Sarah Addison Allen, PAPER GHOSTS, on Grief
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:03]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show, and learned endless amounts about
[0:09]storytelling, reinvention, and life itself, because when you talk about books, you're
[0:13]really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read, and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]I really enjoyed talking to Sarah Addison Allen, the author of Paper Ghosts, a novel
[0:31]novel.
[0:32]Sarah is the New York Times bestselling author of 8 Novels, a native of Asheville,
[0:37]North Carolina, where actually we had is a V-retreat.
[0:40]Allen is credited with bringing southern magical realism to a mainstream audience.
[0:44]Her work, characterized by its romantic lyrical prose, an exploration of family dynamics,
[0:50]through a supernatural lens, has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold millions
[0:54]of copies worldwide.
[0:56]Sarah's debut novel, Garden Spells, was a breakout success, an indie bookseller favorite,
[1:01]and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
[1:04]Her subsequent works have each been best-sellers, garnering a claim for their quiet magic
[1:08]and subtle, folk-loric elements integrated into southern contemporary life.
[1:13]The daughter of a journalist father and a mother who was a celebrated cook, Allen grew up
[1:17]in a household where storytelling and food were the primary love languages, elements that
[1:21]now define her fiction.
[1:23]She attended the University of North Carolina, graduating with a degree in literature.
[1:27]At age 39, Sarah Tekahayides from Publishing, following a diagnosis of late-stage breast
[1:32]cancer.
[1:33]Her return to writing was marked by a shift toward more poignant narratives.
[1:36]We discussed all of this.
[1:38]Her most recent project, PaperGhosts, continues her tradition of blending mystery with
[1:42]the supernatural.
[1:43]She still resides in Asheville, North Carolina, with her family.
[1:47]Welcome, Sarah.
[1:48]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Buds to talk about PaperGhosts, a novel congratulations.
[1:53]Thank you.
[1:54]It is so lovely to talk to you about this haunting, beautiful story of family, of once
[2:03]that are never really achieved and how you cope with the expectations, really, that are
[2:09]on you and that you can't really escape.
[2:12]It's also about, well, I shouldn't even, I shouldn't be talking about what it's about.
[2:15]Okay, Sarah, what are you talking?
[2:17]What is PaperGhosts about, and then I'll opine, I guess.
[2:20]Hi, thank you.
[2:23]PaperGhosts is at its core, it's about how we are haunted in all the ways we can be haunted.
[2:32]We can be haunted by scent and music and photographs.
[2:38]That's where the title of the book comes from, photographs or paper ghosts.
[2:42]We can be haunted by generational trauma, by generational curses.
[2:46]They follow us around.
[2:48]We can be haunted by spirits themselves.
[2:51]So in some large ways and some small ways, all of those are incorporated into the book.
[2:58]It takes place in two timelines and it opens up in 1976 with Willa Mina Wester, and
[3:05]she's 18, and her life is sort of laid out before her by her controlling grandmother,
[3:11]even down to who she's going to marry, but this is the only way she can inherit the
[3:15]Wester fortune, because the westers are sort of the big wigs in town, and her grandmother
[3:20]has this uncanny knowing, and that's how she keeps control of the town.
[3:26]But then sort of this charismatic young musician, in this ragtag touring one hit wonder
[3:33]band, gets left behind in this small town, and he and Willa Mina meet, and they fall
[3:40]in love, and it's electric, but then her grandmother finds out, and things don't turn
[3:46]out well.
[3:47]And then suddenly we fast forward, and we're in modern times, and present day, and Willa
[3:53]Mina's estranged son, she has one child.
[3:57]He's facing a tragedy, his wife died, so he moves back into the wester house with his
[4:03]young daughter.
[4:04]Now, Willa Mina is an older woman at this point, and her entire goal in life at this point
[4:09]is to stop the wester curse, to stop this generational trauma.
[4:14]It's why she sent her son away, he doesn't know any of this, but suddenly here's this
[4:19]bright young granddaughter in her house.
[4:22]And Willa Mina doesn't want to be the grandmother, that her own grandmother was to her,
[4:26]so she wants Bailey to live her own life, her granddaughter to live her own life.
[4:31]But Bailey is enamored of her grandmother, and she wants nothing more than for her grandmother
[4:37]to love her, and she tries very hard to be like her, which is the antithesis of what
[4:41]Willa Mina wants, and history sort of repeats itself.
[4:45]Bailey ends up leaving town after high school, but then we fast forward again, and Willa
[4:51]Mina is an old woman now, and she's dying, but she calls her granddaughter back to actually
[4:57]tell her the stories of what happened and why.
[5:01]And some time ago, and I don't know who to attribute it to, but there was a quote floating
[5:08]around on the internet that went just because my mother didn't break all the generational
[5:15]curses, doesn't mean she didn't break none.
[5:20]And I think that's the truth of the generational curses, sort of the time loop, the history
[5:26]loop, the mistakes repeating themselves that happened in this book is that we need to
[5:30]hear the stories from our grandmothers and our mothers to sort of navigate the wild landscape
[5:36]of our own life, because we need to know where the holes are so we don't fall in.
[5:40]So that was, that sort of, that's paper ghost in a nutshell.
[5:44]Wow.
[5:45]I was not shown that Instagram visual, by the way, and the quote that you wrote, did not
[5:51]come across my feed, but that, you know, it hadn't, maybe I would have written a novel
[5:55]about ghosts, who knows, but I'm deprived, I guess.
[5:58]Even though it was, it was beautiful because we kind of look at our own mothers and our
[6:02]own grandmothers and say, there was, there were certain ways that I don't, there's some
[6:07]things I don't want to pass down to, you know, my own children or I want it to stop
[6:10]now or at least I want to dilute it.
[6:12]And I think, you know, we, we all think about that.
[6:15]We all think about how we were hurt and how we don't want to in turn be the ones who
[6:19]hurt in the same way.
[6:21]Yes.
[6:22]And I love just getting into that all or nothing thinking, which I fall victim to a lot.
[6:27]Like if I can't do all of it, I'm just not even going to start.
[6:29]You know, I've got to have time to do it all, which is impossible.
[6:32]You know, you are so good at doing it all.
[6:34]You had amazed me.
[6:36]Oh my gosh.
[6:37]You want to do, and then you do it.
[6:40]You are, you are a marvel, Tommy, you know, I live in fear a lot of times.
[6:47]So fearlessness is hard for me, but I see in you fearlessness.
[6:52]Oh, that's sweet.
[6:54]I don't consider myself fearless.
[6:56]I love that.
[6:57]That's amazing.
[6:58]You had a line in here about loneliness that I just loved.
[7:02]Let me see if I can find it, but I think it's something like there are worst things
[7:07]in loneliness.
[7:08]Of course, I had this ready to go and now it's missing.
[7:10]Hold on.
[7:11]This is later in the book.
[7:13]This is this post clutch situation, but anyway, she said this would be her life now because
[7:18]she had her life.
[7:20]And then you say there were some things worse than loneliness.
[7:24]And then you say she finally reached the house and parked, but heavily up the stairs,
[7:27]her entire body hurts.
[7:29]But I was really struck by this line.
[7:31]There were some things worse than loneliness because gosh, loneliness is the feels like the
[7:36]worst.
[7:37]Also, tell me about that line and what you were thinking, sort of writing it and how you
[7:41]feel about that.
[7:42]Well, I remember it now because it was in Bailey wanting to be like Willamina.
[7:48]She sees Willamina in this very controlled atmosphere.
[7:51]And Willamina has hold herself away in this house, you know, just away from the world.
[7:59]And in wanting to be like Willamina, Bailey thinks that loneliness needs to be a part
[8:04]of her life in order to be like her grandmother.
[8:06]She needs to be very self-contained and self-sufficient.
[8:10]And part of the path that leads Bailey to clutch is that she wants so very much to be in
[8:15]love.
[8:17]And she is very much hurt by the situation when she confronts it with clutch.
[8:23]And it hurts so much that she almost understands why her grandmother has hold herself
[8:29]away is because love can hurt or the semblance of love or passion can hurt.
[8:36]And so she thinks now this has scared me so much that maybe loneliness isn't so bad.
[8:43]So I think she's thinking in terms of extremes, like there's no really middle ground.
[8:47]You know, you either have to have nothing or you have to have at all.
[8:51]But I think there is a middle ground and she doesn't end up finding it.
[8:55]But I think that's where it came from.
[8:56]It was that there are some things worse than loneliness, but it's not an extreme in real
[9:05]life.
[9:06]So the book really is the personification of generational trauma in a way, right?
[9:12]It is brought to life-ish.
[9:15]How do you feel about the spirit world and things that, you know, spirits actually coming
[9:22]to haunt you?
[9:23]Is this something that's happened to you?
[9:25]Do you feel you're one of the people who can like sense other spirits and energy around
[9:30]or is this more of a literary exercise in investigating some themes?
[9:36]I think it was an investigation.
[9:38]I've never seen a ghost and my mom and my sister passed away very close together several
[9:46]years ago and I remember at the time I was thinking, you know, what I wouldn't give to
[9:51]just, you know, since their presence or even dream about them and I didn't and I couldn't.
[9:57]So I think it was a bit of wish fulfillment in terms of…
[10:00]wanting to commune with, you know, someone I've lost, but after my mom and sister passed away,
[10:07]but my sister was my only sibling. So it fell on me to go through my mom's things. And my mom had a
[10:14]lot of things. She collected stuff. And so there was a lot to go through. And I was the only one
[10:20]who had the memories now. So I had, you know, I had a lot of help, but I had to touch everything
[10:25]and I had to say, because I was the only one who could say, you know, this stays or this goes
[10:30]or this was important to mom or this, you know, in order to pass it down. But that's when I came to
[10:36]the realization that that we can be haunted by other things other than spirits. You know, we can be
[10:40]haunted by all the scent of my mom's perfume, you know, coming across her perfume bottles. It was
[10:45]like suddenly there she was by where we're haunted by photographs, you know, of people who have
[10:51]passed. So this was my exploration into other ways we are haunted, not just by, just not, just not
[10:59]by spirits. I'm so sorry about your mom and your sister. Can I ask what happened? My mom was in
[11:06]hospice. She had a massive brain hemorrhage. So she was, she was going downhill in four years.
[11:12]My sister passed away quite suddenly by an accidental overdose. So it was two funerals and six days.
[11:20]And it, but you know, it was some time ago, it was maybe almost seven years ago. And my,
[11:26]my book, Otherbirds, which is a book I wrote just before this one, was about letting go of our
[11:32]ghosts in a way. You know, the people we keep and for comfort and letting go of them. So paper
[11:38]ghosts kind of flipped that on its head and said, this is about the ghosts that stay.
[11:44]Oh, I'm so sorry. That is so hard. My gosh. It was difficult, you know, at the time going through
[11:52]that amount of grief, but you know, you sort of, you realize how resilient you are on the other side
[11:58]of it. It doesn't feel good going through it, but you know, there's a certain comfort in knowing
[12:03]that you can get through hard stuff. Yeah. Did the writing help? I couldn't, why my mom was dying?
[12:10]I could not write. I was in like a functional freeze. I was, I had reached a really low point
[12:15]why my mom was dying. And after they passed away and then the pandemic hit coming out of that,
[12:21]I felt sort of a renewal, you know, I had, I had worked through it. So Otherbirds did help in terms
[12:31]of exploring the ghosts we keep and the ghosts we let go. And I think paper ghosts,
[12:38]in going through my mom's stuff, it sort of helped, you know, understand the ghosts that stay,
[12:43]that even though they're not here, there are bits of them still here. Wow. Did you, like, how did
[12:51]you become a novelist? Like, where did that all come from? And how was it a lifelong dream? And
[12:58]like, what was your life like before your sister and your mom passed away? Tell me the whole thing.
[13:03]Well, my dad was a writer. My dad was a journalist and a columnist. And so, you know,
[13:07]there were always books in, in my house and growing up. Where did you grow up? In Asheville,
[13:13]North Carolina. Okay. Born and raised and still here, you know, I am, I am, my roots are very deep here.
[13:19]I've often said that I wasn't born with wings because I'm not a traveler. I'm, I'm very home
[13:24]oriented. But because I wasn't born with wings, I think I was given very deep roots to make up
[13:30]for that. I have a very strong sense of home. So here in Asheville. Asheville has gone through
[13:35]so much too with all of that. I mean, that has had that recovery sounds like it's been slow and
[13:40]terrible. Oh, my God. We were not here. We are in high elevations of the mountains of Western
[13:46]North Carolina. We were sort of slammed by Hurricane. No one was expecting it. And it was devastating.
[13:53]And interestingly enough, in paper goes several of the characters hate rain. And that was my nod
[14:00]Hurricane Helene coming through because it devastated so much. I had so much damage on my
[14:05]property. I tree fell on my house and rain came in. It was horrible. So the characters hating
[14:10]rain and paper goes with a direct nod to Hurricane Helene. But we have overcome. There's still a lot
[14:17]to do. We're a tourism industry. So it's slow to come back. But we're still here. We're still open.
[14:24]And I'm glad we all survived it. But my dad was a was a journalist and a columnist for the
[14:30]Asheville Citizen Times for years and years. And there were books in the house. And so I was always
[14:36]a reader. I never thought of writing as a career. But I did always like to write. I wrote a lot of
[14:42]short stories. And I wrote a book when I was 16, a romance when I was 16. I never thought of
[14:47]as a career, but I liked doing it. But it was only when I graduated from college that I thought,
[14:53]I don't know how to do anything else. Let's give this writing thing a try. Let's see if I
[14:56]can make a career out of it. And it took many years. But then my big break was garden spells,
[15:02]my first book. And I published, I think six books before my mom, before my mom's brain injury.
[15:09]And then went on a very long, like long hiatus, like seven years and then came back with other birds.
[15:16]And, you know, I think writing changes as you change. I'm not the same writer I was,
[15:22]because I'm not the same person I was. I have experienced a lot since I first started writing.
[15:29]And I think the themes of my book while staying true to what they were have, I don't know,
[15:35]I think they have leaned more poignant because of what I've been through.
[15:41]Wow. Well, I feel like your backstory now gives all new meaning to the whole story, even just
[15:49]the staying in the town and what that feels like. I mean, now I get, I get it even more,
[15:55]which is why I love hearing from authors because the meaning gets even deeper than on first
[16:03]read, which is awesome. How do we separate the dancer from the dance? They're all sort of
[16:08]writer in the, our work is sort of, they're, they're connected in ways. Yeah. Wow.
[16:15]Did you ever meet someone like Jack who you wanted to just throw it all to the wind and
[16:20]run away and try a totally different life? Oh my gosh, when I was younger, yes. And I think
[16:29]in part of the, the transition between, you know, who I was as a younger writer and who I was
[16:34]as an older writer, romance doesn't pay, pay as big of a part in my books as they did when
[16:42]they were younger. Relationships play a bigger part in my books and they did when I was younger.
[16:47]And it was, it's more of the finding the, the soulmate is more of finding the connection.
[16:54]And part of what changed that was that in the, in that some sort of transformative 10 years
[17:00]was that I was diagnosed with late stage breast cancer when I was 39. It was such a couple
[17:05]of years before my mom got sick. And so that sort of changed my idea of what romance was. It
[17:11]was, it was not trying to find someone to complete you. It was trying to find someone, trying to
[17:18]make yourself happy finding the point where you know who you are and, and what makes you happy.
[17:25]And then opening shelf up to someone who will make you then happier, but it's not looking for
[17:30]someone to complete something in you. And I think that's the chapter I'm in right now.
[17:37]Oh my gosh. I mean, you say that you're not fearless. You have gone through so much stuff.
[17:44]And you're out here like marketing your, what your eighth book. Oh, say that's pretty fearless.
[17:50]This is amazing. So I need to rewrite that. I think what the difference is, is that I am able
[17:59]to navigate the hard stuff, but I, because the hard stuff comes to me. I am, I am unable. It
[18:05]takes a lot for me to make a step on my own. I think I am, I am, I can deal with the hard stuff
[18:11]if it comes to me. But as, as opposed to my taking a step into the unknown, that, that's
[18:16]for me. I get it. I get it. Well, friendships also play a big role in the book. Do you have friends
[18:25]you grew up with who are still there? Do you have friend betrayals? Do you have friend like, what's
[18:29]the, what's the, the backstory and the friendship piece of the book? I have my two very best friends
[18:36]in the whole world. I have known nearly all my life. I've met one in third grade and one in eighth
[18:42]grade. And we have been through all of life challenges up to the point where all of our mothers
[18:49]were sick at the same time and died within nine months of each other. So it was, we, we were just
[18:55]bonded at this point. So my best friends, Heidi and Michelle, they've gotten me through a lot and
[19:01]I've called them my sisters, my sister friends. So friendships have played a huge part in my life
[19:07]in our, our huge part of my support system, you know, my friends and family. So I, I've explored
[19:14]friendship in a couple of other books. But I think in, in terms of this book, paper ghosts,
[19:20]it is not, it's what you need to build a tribe. And, and I think that does reflect
[19:28]my own experience. Well, I love that. What types of books are you drawn to reading?
[19:34]I, for some strange reason recently, I have never read nonfiction before, but that's all
[19:40]on reading right now nonfiction. I just read the devil at his elbow, which was a true crime book
[19:48]based on the, the Murdoch murders in low country, South Carolina. And the gales of November
[19:55]about the, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald from, you know, Gordon,
[20:00]if it's famous song.
[20:01]So that's what I've been reading recently,
[20:03]but I've often said that who we are as writers,
[20:06]reflects who we are as readers.
[20:08]And so I read, you know, widely,
[20:11]I was a literature major,
[20:13]but romance and Southern fiction and foodie lit
[20:17]and women's fiction, magical realism.
[20:20]Everything that I grew up, everything that fed me,
[20:23]not only is it growing up growing up,
[20:25]but as a young adult,
[20:27]as fed into who I am now as a writer.
[20:30]And I think that's,
[20:32]I think it's white,
[20:32]it's kind of hard to put a genre on my books
[20:35]just because they're all little bits of things.
[20:37]You know, it's not just one thing.
[20:40]So it's kind of hard to categorize,
[20:41]but I think I'm hard to categorize.
[20:45]I am all over the place.
[20:46]So I am, I am my books in a way.
[20:50]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[20:54]Oh, I think don't follow the market
[20:56]in the same way that, you know, my book,
[20:59]my breakout book, Garden Spells was,
[21:01]was, you know, was a book that on paper, if you were,
[21:06]it was not a marketable book.
[21:07]It had so many different elements to it.
[21:11]But I was at a point in my,
[21:13]in trying to get published right before Garden Spells,
[21:17]because I was trying to follow the market.
[21:19]I was trying to write romance
[21:21]or I had even veered into trying to write mystery
[21:24]because I was looking at what was selling
[21:26]and I thought, I'm gonna try to write that.
[21:28]And that's a fool's errand, don't do that.
[21:31]You know, take what you like to read.
[21:35]And I think it was Glen and Doyle said,
[21:39]reading is the inhale and writing is the exhale.
[21:41]And I think that's the best advice borrowing from her,
[21:45]I can give to any writer is that write the book
[21:47]that speaks to you, write the book that's in you.
[21:50]And don't worry about where it's going to find a place
[21:53]on the shelf, because if it is the true book of your heart
[21:58]and if it is the book that you,
[22:03]you labor over and work until it's best it could possibly be,
[22:07]then it will find where it's supposed to go.
[22:10]I love that.
[22:11]Oh my gosh. Sarah, thank you for wrestling
[22:14]with your ghosts in front of the rest of us.
[22:17]So we can dive in and imagine what else is out there
[22:23]and think about family really in a new way.
[22:28]Family, destiny, and second chances and all the rest of it.
[22:32]So anyway, thank you very much.
[22:34]Thank you for having me.
[22:35]And Sibi, thank you for being such a good book citizen.
[22:38]And for all you do for the book world,
[22:40]I think you deserve a congratulations.
[22:42]You deserve a big thank you.
[22:44]Yeah. Thank you. I'll take it.
[22:46]I'll take it.
[22:47]I'll take it.
[22:49]All right.
[22:50]Take care, Sarah.
[22:51]You too, Zibi. Bye. Bye. Bye.
[22:53]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[22:56]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[22:59]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[23:01]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[23:05]and spread the word.
[23:06]Thanks so much.
[23:07]Oh, and bye the books.