Dear Reader,
One of the questions a writer hears a lot is, "How did you come up
with that idea?" Many people seem to believe you can find the
point in time where an idea for a book was born, but the truth of it
is that most times you've been gathering bits and pieces of events and
characters and slowly circling in on the idea that will bring them all
to life.
So it was with Gone South. I think the idea began five or six
years ago, the first time I saw a man standing on the street, holding
a sign that said "Will Work For Food." Sometime after that, I read
a magazine account of Vietnam veterans who had been contaminated by
Agent Orange and were dying. I walked into a bookstore in New Orleans
maybe a year after that and found a fascinating and very strange tome
about freaks that included an old sepia-tone photo of a man with three
arms. Also on that same trip, I took a tour of the swamp---not for any
particular book, but for my own education. Later on, I watched an
interesting TV show on PBS about Elvis Presley impersonators. One
night on CNN, I saw a report on a Vietnam veteran who'd gone berserk
and shot a couple of people, and the newscaster said that the man had
been out of work for several months.
And this is how it happens. Gone South was starting to come
together.
Gone South is on one level the story of a man on the run from a
tragic mistake, but on another level it's the story of a man moving
toward something that he doesn't fully understand. Its basic
premise is that you can start out in one direction, and life and
circumstances take you another way entirely, and sometimes all you can
do is hang on for the ride. Gone South is about the pressures
and uncertainties of life, the unfairness of it all; but it's also
about toughness, and faith, and finding a way through the thorniest
maze to find some kind of answer.
All the main characters in Gone South are searchers. They are
moving into the unknown, on dark and twisty roads that gradually
converge. They are linked by longing, by the hope that somewhere ahead
lies a sanctuary from the rough wilderness of life. But, as in every
journey, there's a price to be paid.
The world has become a hard place. There are difficult choices to be
made, and things happen to people that knock them off the tracks. But
Gone South is about fighting the good fight, no matter how
tough the adversity. It's about not giving up in the face of
crippling problems, of finding a way from darkness into light against
all odds.
So that's where Gone South has come from. The man with the
"Work For Food" sign, the dying Vietnam veterans who followed orders
because they were good soldiers, the freak with three arms, the sultry
Louisiana swamp, the Elvis Presley impersonators, the veteran who
cracked under pressure and picked up a gun; all those are the
foundation upon which Gone South is built.
It's a strange trip, into a strange place. The dark and twisty roads
are waiting, and I hope you enjoy the ride.
Robert R. McCammon
