Ruth Linnea Whitney is a novelist who has lived in Port Townsend, WA, on the Olympic Peninsula for decades. She is also a woman who has traveled extensively to third world countries with her doctor husband, who many times over the years, treated patients sorely in need of medical attention. One of the countries he worked in, Zaire, provides the setting for Whitney’s newest work, the novel Mimosa Road.

When I told friends I was reading a novel entitled Mimosa Road that takes place in Zaire and was totally emersed in it, the title confused them. Why would it be named after a drink? Well, Mimosa Road is the name of the road in Mimosa Village where Expats like Ruth’s main character Cass, her husband Will, and their two young boys, Corey and Mattie live. Their homes on Mimosa Road are, as you can imagine, quite different than those of the country’s native population. All the comforts of a Western civilization home, family cars, and household help set many scenes in the novel as does a typical small hut in Zaire, with shared sleeping mats and a tin roof for the lucky.

In the back cover blurb for the novel Nancy Kilgore, author of Bitter Magic, praises the book this way:

A page-turner, a history lesson, and a pleasure to read. Two remarkable women, an African native and a privileged American ex-pat, become friends as they find different ways to resist the cruel regime of Mobutu.  Mimosa Road is both a lyrical journey into an African village of the 1970s and an edge-of-your-seat story about life under a ruthless dictator.

I began my interview with Ruth by asking her about the authenticity she achieved in writing the lives of African natives and expats like her family.

Sheila:
Your novel certainly reads with the authenticity of someone who lived in Zaire. The evocation of how people there speak and their interactions with nonnative people of various nationalities, along with your facility in switching voices from those of the native people in Zaire to the white people who occupy a special “village,” which is to the inhabitants of Zaire not a real village at all, keep the reader engaged in the story.

Can you tell us a little bit about the roots of the novel and then something about how you worked out the writing that incorporated three languages?

Ruth:
From 1974 to 1976, I lived with my family in the sub-Saharan country then called Zaire, now DRC. By area, it’s the second largest country in Africa, among the richest in natural resources, and yet among the poorest countries in the world. When we lived there, the reign of Mobutu was in full swing. The moment we arrived we began hearing stories about Mobutu’s palatial estates in Europe and about his brutality to those who dared challenge his authority. And everywhere, we saw evidence of the poverty and suffering of the people.

My first novel, Slim, reflects those realities, too. I decided to set that story in a fictional country. But Zaire wasn’t finished with me yet. I decided I had one more novel of Africa wanting to come to light. And I set Mimosa Road in the neighborhood where we lived. It was fun revisiting that place in memory after so much time. I still see the sprawling lawn our young gardener kept trimmed with his coupe-coupe. I see the deck where our two preschool-age boys and their playmates did a dance of joy during a monsoon rain. I see the paraplegics on the hospital ward I visited regularly. I hear the goat we carried home in the trunk of our Mazda to serve at the party we gave for David’s nurses as we prepared to leave the country. So much of those twenty-four months are embedded in my memory.

Like other countries in Africa, Zaire/DRC is multilingual. Reportedly, 242 languages are spoken in Zaire alone. A typical Zairois might speak a minimum of three, including Lingala, the lingua franca or language of commerce, French, the official European tongue, and a tribal language. When David and I decided to move to Zaire, we were living in San Francisco. Each Saturday, we took French lessons at Inlingua. The classes focused on speaking rather than the writing I’d mostly done in my college French classes. Those Inlingua sessions were carried on exclusively in French, and when we reached Mimosa Village, we could get by in French, especially since Belgian French is spoken more slowly than Parisian French. Surrounded by non-English languages, we had to make an effort with at least one strange tongue. For me, it was French. But most of the women we encountered didn’t speak French, so I picked up a rudimentary stash of Lingala.

Writing is very much about voice. As a novelist, I love bringing in more than one character’s voice. When the Sofia character, a native of Zaire and a single mother whose husband has left her, appeared during the writing of Mimosa Road, I had to give her words not in English so when she spoke English, the words sounded like that of a nonnative, non-schooled speaker. You could say she used her stash of English.

The book alternates between Cass’s point of view and Sophia’s. Sophia’s sections came naturally once the character made her appearance. In a way, writing is like putting yourself in an ongoing play where you have to listen to whatever the character wants to say, in whatever language.

Sheila:
On the subject of listening to the characters, how did you corral them into the story structure you would use?

Ruth:
Structure is my Achilles heel. But reflecting on how I worked out a structure for Mimosa Road, I see that I started with the setting, which I knew so thoroughly, even after all this time. The characters came with little urging. But the characters couldn’t just muddle around shaking each other’s hands. The story had to go somewhere. There had to be a narrative arc, a denouement, a conclusion. After returning from Africa, I reflected on the expat experience and how some Expats go off the rails. One that fascinated me was Lori Berenson. This daughter of American academics who went to Peru and got involved, at some level, with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a group working against the government. She was apprehended on a local bus and sent to prison, where she served 20 years, some of it on probation. I stole her experience and gave it to Cass. This experience became my true north for the novel. I found I could shape the preceding events accordingly.

Sheila:
In her review of Mimosa Road, Kathryn Lang, retired Senior Editor of Southern Methodist University Press, writes:

Whitney’s characters are eminently believable, her settings, carefully drawn; the narrative propulsive. The interweaving of fiction with historical circumstance works well; her fictive world illuminates and particularizes the larger issues at play in 1970’s Zaire as well as has resonance for our contemporary world. I was by turns sorry for Cass, mad at her, proud of her, glad to see a ray of hope for her reunion with Will and the boys. Sofia’s situation was heartrending, as she is emblematic of the endless troubles in her country. It’s an engrossing tale, beautifully crafted, by turns suspenseful and lyrical, compelling the reader to turn the pages to reach a satisfying denouement. This is a fine work of fiction.

Novelist Richard Wiley, Pen Faulkner Award-winning author of Soldiers in Hiding, writes that the novel’s “readers are encouraged to believe that they, as individuals, can play a small part in changing the world.” He admits that not many novels he knows of can make that claim.

So, your story structure certainly worked.

In fact, Midwest Book Review mentions the “impressive and narrative storytelling skills” that make your novel “An original and inherently riveting read from beginning to end.”

I certainly felt that as I read.

Can you describe the story structure you discovered and created that winds the political, the marital, mothering, and friendship together into a plot with twists and turns?

Ruth:

I began with the setting, which served as a rich repository of possible directions the novel could go. I knew the protagonist would be an expat, a wife, a mother of young children. I could use these elements and lean into them in the novel. But I couldn’t simply stick with the trajectory of life as I lived it in that place. That would be a memoir.

I knew how I wanted the story to end, and that True North served as a homing device for the plot. One of my early writing mentors used to say that a writer was a fight reporter. He boiled down structure to crisis, climax, and conclusion. Nigel Watts in his books Writing a Novel and Getting it Published amplifies this bare-bones structure. He describes an eight-point arc he claims every classic plot needs:

1. Stasis
2. Trigger
3. The quest
4. Surprise
5. Critical choice
6. Climax
7. Reversal
8. Resolution

For me, these elements of plot inevitably unearthed twists and turns, as you put it. I tried always to keep in mind what the character wanted. At first, as I ruminated on the story arc, and I focused on the expat, Cass. But as her character became clear, other characters emerged and wanted to interact with her. A welcome discovery, as I like having the voice of more than one key character to foster an ongoing dialogue in the novel.

The emergence of the Sofia character was important because it gave me an alternate to Cass and set in place the chapters with two alternating voices.

Sheila:
What are your favorite surprises in the story you structured? Why?

Ruth:
I think my first surprise was the appearance of Sofia’s little boy, Elombe, and his drowning in the big rain. That gave his father a motive for leaving, for Daniel to appear, and for Sofia to turn to Cass.

One surprise was the journey to buy a goat and the way that scene unfolded.

One of my favorite surprise developments was the way Cass’ two boys revealed their distinct, contrasting personalities, which were so like my own two boys when they were small. This allowed me to relive tender moments in their early years.

Another surprise came after the novel was live and several readers mentioned that they found the story to be the journey of two women seeking their own identity, apart from their husbands. I’ve lived with that question in my role as the wife of a physician, and apparently, it found its way onto the blank page.

Sheila:
Do you have any words of wisdom, tips or suggestions for others who are writing novels, especially novels based on their direct experience?

Ruth:
I’d tell them that the process of writing a novel is, at heart, a mystery. There’s no road map to making this collection of words a thing of beauty, meaning, or entertainment. Each novelist has to find her own path. Yet, we can look to those who’ve gone before and heed their counsel, as I’ve done with Nigel Watts. If the counsel fits, use it. If not, look elsewhere. I love Annie Dillard’s advice: “Write what only you can write.”

I’d say we need to focus on scenes to make our stores come alive, which amounts to showing an event rather than telling it.

It’s important to get feedback on your writing, but not necessarily from family or friends. It does you no good as a writer to have Mom tell you every word you write is wonderful. Seek feedback from those who dare to be honest and don’t worry about offending you.

If you’re just starting on this writing path, write short pieces, essays or short stories, say, before launching a novel. Get some sense of the craft before tackling the big story.

Sheila:
Thank you for these answers to my questions. I will reread Mimosa Road now with the background of your answers for a deeper dive into the story and for harvesting ideas and thoughts about my writing and where it is going now.