by Liv Stecker
They say that the best writers draw from personal experience, and while Caleb Mannan certainly isn't an Okie from the early 20th century, the characters from his recently self-published novel, Bust It Like A Mule, spring from the pages as if they were old familiar friends of the Colville native.
Bust It tells the story of Cotton Kingfisher, the son of a "lousy cuss drunk" in Oklahoma who set out as a boy to make his way into the west, where he rides the rails and works across the Dakotas and the Pacific Northwest, leaving a trail of legend behind him as he goes along, defining the difference between a bum and a hobo who "chooses the life of a gypsy and earns his way through it..." Eventually, Cotton's travels take him to the Land Where The World Began and into the hometown of a "beer bottle pretty girl" named Jael, who forever alters the course of his wandering.
Told in the rambling voice of a drifter poet, Bust It Like a Mule is songlike in its spoken-word dialect and colloquial disinterest in grammatical propriety. Much like the hero of the story, Mannan's writing trudges along, winding through the emotions of the reader like so many mountain roads in Glacier National Park, which serves as the central setting for the unfolding of Cotton's fate. As the story develops, bits and pieces of northwest history are intertwined as Cotton moves through the Second World War and makes his way working seasonally for the Forest Service in Oregon and then Montana as a firefighter. Set against the backdrop of mountains, train cars and raging wildfires, Cotton Kingfisher battles local stigmas as well as his own baggage in the ultimate human quest to belong.
An avid storyteller and writer since elementary school, Caleb kept siblings and friends spellbound with his ridiculous tall tales and imaginative ramblings. Caleb married Jenny Anne Bulla, a local bluegrass musician, and the couple has four children. The themes of small town family, community spirit, down home music and dancing weave their way through Cotton's story, and manifest in a soundtrack for the book that has been developed by Caleb's friends and family, including his wife Jenny Anne, brother Jacob, and childhood best friend Kevin Morgan. The Mannans currently reside on the South Hill in Spokane Washington, where they held a "Hootenanny" release party on July 31st, at the Spokane Women's Club, complete with readings by the author, live music from the soundtrack, and a good old fashioned, small town hoedown.
Growing up several miles south of Colville, Mannan is no stranger to the radical individualists, self-starting curmudgeons, dramatic beauty and hardship of the rustic northwest. Based loosely on an amalgam of characters throughout Caleb's life, Cotton Kingfisher is built on the core personality of J.E. Jones, Mannan's maternal grandfather, who was a singer/songwriter, migrant worker, and heroic legend to Caleb and his brothers throughout their childhood. The second born of four boys and one girl, Caleb Mannan lived on a little farm in Arden where they were homeschooled by their mother, Pat. As a young teenager, he worked a paper route for the Statesman Examiner in downtown Colville. He attributes his persistence in writing to a teacher that worked with him in highschool, Kay Bauer. Raised under somewhat strict, conservative standards, Mrs. Bauer encouraged Caleb to write passionately, allowing him to push boundaries. "As long as it made sense with the story, she supported it," he says, giving him the opportunity to venture into darker themes like war and conflict. Caleb says, "She made writing as a boy fun."
Getting Bust It published was about as much of a fight as Cotton Kingfisher puts up throughout the story. As Caleb's fourth complete novel (but the first to be published!) it was the first to garnish noteable feedback from publishers and literary agents. Granted, the feedback was resoundingly negative, but each response was personal and specific, in contrast to the form rejections Mannan was used to getting for his other stories. Repeated rejections had worn on Caleb, who also works full time in business for a subsidiary company of Expedia.
When he wrote Bust It Like a Mule over a two week period in 2012, it was more of a recreational exploit than his darker and more serious writing endeavors had been for him. It happened after he and Jenny Anne visited Glacier National Park for their 10th wedding anniversary and Caleb was instantly captivated by the wild grandeur of the landscape and the Native American Lore that the area was rich with.
Jenny Anne and Caleb made a pact to get his book published, come hell or highwater, but after so many edits, rewrites and turn downs, however personal they were, the project lost steam. Finally Jenny Anne took matters into her own hands and undertook to have the novel self published. She surprised Caleb with the first proof copies in June of this year. More editing, and preparing to self-market the book, Jenny Anne's kickstart was the momentum they needed to get going, and to "bust it like a mule" in true Cotton Kingfisher form.
Mannan acknowledges his deviation from writing norms in the storytelling style of his book, he says, in an attempt to "connect with people on a visceral level." While some early readers of the story have said it takes a chapter or two to get in stride with the garrulous banter, Mannan says that it is the same narrator's voice that makes it so easy to read aloud and share. And like Caleb insists, he is a storyteller first and a writer second. The back cover of his novel is sprinkled with a tongue-in-cheek nod to literary rejectors, as if to thank them for giving the Mannans reason to wrestle the story into being just to spite them, much as the hero of the story would have.
By the end of Bust It Like a Mule, the reader can't help but root for the crusty loner who has taken on his own demons as much as he has the closeminded Montana town where he lands. Cotton Kingfisher reminds us that a hero is defined by his actions more than his appearance, and that the bad guys aren't always the drifters fresh off the freight train.While Mannan might not have the war stories that Cotton Kingfisher can boast, he certainly captures the pulse of the very human struggle for commitment and belonging, and in that, his experience growing up in Stevens County is enough.
Bust It Like a Mule is available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats, as well as at Auntie's bookstore in downtown Spokane. Visit the author's blog at CalebMannan.com for more background on the story, artwork by the author, and to listen to songs from the soundtrack by local artists.
No comments:
Post a Comment