Date Published: February 15, 2021
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Maelle Woolley, a shy botanist, prefers plants to people. They don't suddenly disappear. Raised on her grandparents' commune after her mother's mysterious death, she follows the commune's utopian beliefs of love for all. Then she falls for attractive psychiatrist Zachary Kane. When Zachary claims her mother and his father never emerged alive from his father's medical research lab, Maelle investigates. What she discovers will challenge everything she believes, force her to find strength she never knew she had, and confront the commune's secrets and lies. What happened to love? And can it survive?
Interview with Margaret Ann Spence
For those interested in exploring the subject or theme of your book, where should they start?
Joyous Lies starts in Berkeley, California, where PhD student Maelle is trying to find out if plants can hear the sound of a predator ( a caterpillar) and can communicate the approaching danger to their companions. As it happens, scientists are researching this at the moment. Plants, it seems, are more like animals than we think, just slower and with a different operating system. I became interested in the amazing powers of plants when I started reading the books of Michael Pollan. His ground-breaking book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World, was a real eyeopener for me.
Maelle has been brought up on her grandparents’ Northern Californian commune, which they created when a group of friends fled the Vietnam War draft in 1970. So I became interested in the hippies and what became of them. And how they survived over the years. In my story, they create an organic farm, so I read up on both these subjects – the Vietnam War era and organic farming.
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
When I moved to arid Arizona I was astonished at the vibrant colors of some of the flowers grown here. I had not expected that. I took the master gardener course through the University of Arizona extension, and studied botany in class, something I had known nothing about. Over the years I met many avid gardeners who had learned how to grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables in unpromising soil. How to make soil productive became a bit of an obsession.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
I wanted to tell a good story. So I had to develop an interesting plot which would engage the reader’s interest. But the underpinning of my books is the relationship between the characters. I was particularly interested in the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter, aunt and niece, and daughter and her missing mother.
Anything you would like to say to your readers and fans?
It would be wonderful if Joyous Lies sparked a conversation about plant conservation, about the rights of plants vs.animals, and about how we arrange child care when parents have to work so hard to survive. Apart from that, maybe some readers will want to try some of the crafts Johanna, my grandmother character became good at, spinning, knitting, cloth and wool dyeing, vegetable gardening and baking.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I loved the research, actually. I met so many interesting people, from cloth dyeing experts to spinners and weavers, plant lovers. I spent a lot of time at the University of California Botanical Garden, which was fascinating.
Can you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?
Another novel is percolating away. My protagonist is also a plant lover with family issues that need to be resolved.
How long have you been writing?
I have worked with words all my life, and trained as a journalist. But it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that it ever occurred to me I could write fiction. I found that “making things up” is actually a way to get at a deeper truth about human relationships. My first novel is Lipstick on the Strawberry, which was published in 2017, also by The Wild Rose Press.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Joyous Lies?
My first viewpoint character in Joyous Lies is 25 year old Maelle, who is studying the communication powers of plants. Maelle has been brought up on her grandparents’ commune from the age of ten after her mother died in a mysterious accident. Her grandmother, Johanna, has been the strongest influence on her so far ‑until she meets psychiatrist Zachary Kane. Their relationship is just blossoming when he reveals that he believes her mother and his father died together in his father’s medical research lab.
Is this true? And why? That’s what Maelle must find out.
If you could spend the day with one of the characters from Joyous Lies who would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you would go and what you would do.
This is such a great question! Although it has occurred 50 years in the past when Joyous Lies begins, I would have loved to have had a bird’s eye view of the hippie scene in San Francisco in 1970, and then to travel with the would-be communards as they flee north to the far reaches of California and try to set up camp there. I would be with Johanna and watch how all the relationships formed and reformed under the pressure and stress, and I’d wonder if I could take it, as they did!
Thank you, Nancy, for these fascinating questions and for the opportunity to answer them.
No problem, your welcome. Thanks for visiting with us today.
About The Author
Margaret Ann Spence writes about women, the choices they make, and what happens next. Her debut novel, Lipstick on the Strawberry, published by the Wild Rose Press in 2017, won the Romantic Elements Category in the First Coast Romance Writers 2015 Beacon Contest. It was a finalist for the 2019 Eric Hoffer Book Award and in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Awards. Joyous Lies, her second novel, launches on February 15, 2021.
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