Guest Blog: Sue McGhee

This week, we're welcoming author Sue McGhee, whose novel When the Eagle flies with the Condor begins during the turbulent 1960's, where the impact social change and warfare alter the characters' lives. Sue is here to talk about the book and give away a copy. Leave a comment for a chance to win. Here's the blurb:

When the Eagle flies with the Condor, there will be peace and brotherhood among nations. This is a two thousand year old prophecy and the underlying theme of the novel.  But the novel is about more than that. It is a story of brotherhood and love, revolution and war, survival and friendship, and begins with two coddled American youngsters whose father builds roads in an attempt to bring commerce to the natives of the backward and poverty stricken country of Bolivia. Their mother, uncomfortable and plagued with anxieties generated by constant political unrest, fills her days with trivialities and alcohol.

The children's care-free lives are disrupted when they must return to the U.S. for reasons unknown to them at the time. What follows is the boy’s anti-social response to what he ultimately deems a godless universe and his sister’s painful withdrawal caused by fears of abandonment by her family. As the children move into adulthood, their reactions to these inimical forces result in his joining the army and deploying to Vietnam, and her returning to South America as a sort of apprentice shaman ministering to the needs of the natives.

Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the 1960s and everything that volatile decade represents. They are players, yes, but they are astute observers as well, recognizing the similarities among the indigenous people of the world with their knowledge, latent power and untapped potential for good. Thus, the prophecy of The Eagle and the Condor comes into play with its message that at the beginning of the fifth Pachacuti (approximately the year 2000), the balance of power will shift and the indigenous peoples of the world will begin to resume their rightful place among nations. 

Q & A with Sue McGhee

                                                    

How did you become involved with the indigenous peoples of Bolivia?

As a child, I spent years in Latin America and learned to love these people. The natives live a hard life especially in the Altiplano and have been oppressed for centuries. I was friends with Olympia, Francisca and Simon or their proto-types, and the story of Olympia’s practice as a medicine woman and mid-wife was real as well as my involvement in it.    

Are you currently involved in supporting them?

No. Unless you consider this book a means of support. But I think their story is important. The current president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is a native “cocalero” and he should appreciate what I’ve written about the coca leaf. I did sign a petition in January (2011) directed to the Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) to remove the UN ruling of 1961 banning the natives from chewing or brewing the coca leaf in their own country because I felt it was an arrogant and embarrassing interference in the rights of the native peoples.   

The novel is about the sixties and not exclusively Bolivia. How were you able to write from the perspective of a soldier serving in Vietnam?

Well, I have a lot of audacity and as a result may get some flak from veterans though I haven’t yet. The philosophy of the warrior is innate within me. That may sound contradictory, since the theme of the book is really anti-war. But in presenting Nick’s side of the Vietnam era, I found I was more of a “Cincinnatus” (as he saw himself), than a “Rambo;” that is to say, if you have to fight to protect your family, your country and save your metaphorical farm from marauders, then take up arms and go fight. But don’t invade countries you have no business being in and becoming, as in the case of Rome and Great Britain, imperialists.  

How did you learn about shamanistic rituals? 

From my childhood living with Olympia and also, when I visited Bolivia and Peru in 2007. I needed to confirm my early impressions, which turned out to be amazingly accurate after all, the intervening years. We stayed with a family who lived high in the Andes with no indoor plumbing, no electricity and no phones. The grandfather threw the coca leaves as I’ve described in the book and his predictions turned out to be extremely insightful. Olympia’s grandfather who was a member of the Kallawaya was patterned after this gentleman. But the real Olympia was a very talented medicine woman/shaman as well.  

What is the relationship between Nick and Bernie supposed to signify?

I’m not sure. But I kept going back to the refrain, “write from the heart,” and I wanted to be honest. I wanted the relationship to reflect honor, commitment, love and devotion in this life as well as a universal spiritual connection and I believe I accomplished that. The kind of love between them is either “agape” or “philia” in the Greek and I’m not sure which one best describes it. I think that he is like a priest or teacher to her. I tried to make that clear in the book.     

Can you articulate an over-all theme of the book?

Brotherhood! And service. I believe we are all connected, that the indigenous peoples of the world are moving into an era where their voices will be heard and we will realize the importance of their contribution; that we must strive for peace and brotherhood among nations. Maybe that sounds corny, but I believe it will someday happen.

What advice can you give beginning writers today?

Learn the craft and stick to your vision! Take yourself very seriously even if others do not. It takes courage to put yourself, your beliefs, all that you are – out there for others to view and take pot shots at, so you need to develop a thick skin. Whatever the finished product is, it is, after all, your “baby.”    

Thank you, Sue, and best of luck with When the Eagle flies with the Condor.

Excerpt Thursday: When the Eagle flies with the Condor by Sue McGhee

This week on Excerpt Thursday, we're welcoming author Sue McGhee, whose novel When the Eagle flies with the Condor begins during the turbulent 1960's, where the impact social change and warfare change the characters' lives. Join us Sunday, when Sue will be here to talk about the book and give away a copy. Here's the blurb:

When the Eagle flies with the Condor, there will be peace and brotherhood among nations. This is a two thousand year old prophecy and the underlying theme of the novel.  But the novel is about more than that. It is a story of brotherhood and love, revolution and war, survival and friendship, and begins with two coddled American youngsters whose father builds roads in an attempt to bring commerce to the natives of the backward and poverty stricken country of Bolivia. Their mother, uncomfortable and plagued with anxieties generated by constant political unrest, fills her days with trivialities and alcohol.

The children's care-free lives are disrupted when they must return to the U.S. for reasons unknown to them at the time. What follows is the boy’s anti-social response to what he ultimately deems a godless universe and his sister’s painful withdrawal caused by fears of abandonment by her family. As the children move into adulthood, their reactions to these inimical forces result in his joining the army and deploying to Vietnam, and her returning to South America as a sort of apprentice shaman ministering to the needs of the natives.

Their lives are played out against the backdrop of the 1960s and everything that volatile decade represents. They are players, yes, but they are astute observers as well, recognizing the similarities among the indigenous people of the world with their knowledge, latent power and untapped potential for good. Thus, the prophecy of The Eagle and the Condor comes into play with its message that at the beginning of the fifth Pachacuti (approximately the year 2000), the balance of power will shift and the indigenous peoples of the world will begin to resume their rightful place among nations. 

**An Excerpt from When the Eagle flies with the Condor**

Every few months, Bernie drove the 382 kilometres to LaPaz by winding roads both asphalt and dirt in order to scour the shops for trinkets for Catalina and the few native children she was teaching, and to arrange for the supplies she needed for her work. Sometimes Ray came with her and they’d enjoy a weekend there together, visiting the shops and the small cabarets that seemed always to be filled with people who had the money to spend on a pisco sour or a local brew of cerveza. They’d rent a hotel room, take hot showers, have a civilized dinner with wine and dessert and make love throughout the night on comfortable beds.

She still knew a few people in La Paz who kept her informed of the local politics, those who lived within the diplomatic corps, some who remembered her parents from years before: English, Americans and Bolivian officials.  Early in the year, she made the trip alone. Ray had gone back to the States for a month’s vacation, after having served over two years with the Peace Corps. It was on this trip that she ran into Norwelia.

After Punta del Este, they had gone their separate ways. Norwelia, still smitten with the idealistic persona of Che, had returned to Cuba through his intercession, apparently kept safe from any reprisals against her rebel newspaper father and stuck it out there during Che’s reforms.

Che had parted with Castro, but was still regarded a hero in Cuba. He was rumored to be in Germany, in the U. S. and back in his native Argentina. It was said that he was in Africa. It was reported that he was in Moscow. No one knew where he was but everyone speculated. Rumors of his whereabouts had been the focus of conversations within the diplomatic community for at least a year.

When Norwelia walked into El Gallo de Oro, it confirmed in Bernie’s mind what had until then been rampant speculation–that Bolivia was a prime target for the Cuban supported guerilla campaign to convert the peasants to Communism.

Bernie knew that the Communist Party was active in Bolivia. On an earlier trip to La Paz, she’d been introduced to a guy by the name of Mario Monjé Molina, their party chief, at a masquerade ball thrown by her mother’s dearest friend from Cochabamba, Mama Ortega. She wondered if Norwelia had developed a contact there.

Norwelia’s eyes found Bernie’s almost immediately. She had lost the soft, tawny luster to her skin; her face looked gray, with the muscles of her jaw clenching spasmodically. Bernie was struck with the wild, caged look that seemed to dominate her face. Yet she was flooded with an irrepressible excitement that she could not define and for a moment she wished fervently that she could re-live the past few years, bringing her to this moment of danger and intrigue in which she now found her friend.

She became exhilaratingly cautious. Her breath came quickly as she excused herself from the bar where she had been seated with friends and joking with the British bartender, Ned. She ordered dos cervezas from the rattan bar, blew Ned a kiss and led Norwelia as unobtrusively as possible to a small round table at the back of the cabaret.

Bernie had many questions she desperately wanted to ask Norwelia, but she managed to control her curiosity and her voice.

“Are you looking for work?” Her heart pounded with anticipation.

“I have a job for now, Bernicita,” Norwelia answered. Her hands were shaking so badly, she clasped them tightly on top of the small table.

“Really?  Here in La Paz?”

“Si. I have a work permit.  A newspaper job here in La Paz. And I clerk in that shop where they sell souvenirs, on El Prado.” She spoke in English and Spanish, her Spanish softer, more like the Spanish of the Argentine.

Bernie leaned forward, her mouth open, her lips raised in a calculated smile. Norwelia whispered something with a slight lisp that Bernie could not understand. She leaned forward again, motioning with two fingers for her friend to do the same.

“I said,” Norwelia continued in a husky whisper. She glanced from side to side and back to Bernie “... that I am here under Argentinean passaport.”

Bernie straightened in her chair quickly, trying to think. The smile she had been forcing on her lips froze.

“My God, Norwelia.”

“Por favor!”  It is Rosa–Suarez.” Norwelia whispered. She wet her lips and began again in a shaky, trembling hiss. “Please be careful with how you call me. You must try to forget what I just told you, Bernicita.”

Norwelia touched the bottle to her lips, but she did not drink. Her eyes locked in to Bernie’s. There was palpable fear there. Bernie felt sick. Norwelia went on, having gained some control, in a more natural voice, describing her reasons for coming. She had obtained Bolivian residency and a job because she needed the money, she said, but she was just a tourist really, wanting to get some local color, intrigued by the history and the tradition of the country. She had gotten bored with her life, she told Bernie. She remembered how Bernie had talked of Bolivia when they were kids together in Miami. It was a spiel designed for any eavesdroppers in the bôite. She wasn’t stupid. She surely knew that Bernie had figured it out. Certainly the

passport was the clincher, and she would not have told Bernie about it, if she had not wanted her to know. Unless, Bernie thought, she wasn’t thinking clearly, out of fear, out of nerves. Because of Cuba’s revolution, the rumors about Che, and the general edginess of Bolivian officials, a Cuban passport might have been subjected to serious scrutiny. Argentina would be considered merely a sister state, a neighbor with the same fears and concerns about an imported revolution as Bolivia.

They talked of family. Norwelia asked about Nicholas of course and then after thirty minutes of trivialities, they stood and touched each other’s hands and tried to smile for the benefit of the other customers. Norwelia’s trembling fingers were thin and cold, her large chocolate eyes were streaked with red. There was still a heavy curtain of reserve between them, but suddenly, as though on some unspoken cue, they both leaned forward, touching cheek to cheek. Bernie hugged Norwelia to her, patting her shoulder and trying not to cry. It was a gesture that indicated a more intimate friendship than they had been trying to portray and she hoped it went unobserved.

“Hermanita,” she whispered. “Vaya con Diós.”

Norwelia pulled away tentatively, her chestnut brown hair intruding on the suggestion of a smile, her eyes wide but steady.

“A Diós, amiga.”

15 Minutes of Fame: Grace Metalious, Author of Peyton Place

Anna C. Bowling
Petyon Place. Even for those who haven’t read the book, seen the movie or watched the television adaptation, the name brings to mind a seething sea of murder, incest, illegitimacy and abuse underneath the picturesque exterior of a small town. Its author, Grace Metalious, would have fit into her own creation as though she were born to it.

In a way, she was. Grace, a housewife and mother of three, burst onto the literary scene in 1955 when a literary agent sold her first novel, originally titled The Tree and the Blossom. Retitled Peyton Place, the salacious tale became an overnight sensation, gaining nationwide interest. Since childhood, Grace had sought respite from her turbulent personal life in her writing, but it was her writing that turned her life into a media frenzy.

Not only did the literary world sit up and take notice of Grace’s raw yet naive writing style, but her own community found several aspects of Grace’s book hit very close to home. Tom Makris, a colleague of Grace’s school principal husband, George, sued Grace for using his name and physical description for the book’s male lead. The plotline of an abused teen who kills her abusive stepfather directly mirrored the case of a local girl, and locations in the novel had strong similarities to places in Grace’s hometown of Gilmanton, NH.

Grace and her family moved to a larger house, paid for by Peyton Place’s royalties, but her marriage to George ended in divorce after he moved to another town, leaving Grace and the children on their own to face the storm of controversy. Grace began an affair with a neighbor, then married and divorced disk jockey TJ Martin, before reuniting with George, only to separate again. In her star writer persona, she spent money as fast as she made it, staying at the Plaza and Algonquin, flirting with the rich and famous. The film adaptation of her novel, heavily sanitized, reignited Lana Turner’s career and gained the legendary actress her lone Oscar nomination.

As quickly as Grace’s star rose, her life began a downward spiral. Her marriage to TJ crumbled under alcohol abuse and violent outbursts from both parties, and Grace’s lavish spending took a large bite out of her bank account. The sequel, Return to Peyton Place, did not match the success of its predecessor, even with its own adaptation for film. Reviews turned savage and a planned publicity tour was shelved.

Grace wrote two more novels; The Tight White Collar was published in 1961 and No Adam In Eden in 1963, but neither made any appreciable impression. She tried her hand at business, purchasing a motel she dubbed The Peyton Place Motel, but the venture soon folded due to lack of guests.
By 1963, when Grace began an affair with British journalist John Rees, friends described her not only as frequently drunk, but delusional and at times incoherent. That year would be her last. Grace died in 1964, of cirrhosis of the liver, her debts exceeding two hundred thousand dollars. Despite protests, Gilmanton’s most infamous citizen was interred in the Smith Meeting House Cemetary.

While the fame of Grace Metalious’ iconic work lives on, Grace herself had only a short while in the limelight, a pattern seen all too often in today’s young luminaries who rise quickly to fame they may not be equipped to handle. If Grace were to begin her career in the twenty first century, would things have gone any differently for her? Would we see her go through rehab and make a comeback, or would social media have brought about her downfall all the quicker?

Writing historical romances allows Anna C. Bowling to travel through time on a daily basis and make the voices in her head pay rent. Her current release, ORPHANS IN THE STORM, is available from Awe-Struck E-books.

News and Media: Real Life Mad Men

By Anna C. Bowling

The picture below isn't the latest cast photo from the upcoming season of Mad Men, but it's close. From the 1960s-80s, my father made his living in the same field as Mad Men's Don Draper and Darren Stevens of Bewitched. Moments of high drama and wacky hijinx are a given in any high pressure workplace and before the days of Photoshop, digital printing, email and PowerPoint, any commercial art had to be done in a far different manner than we know it today.

Having a father who had an endless supply of paper, pencils, markers and the like that couldn't be found in the five and dime was a treasure trove for an artistically inclined child, even though it was made quite clear those were for Dad's work. To this day, a glimpse of a Pantone color chart brings me back to the days I was allowed to visit his office, always a busy place. Sneaking into his studio at home to pilfer the tools of a hard-working commercial artist gave me an up close look at what real life Mad Men (at least those in the art department) did all day. Many of my father's assignments were for newspaper inserts publicizing the latest that department stores such as Caldor's or Barker's (rivals in some circles) or grocery store chains had to offer for a given week.

Since this was before the computer age, the art had to be done by hand, and photographs were taken on film and developed in darkrooms. Layout was another step, cutting and pasting with actual scissors and glue, tape or fixative to make sure everything fit within the allowed space. The layouts could go through several versions, with several layers of tracing paper to try out different colors, image placements or other variables. Typesetting was its own department, which to my pre-elementary school imagination must have been somewhere between a Guttenberg press and a Xerox machine.

Everything came together in large, clanking printing machines that spit out the colorful advertisements on newsprint or glossy paper, ready at last to be picked over with eagle eyes to ensure that everything was spelled correctly, in the right place, and any special elements such as frames or holiday clip art were only on designated pages. My father's personal favorite lucky save in this department was spotting the "It's Mother's Day; Show Her What She Means To You" banner carried over to the wrong section and applied to a manure spreader when it should have stopped at jewelry and small appliances.

Once approved for release, the next step was to get the items where they needed to be, which could be through mail, courier or even personal delivery. Here again, deadlines were all-important and stress levels could rise dramatically if it looked like something wasn't going to make it on time. Since advertising requires a high degree of creativity, our Mad Men usually found a way to make things work, and inserts arrive on our doorsteps and newsstands, snugly buried in our papers at last.

The mechanics of getting a client's concept out to the masses has gone through a computer revolution, but the real life Mad Men (and women) were expert at putting in long, hard hours and nights of work to keep the wheels of commerce turning, juggling family and social life and often their own artistic pursuits as well.