Breathing Out the Ghost by Kirk Curnutt (with interview)

What had being the parent of a murdered child taught her? Nothing--nothing except the inexhaustibility of her own anger, anger at constantly being reminded of what she'd lived through, what she'd always be living through, and most of all anger at the presumption that she should be over it, that she should have proved that life goes on, if not for her sake then for the sake of those around her. That was never the hard part, Sis thought. Life went on anyway, whether you wanted it to or not. The hard part was being left behind to breathe out the ghost of the one who'd gone on. (Breathing Out the Ghost, page 49)

"Life's not a bitch but a breath, and you and me, the things that bond us, the people we've lost, they're nothing but mist, too, exhalations that were always going to disappear." (Breathing Out the Ghost, page 152-153)

I'm happy to say the first book I finished in the new year was great. Breathing Out the Ghost, dubbed a "noir thriller" on the inside flap, didn't disappoint. Kirk Curnutt expertly weaves together the lives of three people: Colin St. Claire, a man haunted by his young son's disappearance who travels in search of the pedophile he thinks is responsible and turns up in towns where children have recently disappeared in hopes of finding his son; Robert Heim, the private investigator who lost his license in an incident involving Colin and the child molester and lies to his wife to go out one more time in search of the truth about Colin's son; and Sis Pruitt, a woman whose daughter was murdered years ago who comes in contact with Colin and Heim after a local boy goes missing.

Breathing Out the Ghost is a well-written, character-driven novel, and Curnutt appears to be an expert at characterization. When Heim lies to his wife to go in search of Colin, you feel his pull to his family losing out to his need to find justice. When Colin records messages to his missing son while on a drug trip, you feel the depth of his pain. You can feel the tension and pain between Sis and her husband, Pete, and you can understand how hard it is for them to bridge the gap after so many years dealing with the grief on their own.

This book isn't for the faint of heart. There is foul language, and in the scenes involving the pedophile, Dickie, there are graphic descriptions of child molestation. However, Curnutt uses these descriptions not solely for their shock value, but to give the reader a glimpse into the mind of a sick person. While these scenes made the book hard to read, I found the book to be a page-turner. Curnutt adds back story and even write scenes from the point of view of a couple minor characters without slowing down the pace, and I burned through the pages to find out what happens to the main characters and the missing children. I have a feeling this book will make my list of favorite books for 2009, and January isn't even half over!

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I had the privilege of interviewing Kirk Curnutt, and I want to thank him for taking time from his busy schedule and holiday recovery period to answer my questions.

What inspired you to write about missing children?

I always wanted to write about the area of Indiana where my mother's side of my family lives, but I could never find a good plot. There have been 1,000,001 generational stories, and too few of them are distinct: there are usually strong women, runaway men, unexpected death, exposed secrets, and some kind of reconciliation. I just didn't know what I could bring to a setting-oriented family story that hadn't been done. Then I found myself reading stories about the parents of missing children. I didn't go looking for them—they just jumped in front of my eyes. The most compelling ones were about the point at which parents had to reconcile themselves to their loss, the point at which they had to find some semblance between a normal life and continuing the search for their child. Of course, there have been 1,000,001 novels about missing children, too, so I zipped through the best and tried to figure out structural ways I could do things differently. In the end, I felt as if I had a chance to avoid the best of both worlds: I could explore character in the way that family novels do, but I could also pace the book with the search plot that abduction thrillers enjoy.

How did these characters come about, particularly Colin, Robert, Dickie Bird, and Sis? Did you find it hard to write from a woman's point of view? Do you identify with any of these characters?

Except for the villain of the book, I identified with all of my main characters. Each personifies certain qualities I admire in people and certain failings for which I have great empathy. Sis was based on all the women in my family: very strong and stoic, embarrassed by any emotion they can't control. That's not to say they're unfeeling—they're just tough and leery of their own vulnerability. I mean, I remember being a child with all those beautiful old women around—beautiful because they were steel gray—but they were mean, too. You started crying around them, and they would really give you something to cry about. It was so different from the city life I grew up in.

Colin was created out of a literary tradition known as the Byronic hero. He's very much the defiant megalomaniac whose willingness to keep to his Ahab-like quest threatens destruction. Robert was somebody that came out of my love of noir fiction: the detective who oversteps his bounds. Each is very different, and each, to a certain extent, has his or her own style. I was very conscious as I was writing that Sis's would be lyrical and pastoral, while Robert's would be cadenced as staccato as a Hammett or Chandler hero, and Colin's—well—his would be very poetic, over-the-top poetic monologues. Dickie was probably the least original: I based him mainly on the man who is suspected of kidnapping Etan Patz in 1979, a convicted predator named Jose Antonio Ramos.

I'm glad you asked about writing from a woman's point of view. It was very important to me that Sis be the heart of the book. I don't really think it's hard for men to write from a woman's perspective—we just have to kind of make a conscious effort to do it. I mean, how many times do we see movies or books in which the basic premise is men are X and women Y (Mars and Venus, etc.). I think we are different but maybe we don't try to understand across genders enough. So it's all about empathy and creating real people—hopefully complex, conflicted ones, and not ones who're merely representing behaviors. (If that makes any sense….)

How long did it take to write the book? How much time did you spend writing at any one time?

It took years to write. Seventeen, basically. Most of that time was spent trying to learn to write. I knew the form of the story I wanted to tell, but I didn't have the ability. Plus I had other books to do in the meantime and professional obligations. When I finally felt like I was up to snuff, I finished a first draft in about eight months—mainly by working from 5 to 8 a.m. in the mornings. Sometimes on weekends I could work ten hours, but that required a lot of deck-clearing. The lawn won't let you wait to write your little novel when it wants mowing. Then over three or four years as the book was being rejected by just about every publisher from here to Timbuktu, I would revise, cutting subplots and developing other characters. Robert, for example, was originally a minor character who stepped to the forefront at one point to balance out Sis and Colin. I had a lot of agents and editors tell me I had too many characters, but I wanted to tell the story at right angles, seeing the main characters from different perspectives. All told, it was about thirteen months of constant writing spread out over eight years of rejection spread out over a decade and a half of procrastination.

Are you working on another novel? If so, any hints as to what it's about?

I have a thriller coming out next November called Dixie Noir, which is set in Montgomery, Alabama, where I live. The main character is a disgraced Crimson Tide quarterback who is trying to redeem himself amid a lot of political shenanigans—the backdrop of the story is the race for our first African American mayor. I wrote and sold this one in eight months; I realized I didn't have a second seventeen years for the next novel. I also have a comedy in the works called Raising Aphrodite, about a single father and his teenage daughter. I've yet to find a publisher for that one, though. Hopefully, it'll happen soon.…

Any advice to aspiring novelists?

My main advice is to be disciplined and counterintuitive. By discipline I mean giving yourself the time to study, to absorb techniques, to practice style, to become knowledgeable about your strengths and how to overcome your weaknesses, and, finally, to finish a manuscript. By counterintuitive I mean questioning your instincts so you offer a new insight on human behavior. Your best friend as a writer is the resisting reader you have in your mind that says, "I've seen this done before, and much better." It's that voice that will compel your originality.

Thanks so much for stopping by Diary of an Eccentric. I wish you the best in your career, and I'll keep an eye out for your upcoming book!

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Kirk would like to offer a copy of Breathing Out the Ghost to 3 lucky readers! To be entered, you must leave a comment on this post with your email address and tell me why you'd like to read the book. The giveaway is open to readers everywhere and will end on Monday, Jan. 12, at midnight EST. Thanks, Kirk!

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Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review Breathing Out the Ghost. You can see the rest of Kirk Curnutt's tour dates here.

Disclosure:  I received a free copy of Breathing Out the Ghost from the author for review purposes.