What does the title of the book — Thin Blue Smoke — refer to?
The book is set in Kansas City, which is famous for its barbecue, which is a theme in the story. When you make barbecue, you want your fire to produce a nice thin blue smoke. If your fire is making heavy white smoke, your barbecue won’t taste good. It’s the thin blue smoke that makes it sweet.
The title also refers to the thin blue smoke that comes from incense burned in worship, which symbolizes prayers going up to God.
One of the primary themes in your book is second chances. Why is that theme is important to you?
We all need second chances in life. And third and fourth and fifth chances. We all fail. We all lose things precious to us. We all make foolish decisions. We all say things we wish we could un-say. We are all mean-spirited and hurtful, sometimes. If life was fair and just, none of us would get a second chance. If we were judged solely on our merits, on the strength and wisdom of our choices, or on the kindness of our hearts, none of us would deserve a second chance. Second chances are grace. Third chances are grace upon grace. Beyond that, it’s all mercy. Mercy we all need.
Even though your story addresses serious themes, it’s really quite funny. That’s not easy to do.
Actually, it wasn’t that difficult. The line between comedy and tragedy is frequently fuzzy. I didn’t necessarily set out to make the book humorous. My objective was only to make it real. And real life is funny. I just wrote the action and dialogue as authentically as I could. If you describe things as they actually happen, there’s almost always something that will make you laugh. The human condition is unbearably sad, and also really, really, goofy.
Another major theme in your novel is the relationships between fathers and sons, or the absence of a relationship. Tell us why you wanted to explore this in your story.
Well, I’m obviously not the first writer to explore that theme. It’s universal. All parent/child relationships are inherently complex and fraught with intense emotion. But for men, their relationships with their fathers are particularly difficult. And when I say “difficult” I don’t mean that all father/son relationships are necessarily negative or dysfunctional, but they are, by definition, difficult. How fathers choose to fulfill their role will, in large part, will determine the direction of their sons’ lives. And sons must, at some point, become their own selves. They must become independent of their fathers and walk their own path. How they do this, or fail to do it, will also significantly determine destiny. It’s complicated stuff. That’s why it makes for great storytelling.
I also believe that, for better or worse, our understanding of and relationship to God is shaped, in part, by our relationship with our fathers.
Your characters deal with real problems —loss of hopes and dreams, squandered opportunities, self-destructive behaviors, loss of relationships, death — in very real ways, with anger, alcohol, despair, humor, compassion, and faith. Talk about the role that faith plays in the lives of your characters.
As we all do, the characters in the book are struggling to make sense of the things that have happened in their lives. They want to believe that it’s not all for naught. They want to believe that there is meaning in their lives and that that meaning can be discerned, and once discerned that it will make a difference. They want to know that God is out there somewhere, and if he is, is he in control? Does he love us? And if he is in control and does love us, why does he allow bad things to happen to us?
The truth is that none of us can know these things. None of us can know that God exists or does not exist. The most devout Christian can claim to know that there is a God. But on this side of the grave, this cannot, in fact, be known. It can only be believed. It is an article of faith. Likewise, the most ardent atheist cannot know for sure that there isn’t a God. He can only believe it.
More than once in your story, a random — seemingly small — event eventually has life-changing consequences in the lives of your characters. Has that happened to you, personally?
My entire life has been a series of seemingly small random happenings that have changed the course of my life — the events that took me to Kansas City to live, the way I met my wife, the way this novel itself came to be — if I trace my life back to the event that moved me in this direction, rather than that direction, those events by themselves seem utterly insignificant. Yet, without them my life would look entirely different. And because my life would be different, so would the lives of all those my life has touched.
This is true of everyone. Nothing that happens to us is inconsequential. Every encounter we have with another person is of consequence. Every success, every failure, every choice, every conversation, everything matters. We can’t always know at the time — in fact, we may never know — what the consequence of these events will be, but, for better or worse they all matter. Which, when you think about, is both very humbling and very daunting.
How much, if any, of your book is autobiographical?
At the most literal level, it’s not at all autobiographical. I’ve never played professional baseball or owned a barbecue joint and I’m not an Episcopal priest. But at an emotional and spiritual level, it is completely autobiographical. Just as the characters in the book have, I’ve experienced deep loss. I’ve squandered gifts and opportunities I’ve been given. I’ve longed to find meaning in pain and sadness. I’ve struggled with depression and doubt. I’ve yearned to hear God’s voice and have heard only silence. None of my own loss or despair has been as great as that of the characters in the book, but then my own personal life story wouldn’t make for a very interesting book.
Your main characters are both African-American and white. Is there a message in your book about relationships between races?
Not really a message, exactly. Barbecue and the blues were introduced into American culture by African-Americans, and both are important in Kansas City, and important in the story. Also, the story is, in part, about how our lives take us in unexpected directions. Many of us, at least in America, don’t expect that our lives are going to intersect with the lives of people of a different race or ethnicity to the extent that we will form truly intimate, meaningful relationships with those people. That’s changing. And for the better. But, historically, ours has been a fairly segregated society, even since the Sixties and the Civil Rights Movement. The racially mixed cast of characters in the book creates some story tension and helps make the point that we don’t really ever know who we will encounter in our lives and what impact our encounters with them will have. In this story the lives of the characters are deeply enriched by the racial and ethnic diversity they allow themselves to experience.
One of the metaphors you use is barbecue. Why does barbecue make a good metaphor in the context of your story?
In much of the world, in fact, in much of the United States, the word “barbecue” is used to describe an event, like a picnic or an outdoor party, at which meat is cooked on a fire. “Let’s all go to the Smith’s house tonight! They’re having a barbecue.” The word is also used to refer to the apparatus on which the meat is cooked. “Hey, Smith! I’m still hungry! Throw another bratwurst on the barbecue!”
In the American South, however, and in regions culturally influenced by Southern culture, “barbecue” is a noun that specifically refers to meat slowly cooked and flavored by the smoke of a low-burning hardwood fire.
It takes a long time to make barbecue. And traditionally the meat used to make barbecue are the “meanest cuts” — the less desirable cuts of a steer or a hog. Less desirable because they’re tougher or fatter, and more difficult to cook. In the antebellum South, these were the cuts of meat given to African-American slave families to cook for themselves. Slaves learned that the “low and slow” method of cooking rendered the toughest meat tender and smoky and absolutely delicious. They learned to make due with what they had. They learned that with patience, hard work, and grace, you can make a tough situation better. That if you wait, tend to your fire, and have faith, something good will come of it.
That’s what the characters in the book must, and eventually do, learn.
Kansas City is known for both its food and its music, and food and music are important in almost every chapter of the book. It’s almost as if they’re characters themselves.
Kansas City’s cultural identity has been formed in large part by its food and music, which I suppose could be said of many places. But barbecue and the blues are unique, and uniquely American. Giving them an important role in the story gives the reader a much stronger sense of place. It makes the story richer and more authentic. At least I hope it does. Plus I wanted to create a soundtrack for the book that would play in readers’ heads as the story moves along.
Talk about your path to publication.
For me, the path was fairly straight. Which I feel guilty about when I hear other authors describe the months and even years they spend submitting manuscripts to agents and publishers. It took me about 30 months to write the story, at which point I sent it to Macmillan New Writing — which my sister Jan Ackerson, who’s also a writer, had alerted me to. Several weeks later Will Atkins at MNW contacted me to tell me that they’d like to publish the book.
It is not an overstatement to say that all this has fundamentally and profoundly changed my life. One of the characters in Thin Blue Smoke has spent his life longing for something that always seems to be close, but never quite knowable or attainable. Writing this book was the discovery of that which, for me, had always been seemingly unknowable and unattainable.
What’s with all the turtles?
I identify with turtles. Primarily because they’re slow, which I am, too. And also because they pull inside themselves, which I also do. In spite of their hard shells, turtles are really quite vulnerable. It seems to me that it would take a lot of patience to be a turtle. And a lot of faith.
