In his latest novel, Rednecks (St. Martin’s Press), Taylor Brown takes readers back to the early half of the twentieth century. But unlike in his previous historical novel, Wingwalkers (St. Martin’s Press, 2022), readers are not soaring above the American landscape amid the Great Depression. Instead, they are rooted in the coalmines of Logan County, West Virginia, 1921.
The story, which intermingles a large cast of historical and fictional characters, retells the Battle of Blair Mountain — the largest armed uprising in America since the Civil War.
“Hellish work down there in the mines and these shabby company towns with their paper-thin houses and tin-scrip money and black dust that got everywhere, all the time — up your nostrils and between your toes,” Brown writes in an early passage, depicting some of the conditions that lead up to the conflict.
And while bullets and bombs eventually erupt across chapters, it is not the lethal explosions that will keep readers engaged. Brown’s gift as an author is his ability to deliver stories at an exhilarating pace without sacrificing character. In part, he accomplishes this through rich and unflinching language. But in the case of Rednecks, he also manages to keep the stakes front and center, without it ever becoming burdensome, tired or cliché.
“One side had power and influence; the other was willing to die,” he writes in an early passage. “One of the oldest, bloodiest stories in a very old book — old as civilization itself.”
THOMAS CALDER: Speak to me about the early stages of Rednecks and how it changed shape from the original story version you published with The Bitter Southerner in 2018, to the novel we have today.
TAYLOR BROWN: Oh, I could almost write a book about the writing of Rednecks. This one was a bear.
I started forming the story back in 2017. I’d been steeping myself in Mine Wars history at the encouragement of my friend and freelance editor Jason Frye — a native son of Logan, West Virginia, where the Battle of Blair Mountain took place. Then violence erupted at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which rocked me hard. Something very ugly had reared its head and I sensed we were entering a new era of civil strife and violence. I saw images of white men marching with Confederate battle flags and paramilitary gear — some of whom would likely self-identify as rednecks — and I wondered at the way a word could be reshaped over time, even contorted. And I wondered what they’d think if they knew the original American rednecks of the 1920s were fighting for social progress, economic justice, and the right to unionize. That one in five was Black and one-third foreign-born. I wanted that story told.
At the same time, I also saw images of people in red bandannas who were providing security not for the white supremacists, but for the counter-protestors. I would come to find out they were members of Redneck Revolt, an “anti-racist, anti-fascist community defense formation” that takes its inspiration from the redneck miners of the 1920s.
So I began writing a short story that braided the history of Battle of Blair Mountain with the story of a march a century later — a contemporary timeline in which a young man gets involved with an anti-racist, anti-fascist community defense organization not unlike Redneck Revolt. The Bitter Southerner published my short story “Rednecks” in 2018 and I began to expand that story into a full-length novel. In this form, the two timelines dueled back and forth, echoing and ricocheting off each other. I was drawing fairly direct comparisons between the civil rights marches of the 2020s and the Blair Mountain march of a century before. In fact, I was heartened when one of my favorite musicians, Tyler Childers, drew a very similar comparison in his 2020 album Long Violent History:
Could you imagine just constantly worryin’
Kickin’ and fightin’, beggin’ to breathe
How many boys could they haul off this mountain
Shoot full of holes, cuffed, and laid in the streets
‘Til we come in to town in a stark ravin’ anger
Looking for answers and armed to the teeth
So four years and 92,000 words after the short story, I submitted this original draft of Rednecks to my editor, who rejected it. He felt the dual timelines were too much for a single book. While I came to see that he was right, it felt like a sledgehammer blow at the time. Five years of work and more than 90,000 words — every single one written and rewritten again and again — possibly gone.
Writing isn’t for the faint of heart. In my experience, it’s something of an emotional and psychological crucible. At this level, the rejections might come less often but they’re big enough to impact your life, livelihood, and very identity. (And I’ve had a few.) But the words of my late father kept coming to me, quoting Churchill: When you’re going through hell, keep going. So often, if you keep putting one foot in front of the other (marching?), even in darkness, you’ll find your way. If you’re willing to find a light, you will. The most important thing is that you don’t quit or close your eyes to your vision.
CALDER: And that vision — how did it evolve once your editor initially rejected it?
BROWN: As I was writing, I saw the historical events as a kind of skeleton of the novel, a skeletal “bone-house” to be fleshed with the characters themselves. And I tried to fly as close to the historical record as possible, as I wanted to write the definitive novel of the conflict. At times I envisioned the book’s setting like the landscape of a model train set and we are flying just above it, dropping into the heads of various characters in different chapters. In fact, there’s a scene in the book where a pilot comes back from a bombing flight with his plane full of bullet holes and brush snared in his undercarriage because he’d been flying so low to the treetops — sometimes I felt like that pilot.
Of course, that proximity certainly made things more challenging at times, as I was largely unwilling to bend known facts to fit the narrative. But many of the facts and accounts themselves are conflicting or problematic, so there was a lot of “space” to work with in the history — a lot of mystery, which is the lifeblood of fiction. At times I veered too far into the historical detail and had to shave back some meat from the bone. But the book is full of little nuggets and fragments and “Easter eggs” for those who know the history well enough to recognize them.
What I also see now is that the contemporary storyline is still there, just as a kind of invisible bulwark that may lift the historical timeline closer to the surface, thundering just below our present-day reality. The book might be “historical fiction,” but it wasn’t originally written that way. And so that part of the writing wasn’t fully lost — it was instrumental to the creation of the book before us. And, of course, the modern timeline may arise one day in a book of its own.
CALDER: Did you yourself recognize when you were veering too far into the historical detail or was that something your editor identified later in the process? This question is, in part, one about time and distance between drafts. For younger writers, embracing time between drafts can often be a challenge — they don’t want to let a story sit, but time might very well be what is needed. Yet, for more established writers, such as yourself, time might be limited due to publishing demands, which is where the editor comes in handy. Tell me more about your drafting process for Rednecks.
BROWN: For me time is crucial. I really need it for that perspective you just can’t get when you’re swimming around deep inside the book.
As I work through drafts of a novel, I typically start by handing it off to a trusted reader like my partner or my mom (no kidding) for the initial feedback — that’s maybe at the second or third draft stage. Then, after working in their feedback, it goes to my freelance editor, Jason Frye, and finally to my agent. Each time there are several weeks or even months before I hear back, so that it kills both birds with the same stone. Not only do you have enough time to detach yourself a bit from the book and work on something else, gaining some much-needed objectivity and perspective, but the feedback of those readers at various stages is instrumental for identifying the fat — and all kinds of other improvements that could be made.
Working with a professional freelance editor like Jason (to whom Rednecks is dedicated) has been crucial for me. I first got the idea after I read Renni Brown’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and tracked down the editing company she’d started, The Editorial Department, which provides different levels of freelance editorial services. They act almost like a matchmaker between you and an editor. Professional editing services don’t come cheap, but MFA programs aren’t cheap either. Later I found Jason via a coworking space where we both rented desks and it’s been an amazing relationship. (I recommend other writers seeking him out.)
All my books have been sold on spec, meaning they were pretty much complete before my publisher bought them, so I’ve rarely dealt with publication demands that limited my time to make changes, etc. Basically, we try to bring my editor the very best book possible, and he pretty much rejects it or accepts it. Sometimes he makes suggestions for a tweaked ending or epilogue, but I don’t think we’ve ever done really substantive changes in collaboration, nor has he read a draft of a book still in development. I think the old Maxwell Perkins or Gordon Lish type of relationship where the editor really helps the writer shape the book and shepherd it to publication is rarer these days unless you have a story or platform they really think they can sell — at least that’s been my experience.
CALDER: Let’s shift to research. You’ve written several historical novels. Has your approach shifted over time? Do you find you are more confident and comfortable in identifying when you know enough about a given period/topic to start writing about it? Or does every project present unique challenges, wherein your past experience doesn’t necessarily inform how you tackle your current project?
BROWN: I’ve actually rounded my way back to an approach that’s worked well for me, which is to start with a short story or two on a given project/place/idea. Not only does that allow me to flesh out the characters and action a bit, but it’s much less daunting in terms of research. My novels Fallen Land, The River of Kings, Pride of Eden, and Rednecks all started as short stories. I’ve found a story is just a really great way to get started and flesh things out, developing characters and storylines in a more concentrated medium (especially since I don’t outline my novels). You don’t have to know everything about a time or place or topic to write a short story — but you do have to get to the heart of the matter.
As far as research, I try to do it somewhat in tandem with the writing; otherwise, if you read everything beforehand, it’s possible to know too much. You can crowd out some of the mystery that’s so essential to following the vision of a story or novel. I tend to assemble and read a lot of material quickly at first, almost scanning for what’s relevant, so I know where to find it as I dig in for more. That gives me a bird’s eye view of the topic and the literature around it without making it so deeply ingrained that it kills the imagination. It’s almost like you need just a little distance . . . but not too much. And finding the right amount might vary from book to book, topic to topic, and writer to writer.
And I’d say the process is similar for any novel that requires research, not just historical fiction. For instance, my novel Pride of Eden is entirely contemporary, but it required so much research into the exotic animal trade, big cat behavior, and actually visiting wildlife sanctuaries, hearing stories, and talking to subject matter experts. The process was similar.
With Rednecks, I was depicting not just a historical era but real events and a handful of real characters, so the research was more intensive than any I’d done. The field research was daunting as well, as coal companies still own and block access to Blair Mountain and some of the other locations in the book. After running into a bunch of company security gates, I started driving around in some of the surrounding hollers with my ’78 Yamaha dirt bike in the back of truck until I got talking to some old-timers who perked up at the sight of the vintage bike. Pretty soon we got to talking and they told me how to get up there, which required riding up was basically a rocky creek on my dirt bike. I lost a foot-peg in the process but got up where few folks have.
CALDER: I don’t outline either, but for some reason hearing you say that for this particular book shocks me. There are so many storylines in it, yet as a reader, I never felt lost. You manage the cast quite well. Some of this had to come through the revision process, but I imagine some of it is perhaps instinctual as well.
BROWN: Man, while I think my instincts for such things have developed over time, I can’t really attribute it just to that. Rather, I think one of the most mysterious and alluring aspects of writing anything, especially something as large and ungainly at times as a novel, is what a large role the unconscious mind must play, and how much we have to trust it. Cormac McCarthy talked about how he felt like he was just taking dictation at times, as if his unconscious had written The Road for him, and I was recently listening to an interview with James Clavell, author of Shōgun (1299 pages), who also never outlined any of his large canvas novels.
There’s something “apart from oneself” about a big novel, in my experience. The idea that you could never accomplish it “on your own” — although you do. But something strange and mysterious is at work when it comes to these things, and that’s one of the reasons the process of writing is at once so thrilling and scary.
That said, I did spend a lot of time looking at how various chapters bounced or echoed off one another in order to keep a certain overarching rhythm to the novel, and in the late revising process, I remember looking at when the names of various characters had last appeared (okay, it’s been 47 pages since we heard from Mother Jones, etc.), making sure no characters were kept out of the spotlight or reader’s mind for too long. But this is not an exact science, as various character storylines contract into peaks at different times throughout the book.
CALDER: No book worth reading can be boiled down to a single message. And this book — with its characters’ deep histories, the violent events that unfold, the division between the working and ruling class — can and does take readers down many roads. As you and I speak, you’re a couple weeks into your Rednecks book tour. What have been some of the most rewarding conversations you’ve had with readers about the novel?
BROWN: It’s been really rewarding to hear from so many West Virginians and/or folks who come from coal mining families who’ve wanted this story told for years — they keep thanking me for bringing a new spotlight to it. I have to say that feels damn good, because writing the book was hell of a battle itself.
Another thing is how many folks are just staggered that a conflict of this sheer magnitude and cultural significance could be so well buried. It’s been rewarding to see folks go slack-jawed when I tell them about the Battle of Blair Mountain — you can actually see them connecting the dots to so many of the labor, civil rights, and cultural battles still raging today. As always, if you don’t know history, you’re failed to repeat it…that seems truer than ever these days.
But most of all, the readers and booksellers themselves have been the most rewarding part of the tour. Never have I had such diverse groups of folks turning out. We’ve had everyone from union firefighters to punk rockers, college professors to special ops veterans, Lebanese-Americans, retired coal miners, history buffs, little old ladies with outsized stories, and so much more. I aspire to write books that can touch such a wide swath of folks, some of whom might not be your stereotypical readers, and I’m watching Rednecks do just that. I couldn’t ask for more than that.
TAYLOR BROWN is the author of a short story collection,