OREGON AUTHOR'S DOUBTS RESOLVED
by David Loftus
[This piece first appeared in the Roseburg (Oregon)
News-Review on March 9, 1990.]
"It was kind of my obsession for a while. I had great doubts whether it would sell."
Novelist M.K. Wren is talking about A Gift Upon the Shore, which, after five years and six drafts, did sell to a publisher. Wren, also known as Martha Kaye Renfroe, will appear for a book signing from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. March 17 at the Jackson Street Bookshop.
She will also sign copies of Northwest Originals: Oregon Women and Their Art. She is among the 49 writers and artists in the collection, published by In Unison, which also publishes the magazine Women In Unison.
In a telephone interview with The News-Review, Wren explained that her new book was hard to classify. It takes place on the Oregon coast after a nuclear war has devastated the world with firestorms and nuclear winter. Mary Hope flees Portland, is attacked by a gang armed with automatic weapons, and is rescued by Rachel Morrow.
Rachel lives in Amarna, a self-sufficient homestead overlooking the ocean. Mary joins her in her mission "to preserve what they can of the books they already have or that they scavenge," according to Wren. The two women eventually encounter a fundamentalist religious group that believes there is only one book, and one member seeks to destroy Amarna's cache of world literature.
One of the novel's themes, Wren said, is embodied in an opening epigraph by Thornton Wilder about the good and excellent things in the world which stand on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for.
"The good and excellent thing here is the books and all they represent. That's what sets us apart and makes us special," Wren said.
The publisher, Ballantine Books, suggested printing a list of representative works from Rachel's library inside the dust cover of A Gift. They range from familiar classics such as Lord of the Flies and Pride and Prejudice, to works specific to the area, such as the Audubon Field Guide to North American Trees and Plants and Animals of the Pacific Northwest.
"This is not the hundred great books or anything," Wren said. "I tried to come up with the kind of books that would be in Rachel's house." The kind of books, in fact, that reside in Wren's house at Road's End, north of Lincoln City, or that she and her friend Ruth Grover have read. "It's a very personal kind of list."
Other themes of A Gift include the ongoing battle between the rational and irrational, the nature of life at the close of a golden age, and woman's role in hard times. Wren asks, "What are a woman's duties if she's capable of bearing children in a world where the future of the human race is in doubt?"
The author admits she tried to cover all the issues dear to her heart and discovered "you can't put everything you believe in one book." The first draft weighed in at 200,000 words and the published version comes to 130,000, "so you see I did have to take a little of the philosophizing out."
The book was a departure for Wren, the author of six Conan Flagg mystery novels (a seventh is in the proof stage) and a science fiction trilogy, The Phoenix Legacy. Among other topics, Wren had to research the effects of nuclear war, Christian Bible doctrine, and farming.
"I have a working notebook that is thicker than most manuscripts, of things that I had to check. I don't really know much about farming. If you read the book you will notice that my characters never eat bread." Research revealed that wheat would not grow along the coastline, but root vegetables and some fruits would.
A native of Amarillo, Texas, Wren settled in Neskowin 25 years ago. "I almost made a living as a painter," she said. "Not quite." The exertion of hustling business and publicizing oneself was unpalatable to her.
By contrast, her first mystery, Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat, sold immediately to Doubleday in 1973. "I didn't go through the paying of dues -- getting rejection slips -- that most writers do. I did later."
She also likes the steady trickle of income from book club sales, foreign markets, and other little extras. "It's kind of marvelous. You don't have to do any more work, the work's done. Which doesn't happen with a painting; you sell it and that's it."
Her next project may be a sequel to The Phoenix Legacy.
"I had originally designed it so that I could do a sequel if I wanted to. [But] I don't want to get pushed into something and not do a good job of it."