Water has always been foundational to my life and my writing. Growing up in Marietta, Ohio, it was a means of commerce, food, meditation, escape. My grandfather, Pappy, took me fishing in the summers. I was the only grandchild who would stay quiet in the boat. Mammy packed our sandwiches and we loaded the spinner rods and the tackle box and headed to the Ohio River where we spent hours casting lines and watching the red and white bobbers on the surface. I always had a book. Judy Blume was a favorite. Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret. Blume spoke about a girl’s body and experience in a way no other author I had yet read. Later, it was Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie Crawford lying beneath a pear tree, surviving a flood, surviving the men in her life and coming home on her own terms. Hurston spoke about a woman’s body and needs and wants in a way I had not read before. She spoke about a woman in the elements, surviving in the natural world. It felt like home.
When writing Clementine, I had the image of Janie Crawford in my mind, stretched out on the surface of a pond, and if I’m being honest, it is the image I go to when I need to lose myself for a little while.
“She lay back in the water again. It wasn’t so cold now that she had grown used to it. Or maybe it was the excitement, the movement, the possibility, her blood pumping harder now…”
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