Wild Sorrow by Sandi Ault
Since the release of her first novel in 2007, WILD INDIGO, author Sandi Ault has wowed reviewers and thrilled readers with her stories featuring tough protagonist Jamaica Wild and her pet wolf, Mountain. WILD INDIGO was the first-ever debut novel to be nominated for the special Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and it was the first debut to win the honored prize. The accolades continued with WILD INFERNO, which Publishers Weekly and Library Journal named one of the Best Books of 2008.Now, Sandi continues to take the West by storm with the third novel in her WILD Mystery Series, WILD SORROW, being released this month. In WILD SORROW, Jamaica and her wolf Mountain come across an old Indian School while tracking a wounded mountain lion on a desolate canyon rim. When Jamaica is forced to take refuge in the school because of an approaching snowstorm, she discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman. What started as a search for a mountain lion quickly becomes much more, and Jamaica soon finds herself struggling to battle threats both natural and man-made as she is stalked and terrorized by the unidentified killer.
Sandi graciously answered some questions for The Big Thrill about her novels and her interesting life.
What was the inspiration for your WILD Mystery Series?
I am smitten by the living culture of the Pueblo Indians, the wild beauty of northern New Mexico and all of the Four Corners area, and I adore wolves. It was fun to put them all together in a series. In truth, though, I also have a more sobering mission in this series. I hurry as fast as I can to capture the vanishing West. I think we live on a knife-edge and may not have the opportunity to see Native Americans living in traditional ways, wolves in the wild, or untamed spaces for much longer. For example: the last traditional ritual I attended at one of the pueblos, all the Indians had cell phones.
You live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, yet your series is set in Northern New Mexico. Tell us a little bit about your "journey" to Colorado, and also about your connection to Northern New Mexico that made you decide to set your novels there.
I have lived all over the world. I was a service brat and have always traveled extensively. I had the same magical encounter that Jamaica does in WILD INDIGO when attending an art show at Christmas time in Taos. I helped a Pueblo elder to prevent a calamity when her display threatened to collapse. She invited me and my then-boyfriend to her home for the rituals over Christmas time at the pueblo, and she subsequently adopted me as her daughter and began teaching me. It was a mind-blowing, life-changing experience.
I lived in Taos for a time and taught writing at UNM Taos. I now live in the mountains of Colorado, but I am only six hours away from my pueblo family, and I visit them four or five times a year.
Your blog is one of the most beautifully written I've ever read. You're obviously a born writer! Yet your first novel only came out in 2007. How did you come to be a novelist? And have you always wanted to write?
Thank you. I'm glad you like the blog. I have always written, ever since I could first lift a pencil as a small child. I used to write songs when I was a teenager--did a singer/songwriter thing--then went on to write more advanced and complex music for a band I fronted as well as for dance companies, theater and even a short film score. I was a journalist for some years, and also a newspaper section editor. It's all storytelling.
I might add that one of the things I love about the Pueblo is that their culture is transmitted entirely via oral storytelling, not writing. Storytelling is the highest calling they have. As modern ways infiltrate and dilute their culture, my adopted Pueblo family is very proud of me as a storyteller, even if I do use writing as the means.
You live with a wolf (Tiwa) and a Missouri wildcat (Buckskin). What's it like to live with wild animals? Is Tiwa anything like the wolf in your novels, Mountain?
The character of Mountain is based on the first wolf who shared life with me. Mountain passed beyond the ridge as I was finishing WILD INDIGO, and when he did, he took a part of me with him. I have never fully recovered from the pain of losing him. It gives me joy to see him live on in the series, and there is hardly a thing I write about him as a character in the series that did not occur in my mundane life with him. He amazed me with his wit, will, intelligence, love for life, and wisdom about how to live. He was my greatest teacher. He changed my life in extraordinary ways.
Tiwa is an entirely different wolf than Mountain. Tiwa is more a beta wolf. (Mountain was an alpha.) Because he is a beta type, Tiwa has been much easier to adapt to. But living with wild animals is a commitment to change one's life entirely. There is no other way to do it. You cannot maintain control, and control, if you can even attain it, kills wildness. This is then nothing more than captivity.
To live with something wild means surrendering a lot of what we take for granted, but the gains for me have been beyond anything I could have imagined. That being said, I would not recommend it to anyone else. I was in too deep with Mountain before I realized how much I would have to change to keep him in my life. I had to alter pretty much everything, especially where and how I lived. You cannot leave a wolf alone--they have abandonment anxiety because to be abandoned means to be out of the pack, and they think they will die. That means when you go to work, the wolf thinks he has been abandoned. Or when you go to the market, or to the library. The amount of destruction they will do from this anxiety is unlimited. Also, wolves typically maintain territorial boundaries of about twenty to forty square miles. I don't have that much land, but you have to have some land. And you have to be willing to hike and get out with a wolf so he can have the freedom to roam that he needs. Mountain was especially challenging because he could escape almost any confinement intended to keep him safe. He even figured out how to ground out electric fences. He was amazingly clever.
What books and authors do you enjoy? What are you reading now?
My favorite authors are James Lee Burke and Cormac McCarthy. I read a ton of non-fiction, especially for research for my books. I am currently plowing through everything I can find by Craig Childs, a naturalist who writes about the Four Corners area. When I meet an author at a conference or joint signing, I always try to read their latest soon after that so I can get to know them better. That's big fun!
What's next for Sandi Ault and Jamaica Wild?
I just finished the fourth WILD Mystery, WILD PENANCE, and submitted it to my editor. While she is reviewing that manuscript, I will be touring for WILD SORROW. I love all the WILD Mysteries, but I think WILD SORROW is my best yet. It was a story I felt called to tell, and the mystery woven within it mirrors the dark tragedy of the real saga of Indian Boarding Schools. The murder in this tome is a hate crime. There was such fear and hatred of Indians when the boarding schools were established that the results were a virtual holocaust. Most people don't realize that the Indian Boarding Schools were still operating in fair numbers as late as the 1960's and 1970's. There are a few that remain today, however their mission has softened and changed and no longer requires them to "kill the Indian in order to save the child."
Soon after the WILD SORROW tour, I am heading to the backcountry with my pack for a couple months to do research for the next WILD Mystery. I always go live in the wild when I do research, and the places we go require climbing, packing, and lots of foot travel--they can't be accessed by roads. I always feel intensely alive then. We have always done adventures like this, including many, many times with Mountain when he was alive. But the last summer of his life, when we knew he was dying, we quit our jobs and went high into the mountains and lived totally wild, including feeding ourselves off the land. There is a story about this on my website at www.SandiAult.com, so I won't go into it here. Since then, whenever I take to the backcountry for research, I feel Mountain's presence. Maybe I even go to feel closer to him, more than anything. At any rate, it's good for our pack, good bonding time, good WILD time.
Contributing editor, Julie Compton, originally hails from St. Louis , Missouri Wilmington , Delaware Florida
I have lived all over the world. I was a service brat and have always traveled extensively. I had the same magical encounter that Jamaica does in WILD INDIGO when attending an art show at Christmas time in Taos. I helped a Pueblo elder to prevent a calamity when her display threatened to collapse. She invited me and my then-boyfriend to her home for the rituals over Christmas time at the pueblo, and she subsequently adopted me as her daughter and began teaching me. It was a mind-blowing, life-changing experience.I lived in Taos for a time and taught writing at UNM Taos. I now live in the mountains of Colorado, but I am only six hours away from my pueblo family, and I visit them four or five times a year.
Your blog is one of the most beautifully written I've ever read. You're obviously a born writer! Yet your first novel only came out in 2007. How did you come to be a novelist? And have you always wanted to write?
Thank you. I'm glad you like the blog. I have always written, ever since I could first lift a pencil as a small child. I used to write songs when I was a teenager--did a singer/songwriter thing--then went on to write more advanced and complex music for a band I fronted as well as for dance companies, theater and even a short film score. I was a journalist for some years, and also a newspaper section editor. It's all storytelling.
I might add that one of the things I love about the Pueblo is that their culture is transmitted entirely via oral storytelling, not writing. Storytelling is the highest calling they have. As modern ways infiltrate and dilute their culture, my adopted Pueblo family is very proud of me as a storyteller, even if I do use writing as the means.
You live with a wolf (Tiwa) and a Missouri wildcat (Buckskin). What's it like to live with wild animals? Is Tiwa anything like the wolf in your novels, Mountain?
The character of Mountain is based on the first wolf who shared life with me. Mountain passed beyond the ridge as I was finishing WILD INDIGO, and when he did, he took a part of me with him. I have never fully recovered from the pain of losing him. It gives me joy to see him live on in the series, and there is hardly a thing I write about him as a character in the series that did not occur in my mundane life with him. He amazed me with his wit, will, intelligence, love for life, and wisdom about how to live. He was my greatest teacher. He changed my life in extraordinary ways.
Tiwa is an entirely different wolf than Mountain. Tiwa is more a beta wolf. (Mountain was an alpha.) Because he is a beta type, Tiwa has been much easier to adapt to. But living with wild animals is a commitment to change one's life entirely. There is no other way to do it. You cannot maintain control, and control, if you can even attain it, kills wildness. This is then nothing more than captivity.
To live with something wild means surrendering a lot of what we take for granted, but the gains for me have been beyond anything I could have imagined. That being said, I would not recommend it to anyone else. I was in too deep with Mountain before I realized how much I would have to change to keep him in my life. I had to alter pretty much everything, especially where and how I lived. You cannot leave a wolf alone--they have abandonment anxiety because to be abandoned means to be out of the pack, and they think they will die. That means when you go to work, the wolf thinks he has been abandoned. Or when you go to the market, or to the library. The amount of destruction they will do from this anxiety is unlimited. Also, wolves typically maintain territorial boundaries of about twenty to forty square miles. I don't have that much land, but you have to have some land. And you have to be willing to hike and get out with a wolf so he can have the freedom to roam that he needs. Mountain was especially challenging because he could escape almost any confinement intended to keep him safe. He even figured out how to ground out electric fences. He was amazingly clever.
What books and authors do you enjoy? What are you reading now?
My favorite authors are James Lee Burke and Cormac McCarthy. I read a ton of non-fiction, especially for research for my books. I am currently plowing through everything I can find by Craig Childs, a naturalist who writes about the Four Corners area. When I meet an author at a conference or joint signing, I always try to read their latest soon after that so I can get to know them better. That's big fun!
What's next for Sandi Ault and Jamaica Wild?
I just finished the fourth WILD Mystery, WILD PENANCE, and submitted it to my editor. While she is reviewing that manuscript, I will be touring for WILD SORROW. I love all the WILD Mysteries, but I think WILD SORROW is my best yet. It was a story I felt called to tell, and the mystery woven within it mirrors the dark tragedy of the real saga of Indian Boarding Schools. The murder in this tome is a hate crime. There was such fear and hatred of Indians when the boarding schools were established that the results were a virtual holocaust. Most people don't realize that the Indian Boarding Schools were still operating in fair numbers as late as the 1960's and 1970's. There are a few that remain today, however their mission has softened and changed and no longer requires them to "kill the Indian in order to save the child."
Soon after the WILD SORROW tour, I am heading to the backcountry with my pack for a couple months to do research for the next WILD Mystery. I always go live in the wild when I do research, and the places we go require climbing, packing, and lots of foot travel--they can't be accessed by roads. I always feel intensely alive then. We have always done adventures like this, including many, many times with Mountain when he was alive. But the last summer of his life, when we knew he was dying, we quit our jobs and went high into the mountains and lived totally wild, including feeding ourselves off the land. There is a story about this on my website at www.SandiAult.com, so I won't go into it here. Since then, whenever I take to the backcountry for research, I feel Mountain's presence. Maybe I even go to feel closer to him, more than anything. At any rate, it's good for our pack, good bonding time, good WILD time.
Contributing editor, Julie Compton, originally hails from ThrillerFest
ITW's annual celebration of the thriller world is the largest event of its kind, a meeting place for authors, readers, budding writers, and publishing industry professionals.
For 2011, we’ll be back in the heart of New York in July with the ThrillerFest conference including CraftFest and AgentFest.
ThrillerFest VI will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.
The dates will be July 6-9, 2011.
More information to follow.
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