Elizabeth Crook's Texas
by Robin Bradford
 Austin writer Elizabeth Cook, the author of The Raven's Bride, a
fictional account of Sam Houston's first marriage in Tennessee, has a
new novel about the Texas Revolution. Promised Lands, a sweeping,
sensitive story of the displacement of one people by another, is
receiving great reviews.
Crook received her B.A. in English from Rice University in Houston,
where she studied with fiction writer Max Apple. Having grown up
in San Marcos, she has spent most of her life in Central Texas and
prefers it that way. (A childhood move with her family to
Australia where her father was a U.S. ambassador she recalls as a
difficult time, as everything was so different from home.)
Giving directions to her apartment in central Austin she said, "Watch
for the big totem pole through the glass door." Indeed, her entry
way is filled with a huge totem pole painted in shades of brown which
her father brought her back from New Guinea. Upstairs there are
books covering two walls and antiques stashed here and there, including
an especially beautiful and unusual cherry wood kidney-shaped desk that
her grandmother had made for her mother when she as a child. From
a silver frame smiles the grandmother in question who recently
died. Mary Holdworth Butt, wife of Howard E. Butt, founder of the
HEB grocery store chain, left behind stacks of diaries of her life as
wife, mother, and first woman chair of the state mental health
board. So Elizabeth says she comes by writing naturally.
At age 34, she is beginning work on a third novel -- something
completely different, she explains -- winding down the promotional tour
for Promised Lands, planning a summer wedding, and looking for a
house. As we sit, me on a floral couch that feels more like a
feather bed, she in a Victorian style wicker chair with striped
pillows, I realize that after traveling through the battlefields she
writes so affectingly about, I imagined her to be a big woman who could
walk across the mountains. Wearing a pastel sundress and
wire-rimmed glasses, she is actually rather petite, someone whose power
comes from her determination, hard work, and intelligence.
AC: Tell me about your journey
in creating the characters and places of Promised Lands.
EC: I started my research in 1986 when John Jenkins, who had a
rare book dealership, put out a catalogue of all his Texana
books. I had toyed with working with the period of the Texas
revolution so I asked him, "If I were to write a book about this
period, of which I know absolutely nothing, which books do I
need?" So he pulled out for me first-hand accounts which were
what guided me through the whole thing and inspired me.
And then it was a matter of making friends along the way. I went
to a lecture on the mustang trade in Texas and met Dan Flores. We
got to be friends and one time when he was visiting at our family ranch
we sat in this old cave that I've gone to ever since I was a child and
talked about my character the Indian guide Metis.
And I got acquainted with Jeff Long and Stephen Harrigan. Jeff
wrote Duel of Eagles and then Empire of Bones which is a fictional
account of the battle of San Jacinto. Steve is working on his --
I just read chapter three and it's great. When we first found out
we were all three working on the same subject we got nervous. So
we divvied up the territory. Steve got dibs on the Alamo and Jeff
said he wanted San Jacinto and I was already working on Goliad. We were able to work together and not compete. We shared
information and we even have cameo appearances of each other's
characters in our books. And Steve wrote one scene for me, the scene of Crucita's death. It had just gotten too emotional
for me and I couldn't kill her off.
AC: What part did he write?
EC: In the historical account, there is a woman who was killed at
the battle of San Jacinto. But no one knew who killed her. So I wrote a scene up to the moment of her death. The fire was
coming at her and she was calling for help. And then I faxed him
those few pages and I went out for a jog and I came back and he had the
death scene there on my fax machine. I sat down and read it and
cried and cried. The way he did it, the murder was
senseless. I would have tried to give it some reason, but it was
much more effective the way he did it.
The problem for me with being a writer is it's so solitary and
lonely. This sort of helped fix that. I would call on Steve or
Jeff and they would edit each chapter as I wrote it and make
suggestions. And then the favor was returned as I began to read
what they wrote.
AC: Tell me about La Bahia in
Goliad, the site of the massacre of over 300 Anglo and Tejano soldiers,
which is at the center of Promised Lands.
EC: That place is magic. There's some feeling there that is
very provocative and compelling. It's a spiritual feeling to
me. I felt it the first time I was there and most people
do. There is something about the place that is haunted. You
hear strange things, you feel strange emotions. A lot of it was
that I was resurrecting all of the memories from my reading while I was
there. I'm not a superstitious person and I don't know if I
believe in ghosts but you hear
things! Luis Cazarez-Rueda, who was running the place at the
time, was from Mexico and he was very superstitious and believed in
ghosts. One night, he said I could come back to visit the chapel
if I came alone. He wasn't supposed to let people do that. It was a gift to me, and it changed the book.
AC: What are the historical
roots for different characters?
EC: Toby [Hugh's 12-year-old son who follows his father, a
doctor, into the war along with his pet Coon Dog] is drawn largely from
a man named John C. Duval who wrote a book called Early Times in Texas. His
memoirs included his escape from the massacre. He and his dog
were hiding in the bushes from the lancers who were searching for
survivors and his dog started growling. He writes that he put his
hand on the dog's throat and trained him to be quiet. Well, there
was a foreword written by his sisters in a later edition and they said
that wasn't the truth. He had had to strangle the dog. But
he could never speak of it without crying so he made up this other
story.
Domingo de la Rosa [the owner of a ranch where espionage is gathered
for the Mexican forces] is drawn largely from a man named Don Carlos de
la Garza who was a ranchero on the San Antonio river. He
conducted espionage rings at the time of the revolution. The
Mexicans were winning every battle until San Jacinto and that was due
largely to these informants.
Callum Mackay [a Scot whose family is killed by the Comanches] is made
up, though there were people on the frontier who were scalped and
survived.
AC: There were certain scenes
that were magical: when Callum's mother is carried by the wind
off the cliff in Scotland, when Adelaido shoots the pale gray pacer
whose ghost haunts Matagorda, and when the Comanche discovers that a
sacred stone has been mysteriously moved. Each of these struck me
as mystic causes for the horrible events that occur to the characters'
lives. Did you think of it this way?
EC: I actually had ended the book differently and my editor had
me cut the last chapter which went back to the stone. I felt that
the stone was indicative of the land and the fact that the land is in
the possession of different people at different times. In the
original ending, the baby Samuel [the son of Callum McKay who survives
an Indian attack] who is now grown, has gone to claim his father's land
and he finds this stone which he perceives as an object of great
mystery. He doesn't know it is the cause of his mother's
death. He takes out a little picnic and arranges it on the
stone. My editor said it was "cloying." So I ended instead
on a very sad note instead of a whimsical note -- which was also sad
but which carried us into the future.
The horse came about because I loved all these tales I read about
horses and was horrified by how the mustang trade was really
done. The pacer, this wild steed that comes back as a ghost, was
symbolic for Callum McKay because he comes and haunts the island
looking for revenge.
The mother falling off the cliff resulted in her son Callum being
homeless and having to go to a new place in search of land. I
wanted to dramatize that all of these people were displaced. They
were all seeking a home. And here was this land with all these
different races and religions and everybody claiming the land. All of them had lost something in order to come here. And of
course, when they came they displaced the Indians.
AC: With Promised Lands, I think your writing has become more confident and smooth. Do you agree?
EC: Yeah, I like this book so much better than The Raven's Bride. That was a
love story, a smaller, easier book. But I wanted to write
something bigger and that meant more. Promised Lands is an epic with a
lot of war, a lot of violence. I found myself saying when
promoting the book that "This is not a book about the war. It's
about individuals caught up in the war." And it is that, but it
is also about the war. I realize that people don't want to read
war books in the same way that they want to read love stories. It
can be intimidating if you know you're about to head off into a journey
that's going to involve a lot of heartache. But I think it's
worth it to the reader. I wouldn't have written a book that I
didn't want to read.
AC: The title Promised
Lands sounds very romantic and
similarly the book jacket has a landscape bathed in rose-colored
light. But after you read it, the title drips with irony. Why did you choose it?
EC: They had nixed 17 titles -- Louis Black made up this
one. And I like it. I had to have a title the next day
because Doubleday was going to print their catalogue. My favorite
title was The Gates of the Presidio. They said: "No one will know what a 'presidio' is." Or The Fires of Goliad. They
said people wouldn't know how to pronounce it.
And I don't think the cover conveys the emotions of the story. But the original cover they sent me looks like southern Utah in the
middle of a drought instead of Texas during the rainy season! (She slips off the dust-jacket of her book
to reveal the original jacket she keeps hidden beneath.) We have here some sort of vegetation that resembles tumbleweed. A
mountain! And a dead cow. They obviously couldn't decide
whether to market it as a romance or a Western! So I went to the
bookstore and got a bunch of books with South Texas vegetation and sent
them, circling the mesquite trees. "Here's a mesquite
tree." "A scrub oak would be appropriate." "Purple phlox to
go with the sky if you're looking for color coordination."
I didn't realize until later that the lettering was all wrong. They don't look like any letters on any of the books I have on my
shelves. And then I realized: "Those are romance letters! I think they
were confused. They thought because I was a woman I wouldn't have
written a war story.
AC: Has your family been
important to your writing?
EC: My mom read to us when we were kids every night. C.S.
Lewis, A.A. Milne, Kipling -- all the Mowgli stories -- whatever caught
our fancy. I think she gave me a gift and I learned a sense of
story and rhythm from listening to her read. My father was also
always quoting poetry. He loved language. I feel like I owe
them, not just for something I got genetically, but for something they
nurtured.
They were also a big part of the writing. Especially The Raven's
Bride. My father had a very long illness and I would read to him
at night what I had written during the day. He looked forward to
it and made good comments.
AC: The fiction writer Cynthia Ozick wrote: "If we had to say what writing is, we would define
it essentially as an act of courage." Do you agree?
EC: I think my writing is probably less courageous than
contemporary writing because there's a protection in writing historical
novels in that it's not likely to be confused with your own
story. I have friends of mine that appear in Promised Lands, but
you would never recognize them because they're wearing buckskins and
ponchos. In fact, when writing the massacre scene I had to keep a
sense of humor because it's the only way I could get through it. So I named those guys after old boyfriends whom I did not like. [Laughing] And they went down begging!
AC: Do you have any quotes
which inspire you to write?
EC: [Elizabeth invites me to look at her refrigerator where
various cartoon are taped up. She points out her favorite which
shows a woman typing away at a computer and a couple watching her
saying, "Walks in the woods. Afternoon naps. Emily tried
everything. Who would have thought a little mousse in the bangs
would spur another five chapters?"] Nothing serious. Really, for
me it's just groping from sentence to sentence, feeling my way in the
dark. I try to leave it in a place where I'm going to be inspired
rather than where I'm at a loss. And then I just make myself turn
on the computer the same time I turn on my coffee pot. There's
not any philosophy behind it besides a compulsion to finish.
AC: What moments in your
writing career have been particularly sweet?
EC: Placing the last period to the final sentence and knowing
that it's good. Over Thanksgiving, I was staying with my parents
and I finished the novel, but I was afraid to tell them because I was
embarrassed. I thought I would cry. So I went around for
three days saying I hadn't finished it. They would ask, "How long
until the end?" I would say, "A little bit longer. I've got
a little more to do" and then I would go up in my room and sit. [Laughter] I just couldn't bear to say I was finished. I had been
working on this book for six years. But I finally told
them. They went out and bought roses for me and I tried to read
them the last few pages from the computer screen but I was sobbing, so
my father came over and read the last pages aloud. That felt like
a real victory.
AC: What are the bleakest
moments of writing?
EC: I can't say it's when something tragic happens to your
characters because those are bittersweet. If you've got it right
there is a kind of sweetness to it because the emotion is very clean
and intense.
I would say it's more the business end. As you promote a book you
learn the six phrases that are going to inspire people to buy it and
then you start to think: "Wait a minute, I don't want to trick people into buying my
book." You want to appeal to the people who are going to love
it. The sad thing is you have to do the promotion -- unless
you're Cormac McCarthy. It makes a huge difference, I
think. I know I've sold a lot of copies because I've been out
there working hard to do it. And then the campaign trail -- the
promotion tour is like a campaign -- peters out and you end up in Buda
or Salado . . . [laughter] . . . on a gravel road. You can't find the
place because it's hidden in the scrub oaks.
You have to become an extrovert and talk on the radio. You try
not to stutter. It's not what most writers are best at. We're used to having time to think and to revise sentences. And
yet more and more it's necessary for selling books because there are a
lot of books coming and going and nobody's specifically waiting
for your next one.
AC: Your editor -- the one that
said your original ending was "cloying" -- was Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis. It must be difficult to have lost her. What role
did she play in your writing?
EC: She was my touchstone at Doubleday. When she bought The Raven's Bride, it had been
through a lot of rejections. She called me personally instead of
calling my agent and said that she'd read it in two days and wanted to
acquire it. I was afraid to believe it. I kept waiting for
the other shoe to drop but it never did. When I went up to meet
with her, she asked what I was working on presently and I told her about Promised Lands. She wanted an
outline but I didn't know how the story would unfold
itself. I like to figure that out as I go. So she
convinced Doubleday to do a contract with me for two books based on my
description of what the second book would be about. That was
so great for me. She did me a big favor by giving this unproven
writer a chance based on just a description of the setting and a few
characters. Then she edited the book that became Promised Lands as I wrote it. Very meticulously. She worked very hard on it. She even
edited one draft over the Christmas holidays.
AC: What have you been working
on since Promised Lands?
EC: I'm working on a contemporary novel. Very courageous!
[laughter] It's a story within a story and it's about a
writer. In the first chapter he's winding up his promotion tour
in Buda . . . [laughter] . . . reading in the conference room in the Adam's
Extract building. I know that's not exactly in Buda, but I have
learned to take liberties. That's all I know right now. I
don't even know if I'll finish it. I've never written anything
contemporary and I've never written anything that wasn't a
tragedy. But I'm tired of the notecards. I don't want to do
any research for a while.
AC: What are you reading now?
EC: Sarah Bird's Virgin of the
Rodeo. I like it. She does contemporary fiction
well. I'm thinking I can learn from her.
AC: You are hosting a fabulous
cocktail party. What writers and/or historical characters, living
or dead, would you invite?
EC: Ooooh. Gosh, I actually have to say it's my friends
here in Austin. It would be Steve Harrigan and Sarah Bird and
Larry Wright and James Michener because I admire him so much -- I think
he is one of the most generous people. It would be people I know,
the people I saw on Friday night.
AC: So you've already got your
cocktail party?
EC: Yes. I've got it!
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