Why I Wrote When the Bluebonnets Come In Spring

When the Bluebonnets Come in Spring is a departure from both previous and future literary work of author and college professor John J. Dwyer. John was recently interviewed about why he wrote Bluebonnets, and how it differs from his other books.

Q: You have written a number of other books.

A: Yes, my first was the historical novel Stonewall, published by Broadman and Holman, which told the amazing story of one of the greatest military leaders in American history, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. That book did—and continues—to sell quite well, so B & H asked to write a sequel, which became Robert E. Lee. That book picked up right where Stonewall left off, and told the story of Lee, but also his daughter Agnes and a number of other characters.

Q: So, are all your books still in print?

A: Yes, they are.

Q: Your last book was a change of pace, wasn’t it?

A: Yes, The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War, which came out in late 2005, was a non-fiction comprehensive historical narrative about the causes, events, and aftermath/consequences of that epic saga.

Q: So how does When the Bluebonnets Come differ from these other books?

A: Well the first thing you’ll notice is its size. As my wife Grace says, “You finally wrote a short book!” My previous books all fell in the 600-800 page range; this one is 200.

Q: Why so much shorter?

A: I have always written until the story I had to tell was over. This story was done in 200 pages, and to go longer would have been to water it down and do a disservice to the reader.

Q: How else is it different from your previous books?

A: It takes place in contemporary times. It is a contemporary story of the people of the land and small rural towns of Texas, and it has an Oklahoma plot line as well. But while contemporary, it is a story not only of the present, but very much of the past--and, ultimately, the future. While many readers will detect that the Christian world view holds a central place in the book, it is a novel with much conflict between Christianity and modern times and culture, and even Christianity and its own declared beliefs.

Q: Religious controversy in Texas and Oklahoma—that sounds like you are getting back to non-fiction, John! And the word “bluebonnets” certainly conjures up images of Texas. What is this book about?

A: It is the remembrance of a current-day Texas woman looking back on her childhood out in the bluebonnet country of Ellis County south of Dallas, and an eventful few months in her life when a series of dramatic events occurred that changed the entire course of her life.

Q: Who is the girl?

A: Her name is Katie Shanahan. She is a spunky country girl who has a posse of Labrador dogs and loves telling them, as well as most of the other large number of animals on her family’s spread, how she is the boss of them all.

Q: Is she the main character?

A: Yes and no. She tells the story, as an adult looking back, and she is in much of it. On the other hand, her father Ethan is the actual protagonist.

Q: How so?

A: Well, he was once a famous college football player for the Oklahoma Sooners, but he now pastors a small, struggling church in the similarly small, struggling—and mythical—town of Cotton Patch. He also has more than a few “ghosts” haunting him from a past that turns out not to be as simple as it at first appears.

Anyway, a whole bunch of difficulties—a few of them outright calamities—descend upon the Shanahans and the Cotton Patch community—much of which is actually farm and ranch land—from nearly the first page of the book. Ironically, these events occur as a local lad named Jed Schumacher is leading the high school football team on an electrifying march toward the state playoffs.

Q: What kind of difficulties?

A: To begin with, Cotton Patch lies some miles outside the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. But it lies in a direction Dallas is not growing.

Q: Why is that?

A: Cotton Patch and the surrounding area are more modest economically, more blue collar, more racially-diverse than the rich Dallas suburbs to the north. They possess little major industry and the people are still connected more tightly to the land and the rhythms of the land.

Q: What do you mean?

A: It has to do with one of the main stories I wanted to tell with the book, the struggle of the little man of the land to make his way in a world dominated by big cities, big money, and big plans for paving over pastures and forests. It is at times a hilarious story, and at times one with morals and messages for all of us. At times, it can be a heartbreaking story.

Q: So this rather humble, struggling area is beset by yet more challenges…

A: Yes, it starts with a gambling casino that is being proposed for the area by some big-moneyed outside interests. At least, to begin with, it is outside interests. Ethan Shanahan doesn’t like the idea, but he is already worn out just trying to shepherd his little, lower-middle class flock, his family, and himself. Then a curious thing happens. Even as increasingly troublesome features about the proposed casino begin coming to light, one by one the community leaders of church-dominated Cotton Patch begin to embrace the project and drop their opposition to it. Ethan eventually realizes he is no longer standing at the rear of the phalanx opposing the project, he is at the front of it—in fact, he is the phalanx.

Q: But that isn’t all that happens?

A: No, the repercussions of Ethan’s growing opposition to what becomes known as the “Family Entertainment Complex” affect his church and even his own family. Plus, one of the most devastating tornadoes in the history of the county lands right on top of Cotton Patch, escalating the area’s economic woes and providing fuel for those touting the casino project as a job and economy bonanza. And in the background during all of this is a serious of mysterious arsons that strike a number of locations in and around Cotton Patch, including a church. This, as well as all the other difficulties, wind up taking a personal toll on the Shanahan family, including Ethan’s marriage to his wife Lorena.

Q: And Katie serves as the herald for all of this?

A: That’s right. She is the conduit through which both she and the reader learn the events, the lessons, the surprises, the ancient secrets, the consequences of the actions of people, families, and a community.

Q: Wow, that sounds a bit deeper than a lot of the contemporary romantic fiction fluff.

A: When the Bluebonnets Come is not that sort of book. It has much love, but also greed, scheming, destruction, and hatred, as well as faith, forgiveness, courage, and redemption.

Q: What books and authors influenced your writing of Bluebonnets?

A: Many voices have contributed to the voice of Katie Shanahan. Like Pat Conway's Prince of Tides, I have attempted to present in Bluebonnets a world of much beauty marred and threatened by hideous evil. Like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, I have attempt to confront, through the eyes of a child, the challenge of different kinds of people who profess to hold that it is right to get along, actually doing so.

Like Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree and Gone to Texas (The Outlaw Josey Wales), we meet in Bluebonnets characters and scenes alternately wry, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Like Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, I attempt to bear frank testament to the toll that some of the uninvited and overweening forces of both progress and old ways of thinking and acting can exact from the little man. And like Texan Larry McMurtry's Horseman, Pass By and Lonesome Dove, When the Bluebonnets Come in Spring is intended, finally, as an agrarian poem of love to the frail, broken, silly, brave people of the land whose tale it chronicles.

Q: So what inspired you to write When the Bluebonnets Come?

A: I lived for many years out on the land where it takes place, though in the book I have inserted the mythical community of Cotton Patch in the midst of the other, real-life towns and communities around it. My wife Grace and my daughter Katie both grew up on that land. I wanted to tell the story of the people I knew and lived among for many years out there, beyond the cities, in the Texas bluebonnet country; the forgotten people who are not necessarily part of the 'New Texas.'

I am talking about the 'little' people of the land--black, white, and brown, young and middle-aged and old--in the struggling little towns and communities and homesteads who are losing their industry, their population, a lot of times their way of life, to forces far stronger than themselves, forces often without faces or even names. These folks are mostly not rich or famous or well-heeled. But they have thoughts and feelings, dreams and fears, though rarely do they have a voice to express them to the world. I know these people, and I have tried to be their voice and tell their brave story.

Q: It sounds as though the Shanahans as a family are at the heart of this story.

A: Yes, they are, partly because of their own distinctive story, and partly because of the archetypal family struggle they depict. In fact, another major objective I had in writing this book was to convey how important is the life a mother or a father lives to their children, and how when we stand in the gap for what is right, even when we get thumped for it, and especially when it is not easy or popular, the heart of what we do will live after us, and in fact may not even be recognized until after we are gone.

There are some mystical components to a family and its heritage and legacy. Like Katie says one place in the story, discussing the characteristics children receive from their elders, even their ancestors: “That’s as fishy to me as how it gets passed right along from me to someone else, which it did, from one hidden place to another to another to another, down a long, long line, never bein’ seen at first, but just comin’ out when you least expect it.” Mothers and fathers leave a wake in which their children follow, and Bluebonnets calls attention to how crucial that wake is, and yet how powerful a force for good it can be. It also reveals how actions, even words, can birth consequences that linger lifetimes after they are committed or uttered.

The character of Ethan is one that I believe will fascinate readers. This is a well-meaning and in many ways heroic man. But he has a lot of problems, some sourced in events that took place decades before, and the reader learns about more of them than most of the people in Cotton Patch. I was heartened when one female reviewer mentioned the name of a female author far better known than myself and said the difference between my realistically-drawn male characters and the other authors’ fanciful ones, was the difference between a man and a woman writing about men, their struggles, their fears, and their angers.

Q: The cast of characters as a whole is quite colorful, is it not?

A: Yes, that it is. And I won’t say who is based on real people and who are composite characters! One of the most interest characters is Miz T, an old widow whose dark coke bottle lenses, cane, and godliness comprise the spiritual compass of Cotton Patch. There is also George Washington Carver Jasper, the grandson of slaves and pastor of a church burned down by arsonists.

Clay Cullum is Ethan's unwanted pastoral intern, and the son of his mysterious old college flame Angelina. At first it is debatable whether Ethan or Clay is more anxious for the younger man to move along to a bigger church in Dallas. In the end, Clay realizes how much he has to learn from Ethan--and Ethan has mentored his own pastoral successor. Clint Granger is an arrogant, Dallas entrepreneur of grand vision, but who represents much of the reason most of Cotton Patch wants his city kept out of its county. Graciela Rodriguez is the Shanahans' beautiful neighbor, neglected and abused by her drunken husband, who proves an unexpected snare to Ethan.

And Jed Schumacher, whom we mentioned earlier, handsome and dashing and renowned on the gridiron. He personifies the Homeric hero adored on autumnal Friday nights by Texas and Oklahoma. Katie and most everyone else are in awe of him, but his broken home has left him with unseen problems, mostly unseen, large and small. And I haven’t even mentioned Jumpy the squirrel hunter, Jose the bicycle rider, Jefe the jogger, Charlie the small-town newspaper owner, or a host of others.

Q: So what is next from the pen of John J. Dwyer?

A: I am working in conjunction with both the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Oklahoma Statehood Centennial Commission to write The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People. We will publish it in the same handsome, colorful, illustration-rich format as The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War, and it will also feature a free online study guide for students and teachers.

Q: What is the release date for The Oklahomans?

A: Christmas season of next year, 2008.

Q: How can people learn more about all these books, and John J. Dwyer?

A: Our websites are www.bluebonnetpress.com and www.johnjdwyer.com.