Yaddo was, well, just perfect. A perfect four weeks in my life.
You set out to write this book after your children were grown and out of the house. Was writing something you’d wanted to pursue, or was this a desire that developed later on? What would you say was your greatest influence throughout this process?
Well, my son had started high school, and my daughter had left for college. It actually felt strange to leave my son at home for a month while I went off to a writer’s retreat, but of course, he was just fine, and he had a lovely time with his dad.
I’m one of those people who has always thought of myself as a writer. Writing is a very natural form of communication for me; I have used it daily all my life. So, yes, I always planned to write a novel—and in fact wrote an earlier one when my children were quite small—and it was more or less just finding the window in my life when I would sit down and do it again. Writing a novel was much in my mind when I was choosing a new career mid-life; I wanted work that would allow me the flexibility to write. (I was, however, a bit naïve about the demands of a community college teaching job!)
My greatest influence? Hmmm. Well, I come from a family of readers, and we like stories, so I think I was influenced by all the ways that stories mattered in the lives of people who mattered to me. My mom instilled in me the idea that a novel was a way to understand the truth of things, that turning to a novel to figure out one’s bearings was simply a practical approach to life’s ups and downs. (A doctor once told her that perhaps she should stop reading for a while, to calm her nerves. It was the books that were to blame, of course—not the six kids . . . )
Why did you choose the quote from the Emily Dickinson poem for the title of this book? How do you feel it captures the essence of the story?
It was chosen in a burst of chaotic energy. I woke up on a Monday morning to an email from my agent saying she was ready to market the book; all she needed was a new title and a bio—in the next couple of hours. Ha ha ha. A new title and a bio that morning? I cranked out a two-line bio that I hoped would make me sound smart and fascinating, and then I grabbed a textbook thinking that I might be able to use a line from a poem. None of the lines I found seemed right, but I sent them off. My agent liked two, and her assistant liked just one, so there we were with “We Are Called to Rise.”
At first, I was worried that We Are Called to Rise sounded a bit sententious, and also, I had trouble remembering it, but I have come to love the title. I think my agent’s assistant intuited how effectively that line expresses the heart of the story; I’m grateful to her for that strong sense. I like Emily Dickinson’s work very much, and I particularly like the thought behind that poem. I hope my story does it justice.
What are you working on now? Are there more novels in the works?
I have been working on another novel. It’s also set in Las Vegas, and it also relies on the strange convergence of people’s lives, but it’s quite different from We Are Called to Rise. I’m working with characters that are far removed from my own experience. This should scare me, but it doesn’t. (They are just words on a screen, and if they turn out badly, I will delete them.) This novel also has a different narrative path. It ends with why the story exists, so the challenge is whether or not I can engage a reader long enough to get there.
About the Author
Laura McBride is a writer and community college teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada. She once thought of herself as an adventurer, having traveled far from home on little more than a whim and a grin, but now laughs at the conventional trappings of her ordinary suburban life. She’s been married for twenty-five years to an expat she met in Paris and has two lovely children. A long time ago, she went to Yale. We Are Called to Rise is her first novel.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Laura McBride
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition June 2014
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Interior design by Robert Ettlin
Jacket design by Christopher Lin
Jacket photographs: Blue sky © Bartosz Hadyniak/Getty Images; Mojave desert © Jaclyn Sollars/Getty Images; Ice cream truck © Hero Images/Corbis
Author photograph by Michelle Adams
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McBride, Laura.
We are called to rise / Laura McBride. — First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Women immigrants—Fiction. 2. Mother and child—Fiction. 3. Immigrants—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Murder—Fiction. 5. Las Vegas (Nev.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C284W4 2014
813'.6—dc 232013034756
ISBN 978-1-4767-3896-3
ISBN 978-1-4767-3898-7 (ebook)
Contents
* * *
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
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