Writing about the depression era is certainly timely, with the pandemic, lockdowns, and shutdowns across the country, not to mention shortages. What similarities do you see, and how do you hope that your book could bring hope to those struggling today?
You know, when I began this book in 2018, none of us could have imagined a sequence of events that would lead to shortages of necessities like toilet paper, or massive layoffs. I think that in the early 1930s Americans couldn’t have imagined enduring years of extreme drought, or that their life savings or homes might be lost overnight in a stock market crash or bank failure. I think what we’re facing is similar, as you mention, in that hard-working people have lost jobs, or farms, or homes through no fault of their own. There is frustration with the government, as there was during the Great Depression.
The Veteran’s Bonus March of 1932 came from a grass-roots uprising of frustrated citizens. It’s an event in our history that we don’t hear much about. I know I wasn’t taught about it in school. In May of 1932 a group of eight destitute veterans left Oregon, determined to walk, hitchhike, or ride the rails across the country, intending to petition President Hoover to demand early payment of their war bonuses (slated to be paid in 1945). As they made their way across the country they gathered support and notice in the press. By July, there were 20,000 vets and their families camping out around Washington, D.C. In a huge publicity fail, Herbert Hoover refused to meet with them. IN ALL GOOD FAITH is set during that summer, and I think the themes of resilience, adaptation, and survival are relevant to where we are in the summer of 2021.
The Great Depression tried our country and citizens, and I think that anyone who lived through it or grew up in that time was changed forever, with a hard-won sense of gratitude for the most basic things, like a floor under one’s feet or having enough to feed one’s children. I chose to tell a story about two women surviving and succeeding in this era by working together and adapting.
Anxiety plays a large role in the main character's journey, but she's struggling with it at a time when mental health - especially for women - wasn't a subject that could be talked about, let alone treated. How does your character cope with her situation?
When I was researching this novel I sent a list of medical questions to my family doctor. He loaned me a physician’s reference from 1934 called The Modern Home Physician Illustrated, by an aptly named Dr. Wise. I decided to use that book as my sole source for medical opinions and treatments of the era. The category Mental Disease is allotted three pages of small print. According to Dr. Wise, “Heredity, State of bodily health, poverty, bad sanitary conditions increase incidence. Sex is another important factor. To mate with a member of the opposite sex is the natural destiny of the sexually mature individual, and the frustration of this design may occasion mental disorder. The incidence of insanity is considerably greater among the unmarried . . . Insanity is also more common among those who have been widowed . . .”
You just can’t make this stuff up, right?
Dorrit’s anxiety attacks are something I can write about from personal experience. I gave her a set of strategies—or really—rituals, that she uses to cope during panic attacks. She uses a sequence of self-calming distractions, such as counting tiles on the floor, and she keeps a list of triggers in her journal. She escapes into books, especially Nancy Drew mysteries, and Nancy is sort of her fantasy alter-ego. Her mother has always encouraged her to find solace in prayer, but that brings her no relief and she doubts the faith she was raised in. Being thrust into a situation—The Bonus March—where avoidance and isolation are not options, Dorrit conquers many of her fears through surviving unanticipated trigger experiences.
Perseverance and resilience are major themes in the book as well. Do you think the struggles in these arenas were different for men and women, historically?
Absolutely. In the 1930s men were expected to be the providers while women stayed home. An unmarried woman was labeled a spinster and was generally disregarded by society. During the Depression, some institutions like railroads and the Postal Service laid off all of their female employees in order to make those jobs available to men who had families to care for. So I think that for men, the struggles of that era were tied to their self-esteem as bread winners. Some men left their families in search of work and never returned, as Kristin Hannah writes about so eloquently in her recent novel about the Depression, THE FOUR WINDS.
Women learned to adapt and make do with less, and then with nothing. Women entered the workforce where they could find jobs, like picking crops, and proved that they could work as hard as men. My character May Marshall is conflicted by the pushback she gets in attempting to revamp her family business to adapt to hard times. She struggles with being a working mother and her position in her marriage. She decides to act on her own intuition without her husband’s consent, and in 1932 that was a big deal. When we read history about the Great Depression we hear statistics, and we can see the devastation in photographs by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. It’s the photographs of those dust bowl mothers that resonate with me most.
Friendship is key to survival and health in this book. How do you think those themes translate in today's world?
In the past year and a half many of us have come to define our “pod” of close friends to quarantine with. That implies a level of mutual trust and concern that we’ve never had to qualify before. We’ve worried over sick friends and kept each other afloat in many ways we never anticipated. I think these times have increased our empathy and patience. I know it has mine, and I hope those small positive outcomes stay with us.
In my story, Dorrit is forced to ask for help and to trust strangers. She pools resources and works with new friends toward a common goal. This takes her out of her shell, somewhat, and she finds strengths she didn’t know she possessed. When she finds herself physically helpless, coping strategies that have worked for her in the past won’t help her. May finds a level of empathy with Dorrit that opens up some painful parts of her past that she’s shut away. In helping her friend survive, May is also healing herself. I like to think those themes are as relevant today as they were in 1932.
Liza Nash Taylor was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The 2016 winner of the San Miguel Writer's Conference Fiction Prize, her work has appeared in Microchondria II , Gargoyle Magazine , and Deep South , amongst others. A native Virginian, she lives in Keswick with her husband and dogs.