Peggy Townsend Interview - The Beautiful and the Wild ~ JeanBookNerd

Photo Content from Peggy Townsend

Peggy Townsend is longtime newspaper reporter who has won multiple state and national awards for her work. She has chased a serial killer through a graveyard at midnight, panhandled with street kids, and sat on a mountaintop with woman who counted her riches in each morning's sunrise. She has rafted rivers, come face-to-face with a grizzly bear and, twice, lived in her van for seven weeks while traveling across the country. She divides her time between the Central Coast of California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Beyond your own work (of course), what is your all-time favorite book and why? And what is your favorite book outside of your genre?
So many books, so much love to give them! My all-time favorite would probably be REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. I remember reading it as a young teen and being blown away by its darkness and the twists and turns that happened. All these years later, I haven’t changed my mind. As far as books outside my genre, AN UNFINISHED LIFE by Mark Spragg is a novel I can read over and over. The writing is brilliant and spare, and the characters are just so memorable.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
I would say the best advice I could give is to write every day. Even if it’s only for an hour, sit in front of your computer or grab a legal pad and write. It’s a practice that strengthens your creative muscle and cements the idea that you are, indeed, a writer. Sometimes, what you write will be junk and, sometimes, it will be brilliant. But, in those daily words, you will not only find your voice but also the confidence to tell your stories.

What chapter was the most memorable to write and why?
For me, the most memorable chapter in the book as far as writing was probably the third chapter from the end. I went into the scene knowing that I needed to accomplish one thing in order to move the book toward its conclusion (I’m an obsessive plotter, by the way) but, suddenly, as I was writing, the characters took over. The scene swerved in a different direction than I’d planned and, yet, it worked better than the outline for the way it set the stage for what was to come. I also realized after I’d finished that the new direction reinforced one of the central themes of the book, which I hadn’t planned on doing. It’s a mystery to me how that kind of thing happens. Maybe it’s writerly magic or some otherworldly author portal. Or, maybe it was just one too many cups of coffee.

Has reading a book ever changed your life? Which one and why, if yes?
Actually, one book did change my life. I was working as a journalist and our newspaper was about to be sold to one of those companies I believed put profit over good journalism. I happened to read Jon Krakauer’s book, INTO THE WILD, and thought: When had I started living life so safely and avoiding change and when had I stopped making leaps of faith? So I quit my job. Eventually, that decision led me to fiction writing, which is all about leaps of faith and which makes me very happy.

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WILD

The setting for the book was inspired by a seven-week trip my husband and I took to Alaska in our van.
While hiking to the Russian River in Alaska to fish one summer night, I came face-t0-face with two grizzly bears, which sparked a scene in the novel.
As a journalist, I went inside a prison nicknamed “Gladiator School” by its inmates for the violence that went on there. I used the noise and feel of that overcrowded prison to help create the feel of the juvenile detention center in the book.
The character, Xander, is based on children with Williams syndrome, a genetic condition which results in heart problems and learning challenges which come side-by-side with high verbal abilities, social personalities and a love of music. Xander is the truth-teller in the book.
Because Xander loves music, I created a nine-song playlist for him which is available on Spotify.
Secrets are at the heart of the book. According to research I found, the average person has thirteen secrets, five of which they have never told to another person.
The “Witness Tree” in the book was inspired by an actual Witness Tree I found on a hike in the Sierra.
A Witness Tree is used to mark surveying boundaries. However, it also can signify a tree which was alive when an historic event occurred around it.
My protagonist, Liv, grew up on a beef cattle ranch. As a young 4-H Club member I raised Hereford cattle.
I found my writing desk on the side of a road with a free sign on it.

Can you tell us when you started THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WILD, how that came about?
I started THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WILD, about two years ago. I was stacking a cord of firewood for winter and listening to podcasts when I heard the story about Billy Sipple, an ex-Marine who stopped the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. He was hailed as a hero and, in the process, outed as a gay man by the media. According to the podcast, his family hadn’t known about his sexuality and shunned him afterward and I thought: What if a good deed you’d done unmasked your deepest secret? If you know how big a cord of wood is, you’ll understand that I had a lot of time to spool out that thought. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WILD is ultimately about the tyranny of our secrets and the idea that we may not really know the person we love.

The dangers of Alaska aren't limited to storms, starvation, and grizzly bears. Sometimes the most dangerous thing is the person you love.

It’s summer in Alaska and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and gray. Around her is thick forest and jagged mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape.

Carrying her own secrets and a fierce need to protect her young son, Liv must navigate a new world where extreme weather, starvation, and dangerous wildlife are not the only threats she faces. With winter's arrival imminent, she knows she must reckon with her past and the choices that brought her to the unforgiving Alaskan landscape if she is ever going to make it out alive.

A story of survival in the wilds of Alaska, The Beautiful and the Wild explores the question of whether we can ever truly know the person we love—or ourselves.

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