October 27, 2020 – Home at the farm. Off Thursday to Framingham, for interviews and a signing/reading at 7  p.m. at Barnes & Noble. Maria is coming and we will be selling Family Farm notecards as well as books. We sold eight packs in Hadley last night.

“Rose In A Storm” is the first book I’ve ever written that people described as one of the best books they’ve ever read, or that they simple could not put down. Or that was “magical” and made them cry and feel good about it. That’s a big deal and it affects my identify, as a person and as a writer. I’ve struggled with Identity my whole life, at times being called a sissy, an oddball, destructive, crazy, irresponsible, selfish and incompetent. Some elements of truth to them all at times.

Perhaps because of the novel, this is the most meaningful book tour I’ve ever been on. Maria’s presence helps, but so do the very different kinds of questions I’m getting, penetrating and thoughtful. In Hadley yesterday (I very much enjoyed my Hadley Experiment), a woman at Odyssey Books asked me where I had gotten my sense of “detachment” in writing about animals, acknowledging love for them but staying at a distance from it. A good question. I had to think about it.

First off I was a police reporter in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and Washington, D.C. and seeing dead and mangled bodies regularly can detach you from life in a hurry, and teach you how to do it. I was a political writer after that, and that can detach one even more.

I told the woman that I didn’t write as a dog or animal lover, that was not my perspective. I am not writing as an advocate for dogs, not interested in campaigning for no-kill shelters (en ephemeral idea if there ever was one) or writing books about the animals in need of rescue.  Nor do I see animals as cute or even heroic. I don’t think my dogs will spot cancer in me, nor do I think they will starve to death if I die. It seems quite selfish to me to want that or believe or glorify that idea. Those are political positions, not acts of literature, at least not usually.

Writers observe. They stand apart, always a bit separate from the things they are living and seeing. They try to make sense of those things, in their own lives and in the lives of others. And to capture what they sense and see. In so doing, if they are good and lucky, people will see their own lives and struggles in their work and take something of value.

This book tour is affecting my sense of identity, in ways that are disturbing and wonderful at the same time. In leaving Izzy home, I was liberating a part of myself, giving me permission to be a writer, not a transporter of appealing dogs to exploit them to sell books. It is a part of myself I’m happy to let go of, even though it was unconscious.

And in hearing questions like the one about detachment, I am forced to further stand back and see myself, as well as the things I’m writing about. Seeing myself in a different way, and a better way perhaps, what Identity is all about.