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| Lisa Wingate |
PANAMA CITY — “Stories beget stories,” said
best-selling author Lisa Wingate, who will share the sources of her
inspirations with local readers Tuesday and Wednesday.
Wingate’s latest novel, “The Sea Keeper’s
Daughters,” begins in 1935, as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt cajoles her husband
into signing an executive order creating what will become Federal Project Number
One. The results will touch every corner of a vast but struggling country —
yet, 80 years later, will be virtually forgotten.
“Those involved in Federal One were far ahead of
their time,” Wingate said. “They were the beginning of the Civil Rights movement
before there was a Civil Rights movement. They pushed toward equality for women
before anyone was talking about equal opportunity.”
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| Her new novel. |
The new novel follows the struggles of a young
woman hired into the Federal Writer’s Project, a subdivision of Federal One.
“Roosevelt’s Federal Writers faced incredible
challenges,” Wingate said. “They were told to document the stories of real
lives and real people struggling to survive the Depression. Their mandate was
to be all-inclusive, to break down hard and fast societal boundaries, much like
Kathryn Sockett’s character does in ‘The Help,’ when she interviews black maids
in the South.”
The Federal Writers not only documented the
natural wonders of the country, but the hidden lives of minorities, working
women, immigrant laborers, sharecroppers and others typically ignored by the
history books. While Wingate’s tale is fictional, it brings to life the
experiences of a Federal Writer when a modern-day woman discovers the letters
of a great aunt who was disowned by her wealthy family after signing on with
the WPA.
The tale explores the experiences of a woman
traveling into the unknown, all for the sake of a story. The Federal Writers
often found themselves on the wrong sides of local powerbrokers, special
interest groups, and eventually Congressional committees hunting for communists
at the dawn of the Red Scare.
The shifting of political fortunes meant the
thousands of stories documented by the Federal Writers were quietly hidden away
in filing vaults. Only now, as the Library of Congress begins posting the
documents online, many of those narratives are being made available for the
first time since they were written.
“These stories show us where we come from as a
country and as a people,” Wingate said. “They inspired novels like Steinbeck’s
‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ yet so many of us know little about the Federal Writers
themselves. I wrote ‘The Sea Keeper’s Daughters’ to bring to light not only the
lives of the people on the pages, but the lives of the people behind the pens.”
The Federal Writers is a forgotten part of
American cultural history in much the same way as family stories are lost
between the generations, simply because someone felt uncomfortable or
unappreciated and kept their mouths shut.
Wingate will speak on the importance of preserving
our stories — including unobtrusive techniques one can employ to get still
tongues wagging and record your own family narratives — during her appearances
next week. Besides addressing the Panama City Rotary early Tuesday, she will
have two signing and speaking events open to the general public.
She will be at St. Andrews Coffee House &
Bistro, 1006 Beck Ave., in Panama City from 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8; and at
the Blountstown Public Library from 4-5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“The Blountstown visit is special to me because my
grandmother started that library,” said Kathie Bennett, Wingate’s publicist and
the daughter of former Panama City mayor Gerry Clemons.
And one would be correct to suspect there’s an
untold story waiting to be shared in that anecdote as well.
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