WHY I WRITE NOVELS - 10

WHY I WRITE NOVELS – 10 HARVEST THE DUST is my first book of family fiction. I set the story in the time of my grandparents – it’s the mid-1930s in west-central Arkansas. Most people in this small farm town rode in wagons or walked – few people owned an automobile. Water came from a hand-pump outside houses not from faucets inside. There was no running water inside houses so toilets were built in an outhouse. Milk came directly from a cow not from a grocery store. Black and White people were separated by law. Jacob is a black man and the head of this family – his wife, Clara, is a black woman who could easily have passed for white. As a boy Jacob witnessed a black man being burned alive by a mob of white people. Clara’s father was a prominent white doctor who never acknowledged her as his daughter. These early experiences of Jacob and Clara not only influenced their behavior but also the behavior of their children. My own life experience convinces me that my behavior is influenced by not only my experience but also the experience of others. www.adolphusward.net