Dirt Road Home – Behind the Story

 

Ever since people learned about DIRT ROAD HOME, they have asked me “why did you write about Hal Mitchell?”. For those of you that read my first novel, ALABAMA MOON, you know that Hal had a supporting role to the main character, Moon Blake. Many people told me they wanted to know the rest of Moon’s story and I think they expected me to write a sequel. I thought about it long and hard, and had many ideas, but in the end, it was Hal’s story I wanted to tell. For one, I thought of Moon as nicely tucked into bed at his new home. For the time being, he was okay. But Hal was facing a whole mess of problems with an alcoholic father and four years of lockup ahead of him. So that’s what I got my head into.

With ALABAMA MOON I lucked out when I found a game warden in the Talladega National Forest that wanted to help me. He was invaluable when it came to fine-tuning my research into the plants and wildlife of that area. I had an equally valuable resource for writing DIRT ROAD HOME. One day I took my old pickup to the county landfill with a load of trash. The man that helped me unload was a convict in a white jump suit. His name was Chip and he was about my same age. He had a little metal building about the size of an outhouse that sat in the glaring sun in the middle of this giant garbage pit. He would sit inside and read until someone like me came by, and then he would come out and help unload. For doing this he earned a little money for cigarettes and things, but mostly it enabled him to get outside – which prisoners crave.

I started talking to Chip while he worked. First he told me that he was serving a life term for manslaughter. I asked him if he ever thought about escaping. He said that he did. I told him that it must be hard to see all those woods just at the edge of the landfill and not want to just run into them and disappear. He said it was. I said I bet I could get away. He said I probably could, but that it wouldn’t be worth it. You couldn’t contact your friends without getting them in trouble. You’d have to live every day alone and always on the move. Then, when they caught you, as they eventually would, they’d just add more years onto your sentence. Prison was better, he said. There was always hope that you’d get out and get your life back.

After I learned that Chip liked to read in his shack, he told me that he had written a novel. By that time I couldn’t resist telling him that I was a writer. He had never heard of me, but I promised to send him a book if he would tell me what it was like to live in prison. And I promised to read his novel for him and tell him what I thought of it.

I was already working on DIRT ROAD HOME at this point, and now my new contact could give me the inside information I really needed to turn it into the book it needed to be. I sent him ALABAMA MOON and he sent me his manuscript. Then we started trading phone calls and letters. I gave him feedback on his novel and he answered my questions about life “behind the fence.” What were some of the words they used for things? How did it feel on your first day? What did they do to you in there?

DIRT ROAD HOME started to come alive once I incorporated Chip’s insight. And ALABAMA MOON was being passed all over the prison. Chip said he had a waiting list of people that wanted to read it. Then I started getting letters from prisoners telling me how much they liked the book and even telling me some of their personal problems. I was surprised at how well most of them could write and I read all of the letters with interest and replied to some of them.

I thank Chip in the beginning pages of DIRT ROAD HOME for his help. He didn’t know I was going to do this. I sent him a copy about two weeks before it came out and he called me and thanked me for it. I could tell it meant a lot to him. But I couldn’t have done it without him.

When you read DIRT ROAD HOME, the language and the situations are taken from the way it really is in prison. Although most juvenile facilities are not as bad as Hellenweiler, I believe Chip would tell you that some are worse. Happy reading.