incredible journey. It was hard, really hard to get it right, so I hope it’s good. I hope people will read this and come away understanding the story of Peck and Cassie’s lives together. I say it’s Cassie’s story, but really it’s a love story.

What is next for you, Jack?

Really I don’t know. I want to write another book, so I’m looking now, testing a few ideas. I teach at Georgia Perimeter College, a two-year liberal arts school in Atlanta and will continue renewing myself through my students. They are wonderful, especially at the two-year level. They have no idea what they can do and when the light goes on, man, that’s something to behold. I love teaching, so that sits in front of me, the one good constant in my life. But I’ll write more, I’m sure. I need to get this book to bed and then clean my palate, so to speak. I’ll keep you updated, that’s for sure.