**On Bent Road, a battered red truck cruises ominously
along the prairie; a lonely little girl dresses in her dead aunt’s clothes; a
boy hefts his father’s rifle in search of a target; a mother realizes she no
longer knows how to protect her children. It is a place where people learn:
Sometimes killing is the kindest way.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I have no idea, though I’ve really tried to remember, when
the moment was that I decided I was a writer. I had an English teacher in high
school, Mr. Thornburg, who taught me about Shakespeare and the wonders of analytical
thought, and once gave me an A for a paper comparing The Faerie Queen with Out
of the Silent Planet. I do remember that.
I remember, as a
semi-grown-up, maybe age 22, writing a story for Rolling Stone about Susan Ford’s
prom at the White House. I remember seeing that in print, and staring at the
page in wonder.
I remember when I finished Prime Time. I typed ‘The End” and
burst into tears.
Lori Roy, though, does have an idea when she began. She’s
come a long way since then—and now her first novel, the lyrical and moving BENT
ROAD, is an Edgar nominee. Something must have gone right.
Grab a cup of tea or coffee, and maybe curl up in a chair. And listen, for a moment or two, as Lori remembers—it all began on a
SNOW DAY
by Lori Roy
Brother flips on the radio and rolls the dial until a familiar
voice speaks to us. I stand in mismatched socks and faded flannel pajamas, a
patchwork quilt wrapped around my shoulders. When the heater clicks on, I
shuffle a few steps until I stand over the floor vent. My quilt traps the warm
air that begins to flow. Brother gives me a shove because no fair hogging all
the hot air.
In the kitchen, Mother pulls a skillet from the shelf over
the oven and fishes a spatula from the utensil drawer. The announcer begins to
read from his list. We shout for Mother to please be quiet because we can’t
hear the radio. USD 320…that’s Wamego. USD 475…that’s Junction City. Brother pounds both hands on
the table, one on either side of the radio. Come on USD 383. Come on USD
383. I slide one foot after the other
until I again stand over the vent, trap all the hot air and close my eyes.
Silently, only mouthing the words, I say the same as Brother. Come on USD 383.
The announcer says, “USD 383.” It’s official. Our school district is closed for the day.
Brother gives the table one last smack, runs for his room
and his mattress springs creak as he dives back into bed. I join Mother in the
kitchen and sit at the table while she scrambles half dozen eggs. She’ll add
ham and cheese before she’s done.
Outside, the drifts have piled up against our front door and the plows
haven’t yet reached our street. A lone set of tire tracks cuts through the
fresh snow. At the end of May, when we should be getting out of school for
summer break, we’ll have to make up this day, but for today, it’s a snow-day.
No school.
Unlike Brother, I don’t want to go back to bed. I am awake,
wide awake. Too windy to play outside. Maybe later if the snow stops, but it’s
too cold for good snowballs. The snow won’t stick. So, instead, I’ll write a
book. I have the whole day. How long could it take? How hard could it be?
This time, I sit alongside the vent in the floor, again trap
the warm air with my quilt and tap a number two pencil on the tablet Mother found
for me. I keep tapping, and while I can’t think of anything to write, I do see
a picture in my mind. A boy. He’s
thirteen or fourteen—about my brother’s age. He’s sitting on the ground,
leaning against a tree. He’s lonely, I think. I don’t know who he is, what has happened
to him or what will happen to him, but my novel is definitely about this boy.
I ask Mother if she has any cardboard. She tells me no, but
she does have a small shirt box—a leftover from Christmas morning. Perfect.
It’s thick like a novel would be. I fetch a box of Crayolas from my room,
return to my spot over the vent, and design and color my novel’s cover art.
It’s a picture of the lonely boy leaning against a tree with no leaves. I’m no
good at drawing the leaves.
In the year since my first novel—BENT ROAD—came out, I am often asked when
I started writing. This is the story I tell in answer to that question. I
wasn’t disciplined in those days and never made it past designing the novel’s
cover. In truth, I wasn’t disciplined enough until I hit my thirties.
So
perhaps I should say that’s when I started writing.
For about ten years, I wrote every day. I
gathered rejection slips for unwanted short stories, attended a few writers’
conferences, met some great writer-friends, won a small award here and there,
gathered more rejections slips and finally wrote and sold BENT ROAD. And while the novel I started on that
snow-day back in the mid 70s never made it beyond a hastily colored shirt box, I’d
like to believe the young boy I envisioned did find his way into print. He is
Daniel Scott, one of my point-of-view characters in BENT ROAD.
Given this, I will continue to say I first became a writer
on that snow-day when I was eight-years-old.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ah. I'm reading Bent Road right now, and it's absolutely original--you can tell, from this essay alone, how special it is. So, Reds—if you write, when did that
happen? If you read, when did you realize how important it was to you? A copy
of BENT ROAD to one lucky commenter!
*************************************************
Lori Roy was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas where she graduated from Kansas
State University. Before beginning her writing career, Lori worked as a tax
accountant in the public sector and later for Hallmark Cards. Bent Road,
Lori's first novel, was named a 2011 New York Times Notable Crime Book and has
been nominated for the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the Edgar
Allen Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Additionally, BENT ROAD was named One of the Best for 2011 by the Library Journal and one
of the top 100 books for 2011 by the Kansas City Star.
Lori currently lives with her family in west central Florida.
