What We're Writing Week: Threading the Needle on Difficult Subjects

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I knew for a long time that Book No. 10 (working title AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY) would have a conflict between the protagonists of my series – plus a few newcomers – and white supremacists. I follow the news closely, and white supremacists have been the number one domestic terror threat for over a decade. Whether they go by the traditional name, Nazis, or dress themselves up as the “alt-right,” they're a dangerous crew, and as a plot driver, they have two things I look for: the potential for a LOT of conflict, and an issue that's plausible for a rural area in upstate New York.

What I didn't expect was that the issue would be so timely. Every time I do more online research on the various ways white supremacists find each other and organize, or on their malignant beliefs, or on the ways violence against women is intertwined with “white pride”/Christian dominionism/mens rights advocacy, I wonder which FBI agent is adding pages to my file.

I find myself repeatedly running up against two challenges while working on this book. The first is: how much info do I give about the ways the alt-right lures disaffected young (mostly) men (mostly) without creating a road map for someone reading the completed novel? Just as no mystery writer wants to give the exact composition and dose that would enable readers to poison their, ah, loved ones, and no thriller author wants to tell the audience precisely how to construct an explosive out of commonly-available materials, I have no desire to give any potentially curious alt-folks a handy users guide to finding their local chapter of Nazis-R-Us.

Secondly: how to I ensure the “bad guys” are authentic, rounded, three dimensional human beings without apologizing for or glossing over their vile beliefs? It's a different thing from making sure my previous villains are recognizably human. A man who sells drugs might love his kids, and someone who kills to keep his business afloat might do it out of understandable desperation. But it's hard to thread that needle when your talking about, you know, Nazis.

Anyhoo. Here's an excerpt from a little further along in the first chapter/prologue, this beginning of which you can read here. One of the men on the White Supremacy float has unveiled a nasty banner, enraging Ron Tucker, one of the guests at the party. He flings himself at the offending sheet (and the man displaying it,) Russ races out to stop the fist fight, and the whole melee, boxed between floats before and behind, careens down the road at a walking pace.

Clare turned and faced her conscripts. “Okay, you two. Get up to the cab and see if you can stabilize that steering wheel.”

Bill looked at the melee with dismay. “What if the driver tries to hit us?”

Hit him back, she didn't say. “Tell him you're trying to help him.”

“He's a Nazi!” Terry protested.

“Then tell him Russ is trying to help him! Go! Now!” Whipped by her command voice, they ran toward the tractor. Clare could hear the whoop-whoop of a squad car signalling pedestrians out of its way, but she couldn't make out its light bar in the blaze and glitter of the floats behind her. Should she help Russ? No, another body would just increase the chance of an accident. Terry and Bill were hanging off the sides of the tractor now, reaching inside, hopefully, dear God, about to straighten its trajectory.

In the middle of the carnival of light and dark and movement, her eye was caught by one still figure. A woman with a large white candy bucket had stopped, staring, as her float arced past, riveted in place by the sight of the men tussling on the back of the tractor. Maybe, like Clare, she was concerned for her husband.

Clare ran toward her. The woman, startled, whirled and raised her bucket – whether an offense or a defense, Clare couldn't tell, but she stopped short and spread her open hands. “I'm not here to hurt you.” She gestured up the road, where the siren's sound was more pronounced. “The police are going to be here very soon. If we can stop this fight now, nobody needs to get arrested. Is that your husband?” They both looked at the back of the float. The man in question managed to shove Ron Tucker out of striking distance, but the mechanic wound his fists in the sheet and wrenched it away, flinging it onto the pavement.

“Oh, no!” the woman said. She lurched toward the fallen banner.

“Leave it.” Clare grabbed the woman's coat. “The police are going to confiscate it anyway.”

“They can't do that! We have a right to be heard! We have a first amendment right!”

“Look at me.” Clare pointed to her eyes. “Look at me! You don't have a first amendment right to brawl, and the cops aren't going to care who threw the first punch. My husband is trying to stop it.” She pointed to where Russ clawed at Tucker's jacket. The banner carrier, now deprived of his prize, was in it with two hands, trading blow for blow with the mechanic. “We need to stop it.”

“How?”

Clare hadn't realized how keyed up she was until she felt a downbeat of relief at the woman's question. “If your husband jumps off the float, it'll give mine the chance to grab his assailant.” The woman looked blank. “The other guy.”

JULIA: I'm sure you've read many other books that deal with difficult issues, dear readers. Can you think of novels or movies where it's been handled especially well? And - not that we're going to name names - can you think of cases where the writer(s) got it wrong?