The Do-Right and Bird Boys
Available from https://cincopuntos.com and independent bookstores, and online.
The best characters in fiction can almost feel like friends, but Lisa Sandlin’s Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan haunt me. The unlikely private investigator and his secretary are trying to make it in the business. If you saw their resumes, you wouldn’t bet on either one of them. Phelan is a former oil field roughneck and Wade an ex-con. The two mysteries are set in 1970s Beaumont, Texas, where Lisa was born.
Lisa’s voice and attention to setting will sink you into that gritty, noir oil city.
Lisa has won an NEA Fellowship, the Jesse Jones award from the Texas Institute of Letters for Best Book of Fiction, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, Violet Crown Award, Pushcart Prize, New Mexico Book Award, and the Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction from A&U, America’s AIDS magazine. The Do-Right received the 2016 Shamus Award for Best Debut Novel from the Private Eye Writers of America and the 2015 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers.
Lisa, who lives in Santa Fe, is also the author of an acclaimed short story collection, In the River Province, which John Nichols called “a prose poem to New Mexico that will endure to become a classic.” Don’t miss this one! The stories are about people on the Good Friday pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayó. To order this title from the author, see her website: lisasandlin.com.
Ramona: Your two Delpha Wade mysteries have been praised for the masterful creation of setting. Beaumont, Texas, where you grew up, is without a doubt in your blood and your DNA. So did you have to do a lot of research to recreate 1973 Beaumont for the Delpha Wade books?
Lisa: I did not have to do a lot of research since Beaumont is my hometown. But I did some anyway, checking on businesses long gone, locations, highway numbers. I used, for example, a steakhouse that had an adjunct room with wood carvings by the owner. He called it Eye of the World, and it was a combination of world architecture and biblical scenes, totally oblivious to scale, camels large as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc. But it was a wonder. I used to run in there and study it all when I was a kid.
Ramona: It's a cliché question to ask an author where she gets her ideas. However, in this case, Delpha and Tom are so atypical as PIs, I have to ask how you dreamed them up.
Lisa: I was asked to write a story by Akashic Books out of Brooklyn for an anthology called Lone Star Noir. The story I wrote became The Do-Right eventually. I was thinking about it one day in my office and a student said, Hey why don't you make the secretary the hero? I liked that idea, so I put the emphasis on Delpha. Also it's easier for me to write from her point of view.
Ramona: I really admire how fully three-dimensional you've made Delpha, a woman who's had a very rough time and is now trying to build a life outside of prison. Was there something in particular that drew you to an ex-con as a character?
Lisa: I was a kid who longed to be grown up, thus childhood felt to me like a kind of prison. Additionally, importantly, my grandparents lived near two prisons. My mother's parents lived near Huntsville, called The Big House and The Walls, which is still where, sadly, Texas holds its executions. It's dark piney woods there and simply feels dark. My father's parents lived in Gatesville, home of the boys' reformatory, which eventually became Gatesville Women's Prison, Delpha's home for 14 years. Both prisons loomed large in my imagination. If you're punished a lot, it's not a far leap to imagine yourself in prison.
Ramona: Your style/voice has been described as “Chandleresque.” How did you find this voice?
Lisa: The voice is from my mother's parents. Once I hit on that, the book simply unspooled. It's not at all the voice in my other books. For me, the voice of the story has depended on the characters and plot. You'll see that easily in In the River Province. The last long story tells of Maria de Agreda, the Woman in Blue, a young Spanish abbess who claimed to fly to New Mexico several times a day to proselytize to the Indians. Independent accounts claim the Indians saw her. Its voice is light years from Delpha’s.
Ramona: You've taught writing at Wayne State and the University of Nebraska. What was your approach to teaching writing?
Lisa: Have students write, mainly, and discuss novels or stories they’d read. Do active exercises when possible. Very traditional. I always tried to have fun with it, though, because I consider writing/creating fun. (Most of the time.)
Ramona: In that vein, do you have any advice for writers who are trying to find their voice?
Lisa: Keep writing. You know that theory of 10,000 hours? (Eric Andersson, Malcolm Gladwell): Practicing any skill for 10,000 hours will make you an expert? I wouldn't say that was always true but it surely will make you conversant and improved. I’m also with Gladwell because I believe in talent. You just see it, even with beginning students: the original image, the feel for scene or dialog. The urgency to write. If you have that urgency, you likely have something to say.
Ramona: You’ve also written books set in New Mexico, such as In the River Province. Can you say something about what makes New Mexico such fertile soil for growing stories?
Lisa: New Mexico IS the Land of Enchantment, naturally speaking. The Sangre de Cristo mountains—I’ve stood in the parking lot of a Safeway watching a winter sunset change them to gold, amber, and magenta. The smell of piñon in the air in October brings your lifetime back, if you’ve lived here long. The riches of Native and Hispanic cultures mixed for centuries with Anglo traders and merchants and cowboys make it a place for an open point of view, as well as narrow ones. I go to the Deer Dance at San Ildefonso every year because it’s on my birthday, and it’s a sacred spectacle, a beautiful way to start the year, with drums and song and dance. When I was younger I walked the pilgrimage to Chimayó, another sacred event that connects you to what is holy to you, to the land, and to time.