Did you have a fun childhood? Mine is—hazy. There’s a whole chunk of haze, times that melt into each other in a fuzzy way, not very differentiated. But I guess it was basically good haze, though, with minor dilemmas: school competitions, favorite teachers, beloved books and spelling bees, math fears, adventures on horseback, “shows” in the backyard and “only” divorce (and infinite sibling rivalry) as a potential trauma. All in all, though, fine. I think I came through undamaged.
And that has the wonderful Michele Dorsey (a fabulous true friend of the Reds and ...here she is as an adorable child!) wondering, I guess, if I would be a good protagonist in a novel. (And happy pub week, darling Michele!)
MICHELE DORSEY: My friends and I were sitting on a porch the other day having a lazy, rambling summer conversation, when one accused another of having a happy childhood. The rest of us pounced on the poor woman who dared to recount a happy memory while we poised ready to detail our miserable childhoods. As I listened, I realized how fertile a field a miserable childhood is for a writer and how many of my characters have suffered through one. Can a character whose childhood was happy be a worthy protagonist?
In my new standalone suspense novel, Gone But Not Forgotten (July 2023 Severn House), Olivia Rose Taylor had worse than a miserable childhood. Hers was stolen when her mother fled an abusive husband who threatened to murder them and relocated to Vermont under new identities. Olivia is forced to live in obscurity so as not to bring attention and endanger them. Her mother is diagnosed with dementia before Olivia can convince her to reveal their identity, which Olivia is desperate to learn before she starts a family of her own. Just as Olivia finds the courage to search for the identity of her family of origin, someone sets out to stop her.
If Olivia didn’t have a crappy childhood, I wouldn’t have had a story to tell. Someone merely trying to kill her isn’t nearly as intriguing as having dark, ancient family secret as the motivation.
I began thinking about other characters I’ve written. Sabrina Salter in my series, (No Virgin Island, Permanent Sunset, Tropical Depression, Salt Water Wounds), on St. John in the Virgin Islands had a wretched childhood. Her mother abandoned her when she was a toddler, leaving Sabrina with a drunken father, and a maternal grandmother who wouldn’t acknowledge her. No wonder Sabrina found love in all the wrong places and ended up killing her husband, even if it was an accident. When I pondered about two works in progress, I realized the protagonists in both had troubled childhoods. Am I fixated with rough childhoods? Was I channeling my own, which I would characterize as glum, a word that just popped into my head.
But wait. Lots of characters in books I have loved had crappy childhoods. Who didn’t love Kinsey Millhone, the protagonist created by Sue Grafton in her alphabet series about an orphan raised by a stern aunt. Kinsey was scarred and quirky, but we rooted for her. Barbara Havers in Elizabeth George’s Thomas Lynley series, plagued by bad habits like smoking and eating junk food, is still having a miserable childhood well into adulthood. She’s the character in the series who rises above the aristocracy and creeps into our hearts.
Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins may take the prize for traumatized childhoods. Rawlins was a black child born poor in Louisiana, orphaned by the age of eight, who jumped a boxcar to Texas, where he became self-educated in skills from sewing to literature.
The list of protagonists with tortured childhoods is long. Ann Cleeves has given us Vera and Matthew Venn, both with dark childhoods. Michael Connelly has graced us with Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, who had the same father but didn’t meet until adulthood. Both had blighted, but different beginnings.
Can a character be interesting without having had a miserable childhood? Does anyone in life honestly have a valid claim they had a happy one? Or are we simply living in an age that invites us to wallow in misery? Do I read and write about people who had desolate beginnings because I want to experience their ultimate triumphs or to find comfort and camaraderie?
I’d love to hear from the Reds about the experiences of their characters and whether their own childhoods affect how they create the backgrounds of them. How do readers feel about the flawed characters who are the products of sad beginnings?
In the end, I am a sucker for a happy ending, and what better way than to have a character who starts life one rung down climb to the top of the ladder?
HANK: How about you, Reds and readers? Writers, do your characters have flawed childhoods? Or readers, would YOU be a good protagonist?
C. Michele Dorsey is the author of Oh Danny Girl and the Sabrina Salter series, including No Virgin Island, Permanent Sunset, Tropical Depression, and Salt Water Wounds. Her latest novel, Gone But Not Forgotten will be published by Severn House in July 2023.Michele is a lawyer, mediator, former adjunct law professor and nurse, who didn’t know she could be a writer when she grew up. Now that she does, Michele writes constantly, whether on St John, outer Cape Cod, or anywhere within a mile of the ocean.
