Garth Stein, a former documentary filmmaker, centers his second novel around Evan, a single Seattle musician - with epilepsy - who contacts Dean, the son he fathered when he was 17.
Q: How did your sister's epilepsy influence the writing of your novel?
A: There's a book called "Brainstorms: Epilepsy in Our Words," which is an anthology of first person narratives written by people with epilepsy. After reading it when I was early in the writing process of "How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets," I realized two things. First, that epilepsy is pretty different for everyone who has it. Second, that what was important was my sense of epilepsy and how it affected my family. So while I did some research into the clinical aspects, I relied on my own experiences and impressions to shape Evan's attitude toward his epilepsy. Epilepsy does not define Evan; it merely informs how he deals with the world.
Q: How you had the idea to create Evan as a single dad, long-separated from his kid?
A: When I toured with my first novel, "Raven Stole the Moon," I was away from home for three weeks. My oldest son was almost 2 years old at the time, and when I returned home from the tour, he looked at me like I had betrayed him by being gone for so long. I walked into the room and wanted a hug, and he turned his back on me, literally, and ignored me. That's when the idea of writing about fathers and sons crystallized for me. When a father raises his son, they grow together; there is complicity to their relationship. A trust. A familiarity. What I wanted to explore was what happens when that history is missing. When Evan, 31, meets Dean, 14, he kind of says, "I'm your father because I made you, but I'm also not your father because we just met. How are we going to define our relationship?"
Q: How did you come by the attitude, the personality, the talk, the interests of Dean, who's 14?
A: I tried to envision the early teen years as a bridge between childhood and adulthood. And so I wanted to Dean to be, at times, amazingly perceptive and self-assured, and at other times, terribly vulnerable and naive. It's the push-me, pull-you of adolescence, and it makes things very difficult for a kid like Dean, who doesn't want his father but also very much needs his father because there is no one else.
Q: How did your experience as a filmmaker/producer help with the music-biz aspect of the novel?
A: When we lived in New York, my wife played the drums for a couple of bands that gigged in the East Village. That, and the fact that I had a lot of friends in New York who were in bands and, at some point, were forced to age gracefully into a realistic careers, gave me a lot of the flavor. By good fortune, Bryan Devendorf, my editor at Soho Press, is also the drummer for The National, an indie band that's big in Europe, and he helped shape the music language when my limited experience failed me.
Q: Did you spend time in Walla Walla and Yakima?
A: I went to Walla Walla and Yakima a couple of times to scout locations and so forth. However, my general style is to just make things up. For the most part, when I do, they prove correct. My wife says it's because I can channel spirits who guide me correctly. I think that's part of it.
Q: What's one of your hopes as writer of this novel?
A: I think that one of my strengths as a writer is the ability to see the universal. Towns, people, relationships are pretty much the same everywhere. There's that line in the book after the street hockey scene, where Evan reflects on the differences between children: "Or are children all the same? Just different names and hair colors and sizes, but all the same on the inside, nascent souls fighting against the terms of their confinement: a lifetime imprisoned in a fleshy container." I think to some extent that's true. The human condition is universal, and so the towns in which the drama of the human condition is played out should also be universal.