Procrastinators take heart: It’s never too late to publish your first novel. Case in point: Red Summer, the recently released historical fiction work by Frances Pettey Davis. A longtime columnist for Coastal View News, Davis said, “I’ve been doing bits and pieces over the years and just floating them out to my writers’ groups. But I’m a terrible procrastinator, just horrible. So, I finally said, ‘Okay, I got to get serious about doing something.’ So, when I was 70, I got serious.”
That was about 10 years ago, and the now 80-something dynamo has the new book Red Summer as evidence of her efforts. Set in the summer of 1954 in a small California town simmering with paranoia about the Cold War, Davis, who was born in Merced and grew up in the Central Valley, says she knew from the get-go that she wanted to write about life in a small town.
“I really wanted to write about that kind of life, how people got to know each other, had the connections they formed, even the language they used, how they talked to each other; I have a real memory of the slang and the sort of colloquial language that we used. I just think it is fascinating. It’s a microcosm for big-town life, sure, but in a place where you can kind of shine a light on it.”
The characters and the notion of setting as being like another character are some of the standout elements in the book, a multi-generational story of a small town where the long simmering personal tragedies and grievances of the past and the fear-stoked suspicions of the present are slowly boiling over and testing the family in ways they never could have imagined.
I thought of Steinbeck as I read it, so it wasn’t surprising when Davis said, “My earliest influence was John Steinbeck. I totally fell in love with that guy, so I have that same feeling about the land and its importance and how we relate to it and it relates to us. I wanted to put that in there. I wanted to include that as part of this story.”
She continued, “This small-town life is so fascinating because it has everything. It’s got all the neighborliness and the friendliness and the caring, and also the betrayals and lies, the gossip, the social hierarchies, the things that form and interact and interweave all together in a small town are fascinating to me. And so, I want to write. And so, I want to write about that, and I hope that I succeeded in doing that.”
Not only did she succeed in painting a vibrant small-town life, the conflicts of the 1950s are particularly relevant in today’s political climate.
“I remember that Cold War period, that McCarthy period, where everybody was afraid,” said Davis. “I’m now thinking that it’s very timely, because we’ve had other periods in our nation’s history when we’ve been a divided nation, and this is one of those times — the 50s and the Cold War period and the fear and paranoia that were gripping everybody in those days. … We were genuinely afraid. And McCarthy seized upon that fear.”
She continued, “When people are afraid, they will do anything. They will follow any leader. They will forget their values and do silly — well, reprehensible, unavoidable, tragic things sometimes. So, I wanted to just show that there was this other time when we were like, when we were divided like this, and we got through it, and hopefully we’ll get through this one.”
Chaucer’s Bookstore (3321 State St.) hosts local author Frances Petty Davis for a book talk and signing of the novel Red Summer on Wednesday, October 15, at 5:30 p.m.
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