FAQ's

Where did you get the idea for ‘A House Divided?’

Having grown up in the 60’s and early 70’s, the genesis for this book really goes back to my own childhood experiences. Later, when I was in college and graduate school, I did a bit of writing, but nothing of this length. After my wife and I were married and began our family, we settled into our careers and raising three wonderful daughters. Several years ago, as the girls were growing older and becoming more independent, I began thinking that it might be nice to do some writing again when we retired; shortly after that, the thought occurred, ‘Why wait?’ And so it was that I began writing what turned into this manuscript.

How long did it take to write A House Divided?

The first draft was produced over a period of several months. After that, I worked on editing and re-working the main story to the point where the first draft would be barely recognizable.

How did the story evolve over time?

When I first began writing, I had key components, including the ending in mind, but I also envisioned something more along the lines of a short story. As I became immersed in the writing process, however, it became apparent that the work would grow into a full length novel.

What were some of the changes that occurred during the re-writing process?

Probably the biggest change was a shifting of the narrative from third person to first. From the outset, the story was told mainly through Paul’s eyes, but it wasn’t until later that I reworked the manuscript into the first person. Another big change was that the original work actually began almost a year earlier, in 1966 rather than 1967. The earlier scenes provided context for the action which was to came later, but over time it became apparent that the story needed to start ‘in the middle.’

How much of the work is autobiographical?

Having grown up during this period, I recall many of the events playing out on the national stage. Of course, I experienced them through the eyes of a child, later learning more about the context and import of these events. So the story itself blends many events I lived through as a child with insights gained later.

Which of the main characters do you most resemble?

That’s an interesting question. In truth, I would have to say there are aspects of me in each of the three siblings, though there are also significant differences between the fictional characters and my own experiences.

Could you elaborate on this?

Sure. In some ways, many of the attributes I share with the characters relate to different phases of my own life. Take Paul, for example. At the outset, he is young and mostly innocent of the ways of the larger world, vaguely aware of events taking place on the national stage, but mostly immersed in such boyhood pursuits as playing baseball, riding bikes, hanging out with his friends, and of course, running. Over time, however, as his siblings march off to join the army and take part in anti-war demonstrations, respectively, events that had previously seemed like distant news stories suddenly became of tremendous personal importance.

How did this mirror your own life?

Unlike Paul, I didn’t have siblings that were in the military or heavily involved in the peace movement. That said, I do recall my oldest brother, who became draft eligible in 1970, watching the lottery numbers and working diligently to apply for conscientious objector status. So the intensity I experienced may not have rivaled Paul’s, but I distinctly recall the feelings of shock and lost innocence in the wake of various watershed events of the period.

For example?

One example would be the assassination of Martin Luther King. I was ten years old and in 5th grade, but was aware of his role as an important leader in the civil rights movement. I was watching TV the evening he was assassinated, and recall the program being interrupted with a special news bulletin about the shooting in Memphis. I also recall being taken aback at how upset my mother was when I reported the news to her. As an adult, she no doubt knew how volatile the situation in the civil rights movement had become, and likely wondered if the assassination of a prominent leader espousing a philosophy of non-violent resistance would spark violent responses across the nation.

As a kid, this event certainly got my attention, and when RFK was shot two months later, it seemed that it came as a blow not just to the Kennedy family, but to the forces of idealism and hope in general. And, while the May, 1970 Kent State shootings occurred outside the time frame of events in A House Divided, I recall being aghast the following morning when a fellow student asked, ‘Did you hear what they’re doing to hippies now – they’re shooting them.’

How about parallels with the other characters?

Philosophically, my politics probably align more closely with Mary than with Chris. At the same time, however, there was a time when, like Chris, I was heavily into weightlifting; and though I never played football in high school, I knew plenty of people who did; and I certainly ran around with lots of people who were into the beer drinking and muscle car scene.

In terms of Mary, hers was a challenging character to portray, insofar as I resonated with her anti-war views, but didn’t want to present a one-sided picture anti-war movement’s critique of the Establishment. It was also tricky because much of what I learned about America’s troubled involvement in Southeast Asia and other hot spots in the world came after the curtain had closed on the 1960’s. As such, it was a delicate balancing act to present information that would have been known at the time, but still be consistent with what would become known later.

Where did you find information about events taking place on the national stage?

That’s the beauty of the Internet. There is so much information out there; the trick is not so much in finding it, but in weaving it into the narrative as seamlessly as possible, and especially when recalling or learning of an event after the storyline was well developed. Take the situation in June, 1967 for example. Chris, frustrated with his college prospects after being jilted on the football field, has just graduated from high school, while anti-war Mary has come to town for the commencement ceremony. The war in Vietnam has been rapidly escalating for the past 2-3 years, and ends up being the focus of the Class of ‘67’s commencement speech, as well as Chris’ post high school plans. But in the meantime, what would later be known as the Six Day War breaks out in the Middle East. I’d originally omitted this event, but later worked references to it into the building sibling confrontation, while still keeping the focus on the heated disagreements over the war raging in Vietnam. In this, Internet sources provided indispensable references, not just for the basic timeline of this lightning war, but also in terms of finding newspaper headlines for major events occurring during the war, including the still controversial sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli fighter jets.

Other places where Internet sources were indispensable included events outside the political arena. Visits to sites like musicradio 77’s WABC weekly top 40 out of New York, as well as Jeff Roteman’s KQV radio website chronicling the top 40 in Pittsburgh provided valuable information about which hits were current in the days and months when A House Divided unfolds. In a similar vein, sites like baseball-almanac.com provided a treasure trove of information about the national pastime, right down to offering the box scores for games played decades ago.

You mentioned a website chronicling the Top 40 songs in Pittsburgh. How did you choose Pittsburgh as the setting for the House Divided?

This is an interesting question. The short answer is very simple – Pittsburgh is where I grew up, and where I felt it would be easiest to create some sense of place. On the other hand, I wrestled with certain aspects of this. I didn’t want the story to be about Pittsburgh per se; rather, I wanted the story to be one that could have unfolded in any one of thousands of communities throughout the country. In that regard, I decided to leave out Pittsburghese dialog, as I didn’t want the distracted reader being left to decipher the local dialect. A real life Chris and Paul, for example, had they grown up in Pittsburgh, would be throwing around terms unfamiliar to many non-Pittsburghers. Paul would be asking his friends things like, ‘Do yinz guys feel like going down to the crick,’ instead of ‘ do you guys feel like going down to the creek?’ Or, when grilling Paul as to his whereabouts after the great train-ride adventure, Chris wouldn’t have asked where he and the ‘two other delinquents you hang around with’ had been. Rather, he’d probably have asked Paul where he and his two little ‘jag-off’ friends had been all afternoon. I this, a Pittsburgher would understand that ‘jag-off’ is a term roughly synonymous with guys, jerks, or even assholes, depending upon the situation and the speaker’s intonation; while a non-Pittsburgher might be left wondering whether it’s a misspelled reference to an act of self gratification.

Why didn’t you choose a setting where the question of regional dialect wouldn’t have been an issue?

I considered this, but the further into the story I got, the more I liked the Pittsburgh backdrop. Some things, like references to the Pirates’ improbable 1960 World Series victory over the New York Yankees offered useful ways to highlight Paul’s love for baseball. Other references, like mention of Penn State’s vaunted football program under Joe Paterno (a passage first written, incidentally, well before the subsequent child abuse scandal unfolded) were just matters of convenience.

What really sealed the deal, though, was when I discovered the juxtaposition of events unfolding in June, 1968, as Paul’s freshman year of high school comes to an end. The pivotal TET Offensive has occurred in February; Martin Luther King has been assassinated; and LBJ has made the momentous announcement that he will not seek re-election, even as anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy vie with each other – as well as party stalwart Hubert Humphrey – for the Democratic presidential nomination. These events, along with Chris’ enlistment, deployment and subsequent shrapnel injury, have combined to make Paul more aware of and more concerned about events taking place in the larger world, and yet a part of him still longs for a return to the carefree days when the exquisite pleasures and nail-biting tensions of a late-night baseball game could be enjoyed without the messy intrusions from the outside world. These crosscurrents come to a head when Paul rekindles his waning enthusiasm for baseball as he realizes that, on the eve of his last day of school, Dodgers’ pitcher Don Drysdale is in the midst of an historic shutout streak, and is scheduled to take the mound against his beloved Pirates. Meanwhile, the same night sees activist sister Mary eagerly awaiting the results of the Democrats’ make-or-break California primary. Had the story been set anywhere else, save L.A. perhaps, Paul’s keen interest in and eventual disappointment in the Pirates’ performance wouldn’t have rung true. More importantly, the stark contrast between the disappointment at Dodger Stadium and the tragedy that rocked the country in the Ambassador Hotel would have been largely lost.

A House Divided is set in Pittsburgh, a decidedly northern city, yet you make references to racism and segregation being alive and well there.

In this sense, the setting in A House Divided mirrors my own experiences growing up. Battles over segregation were raging, with press coverage focusing on the Jim Crow system so deeply entrenched in the South. And yet, during three years in parochial school, three more in a public elementary school, followed by six years in a suburban middle-school/high school, I never walked the halls or sat in class with a single African-American student. In those days, diversity (a term not yet in circulation) referred to the many ethnic groupings found in Pittsburgh. Like so much of the country though, the city’s suburbs were basically white. Some of it had to do with the fact that, as a group, white people were better able to afford a move from the city to the relatively open spaces in the suburbs. A number of my friends’ parents, for example, rode the growing wave of post-World War II affluence and moved (likely with the assistance of the GI bill) to the suburbs; whereas factors ranging from limited educational background to stifled economic opportunity made the suburbs less accessible to the city’s African-American population. But beyond that, racial factors no doubt played a significant role in the de facto segregation with which I grew up, as any realtor looking to sell a house to an aspiring black family would surely have encountered great resistance. Indeed, it was commonplace to hear African-Americans referred to as ‘coons,’ ‘jungle-bunnies,’ ‘spooks,’ or any number of pejorative terms, including the ubiquitous N-word.

What about religion? Along with Catholicism in particular – it is not cast in a particularly glowing light throughout the pages of A House Divided?

This is bound to be a touchy subject, but in this regard, it’s safe to say I stayed reasonably true to my own childhood experiences. From experiences with heavy-handed, convent-trained disciplinarians in the three years I attended parochial school, to the information I later gleaned about the Catholic Church’s influential role in boosting the staunchly Catholic, but highly repressive Ngo Dinh Diem to the presidency in Vietnam, there was much to be critical of regarding the Church’s role during my formative years. (In fairness, corporal punishment was widely accepted in those days; and in later years, when looking back on my second grade class picture, I counted fully 50 students in the class, all getting ready to make their First Communion, all in the charge of a single nun. Compounding the situation, as I recall, there was little in the way of pull-out services for special education or learning delayed students, and managing that number of six- and seven-year olds would have been challenging for anyone.)

What about the allusions to abuse in A House Divided? Were these included as an opportunistic pile-on to the allegations of clergy abuse that became widespread in later years?

To be sure, this was an area with which I wrestled while writing A House Divided. On the one hand, I actually wanted to avoid inclusion of clergy abuse out of concern that it might be considered either cliché, or a gratuitous slap at the Church. Indeed, this is why I eventually settled on a choir director – technically a layperson, albeit one associated with the Church – rather than a priest per se. More importantly, however, my sense was that the abuse incident was critical to a number of intertwined plot threads.

Can you elaborate on this?

Certainly. Among the themes I strove to highlight in ‘A House Divided’ were the dual roles of homophobia and sexism in American culture. Indeed, as Paul patiently explains to Mary, being called a sissy or faggot, or being told that you ‘throw like a girl,’ were among the most emasculating putdowns a male in mid-century America might endure. A significant part of the reason Chris reacts so strongly to his abusive run-in had to do with the egregious breach of trust, but this breach was all the more painful because of social mores condemning homosexuality as being criminal in the eyes of the law, and a moral abomination in the eyes of the Church – and a thoroughly humiliating label with which to be branded by your peers. Indeed, it is a sad irony that the fear of being branded a homosexual was so mortifying that it was one factor in spurring many an adolescent male in their pursuit not only of various tough guy personas – think fast cars, wrestling, weightlifting, football and similarly macho pursuits – but also relationships with the opposite sex too often highlighted by desires for conquest, reputation-building, and the avoidance of this incriminating label, as by the desire for meaningful intimacy.

To be sure, it was hardly necessary to endure sexual abuse to adopt the staunchly homophobic mores of mid-century America, but it is doubtful that the particular strain that Chris contracted would have been quite so virulent minus the abuse factor.