I wrote last week about Cathy Gohlke and her new novel Night Bird Calling (released January 2021).
I was impressed by how she used My Utmost for His Highest to craft a story about the southern United States just prior to World War II.
Her answers to my questions were fascinating. I’m sharing the interview here.
How did My Utmost for His Highest relate to a rural North Carolina town?
Perhaps no surprise to us with siblings, her brother helped.
Several years ago I wrote a number of short stories about the colorful characters set in this fictional town of No Creek, the one I imagined during a visit to North Carolina with my brother.
When I decided to write a novel, I needed to develop a character from outside the town to connect those stories. I needed someone able to view the town and its quirks and troubles through an outside lens.
That character was Lilliana. She needed to escape a controlling church and abusive marriage, things I’d encountered early in life that the Lord has helped me work through.
My Utmost for His Highest has been an integral part of my journey, as have the Scriptures, dear friends, and many other works of Christian writers.
I wanted to bring the gift of My Utmost for His Highest to readers in the hope that they will experience similar blessings.
What has the devotional meant to Gohlke?
Oswald Chambers’s insights run deep. Even though I’ve read this devotional for several years, a day does not go by but I gain something new.
Chambers holds a high bar, one that at times feels unobtainable. But then I realize the answer is not my climbing up a ladder but diving deeper into Jesus Christ.
By sinking into Him until He absorbs me, until I am truly His and He is mine—all in all– then daily life finds a clearer, cleaner lens and takes on a different hue.
Reading My Utmost for His Highest has made me more aware that it is not what I do for Christ that lasts. Rather, what He does in me for all eternity, is what lasts.
Everything that I do for Him or for others in His Name simply follows.”
How does a British devotional apply to a rural town?
What I love about Jesus is that everything He said over 2,000 years ago in Israel speaks to all nations in all generations. How can a devotional that leads us deeper into Him not do the same?
The meaning of the words, the writing in My Utmost for His Highest, is sometimes difficult to grasp. It probably would not be known or read widely in a rural town like No Creek at the time of my story.
That’s why in Night Bird Calling the devotional readings are first given by Rev. Willard. (He studied Chambers’s writings while in seminary.) They’re related through Biddy’s letters to Hyacinth—women who’d met earlier in life and became friends.
Through Rev. Willard’s sermons and the discussions of characters, we see how applicable Chambers’s writings are to daily human life and frailty—in No Creek, just as they are for us.”
I love including Christian classics and writers from the past in my stories. I hope new generations will read their writings, be inspired, and share them with others.”
Why Night Bird Calling?
Photo by Cathy Gohlke
As a little girl living in Farmington, North Carolina, summer nights came alive with the call of the whippoorwill. It is one of the earliest sounds of nature I can remember.
After my father sold the property and we moved away, the next owners named it “Whippoorwill Farm.”
Some are superstitious about the call of the whippoorwill and other night birds. For me, their call has always been comforting and reassuring, a signal of hope. I loved including that special memory in the story for characters that lay awake at night.”
Why do racial sensitivities and injustice themes resonate in Gohlke?
Gohlke wrote Night Bird Calling long before the 2020 tensions daily appeared on the front pages. I wanted to know how and why they spoke to her.
My family lived in a very old farmhouse in rural North Carolina when I was born. The house had a sealed room my great aunt believed was used on the Underground Railroad. Our nearest neighbors were a very dear older African American woman and her grandchildren. I learned very early a person’s skin color has nothing to do with their worth or the content of their character.
From the time I learned about the Underground Railroad and that people had helped others escape the cruelties of slavery, I knew my first book would be about that, and it was.
William Henry is a Fine Name is used in schools to this day to bring that history alive for students. “
As a girl later living in Winston-Salem, I witnessed the cruel workings of Jim Crow. I saw the unfair and humiliating treatment of brown and black people by some white people. I recognized social cruelty aimed at other students during years of bussing and desegregation.
All of that, and the brave work of leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., awakened in me a strong sense of injustice and a determination to learn more and do better.
Gohlke on historical novels
From the time I was five years old and learned books are not created by magic, but real people, I wanted to write.
Since writing William Henry is a Fine Name, I’ve written up the time line of history. All of my books draw inspirational lessons, speaking of life and world events, through the lens of history. Each one champions the battle against some kind of oppression. Each novel celebrates the freedom found only in Christ.
Writing craft for Gohlke.
Night Bird Calling is a complex novel with many characters and storylines. How did she weave them together?
I long knew the town and the characters, but I needed a main storyline to weave everything together.
By setting the story in 1941 in the rural south, it was not difficult to find inherent historic trends of racism, poverty and abuse. (Trends that continue in many forms today). The growing fear of war also played a role.
But it was Lilliana’s story–her history of marital and church abuse, her need for refuge, redemption, and to understand that God loves and values her– that tied the story together.
Those needs are universal and weave through the lives of many of the characters, even though their troubles differ.”
The “intended” reader?
While Night Bird Calling is an important novel for all, Cathy Gohlke wrote with sensitivity about marital abuse. I asked why.
I was thinking especially of women who’ve been abused or bullied, either through marriage or church or both.
As a young woman I ran away from an abusive marriage and an oppressive church. My journey toward emotional and spiritual healing took many years.
I want women in similar situations to know that they are not alone and that God loves them so very dearly and that the views of their oppressors do not come from God.
I also hope readers gain insight, sympathy and empathy for those who’ve been abused or pushed down and see ways they can help. There are two sides to every coin. I wrote for both.
The importance of books
Sometime after fleeing my abusive marriage as a young woman I bought an old trailer in a run down neighborhood—the best I could afford at the time.
Children in that neighborhood ran as wild and untended as weeds in a garden run amuck. I befriended many of those children and bought a used bookcase and books at yard sales. I then opened a lending library right there in my trailer.
Children came for hours, sometimes to color pictures, read or be read to, enjoy glasses of milk and homemade bread with jam. Often, they asked questions about life and God and prison. (One father served time)—everything imaginable.
Parents often took advantage of their community’s new “free” babysitter, but those were precious and healing days for the children and for me. Years later I became a children’s school librarian. Those memories inspired Aunt Hyacinth’s lending library in Night Bird Calling.”
Tweetables
Night Bird Calling: a complex story with great insight. Author interview. Click to Tweet
Challenging subjects with sensitivity & justice. The novel Night Bird Calling. Click to Tweet
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?