Guest: Theresa Weir

We Riders are pleased to have Theresa Weir back in the convertible with us today!  When we first drove onto the cyber-highway so many years ago, Theresa used to be a regular under her Anne Frasier pseudonym, so it’s a real treat to have her back for a visit.

I ordered her latest release, a memoir, THE ORCHARD, and read it within a few days.  It was an amazing read that sort of crept under my skin and made me question a lot of things, both good and otherwise.  I highly recommend it!  {Book blurb at bottom of post.}  The reviews have been amazing, she’s been a featured book in the Oprah magazine, and—who knows, maybe we’ll see it in movie form someday (sending out good vibes that it happens!).  Theresa offered to answer a few questions (oh woe, on trying to come up with a few good questions, but I tried my best).  So here we go!

This is a personal story. Are your expectations from readers who have followed your fiction career different with a memoir?  Is it scary to put yourself out there?

TW:  Yes. Yes. Yes.  I don’t know if scary is the word, but it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. I’m a private person, and I don’t like to talk about myself. But I’d had this unique experience. This weird and awful and wonderful life. Along with that, I had years of writing under my belt. As a writer, I felt a certain obligation to chronicle this bit of seventies and eighties farm culture as seen through the eyes of my twenty-something self.

Your writing career is barely mentioned, though it began during the course of this story.  Was that done on purpose to keep the focus on other things?  Or?

TW:  Downplaying my writing was done on purpose because I didn’t want the focus to be about me, or my writing.  In an early draft, I said nothing at all about my writing. I sent the manuscript to Mary Logue, a wonderful writer and freelance editor, and she said, “Where’s your writing in this?” It just didn’t seem important to me, but once she brought up the absence, I realized she was 100% right.

What was it like to go through the events of the past and putting them to paper?  I’m sure you ran the gamut of emotions!

TW: It was kind of horrible. I hadn’t thought about how hard it would be to immerse myself in a past I’d tried hard to forget.  It really made me question my sanity. Really!

I know you’ve said this was a funny little story that needed to be told, but readers are taking away a lot from it.  It really makes the reader think, about relationships, the food and farming industry, the things we do to survive.  Are you surprised at the reactions to your story?

TW: By funny I’m guessing I meant strange or odd, not haha funny.  😉 And yes, I’m flabbergasted by the response.  Flabbergasted.  I have to be honest—I don’t understand it.  I wrote about things that are common knowledge. I wrote about an issue that’s been around since the fifties and sixties, but I think the raw and personal story may have touched people.  It’s the old show-don’t-tell rule. You can tell people that their apples are covered in pesticides, but it’s just a lot of noise, just more of the same bad news we’re bombarded with on a daily basis. But I’m showing them the story from the inside, up close and personal.

Is there anything you didn’t tell in the story that you wanted to? (You don’t have to expose details here.  Unless…)

TW:  This isn’t quite what you were talking about, but one thing I wasn’t able to portray was the humor of everyday living in a dark situation. I tried, but I had to give up. I just wasn’t able to pull it off, so I eliminated my attempts at humor.  It’s not so much that I wish I could have included humor, but I’d like people to know that within this sad world we were always laughing. About everything. About the situation, about life in general. About day-to-day events.  It wasn’t sad to be inside it. The sadness comes in looking back.

 Do you think the past shapes a person, or is that a choice a person makes, whether or not to allow it to shape them?

TW:  That’s a great question. I think the past definitely shapes who we are. I don’t think we can get away from it, and anyone who thinks he can is fooling himself. It’s always there. That’s not to say we can’t take that past and rise above it or learn from it. It’s more that we take away life lessons from the past and apply what we’ve learned to the life we’re living now.

Do you eat apples now?

TW:   For a long time I didn’t eat apples. I couldn’t look at an apple or drive past an orchard. I started eating apples again a few years ago. I try to buy organic. If I can’t, I wash the apples with a soapy fruit-and-vegetable wash. And I usually peel them, even though most of the nutrients are right below the skin.

 You are going on tour (or may be on tour as we read this). Is there a schedule online so readers can find you if you stop in their city?

TW: The Orchard has a Facebook page. That’s probably the best place to find my schedule.  Just click on the events tab.

https://www.facebook.com/TheOrchardBook

Visit Theresa’s website

Thanks for stopping by for a spin in the ‘vert, Theresa!  Best of luck with your new book!

Blurb for book: THE ORCHARD is the story of a street-smart city girl who must adapt to a new life on an apple farm after she falls in love with Adrian Curtis, the golden boy of a prominent local family whose lives and orchards seem to be cursed. Married after only three months, young Theresa finds life with Adrian on the farm far more difficult and dangerous than she expected. Rejected by her husband’s family as an outsider, she slowly learns for herself about the isolated world of farming, pesticides, environmental destruction, and death, even as she falls more deeply in love with her husband, a man she at first hardly knew and the land that has been in his family for generations. She becomes a reluctant player in their attempt to keep the codling moth from destroying the orchard, but she and Adrian eventually come to know that their efforts will not only fail but will ultimately take an irreparable toll.