Cassandra King is author of The Sunday Wife, selected as The Great Read in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
The plot centres on the beautiful and talented Dean, who tries hard to live up to the expectations of her odious preacher husband and his congregation. It’s an involving, emotional and intelligent read that is as much about the claustrophobia of small town prejudices and narrow views, as it is about a woman’s journey to independence with the help of a good friend.
**Q Hi, good to talk to you.
A** I am just thrilled to have contact with Australia. I’ve never been there and I’d love to come there one day.
**Q Congratulations on your book, I understand it’s very successful in the US.
A** Yes, it’s been wonderful – gone much better than I ever expected.
**Q You’re being called the “new voice from the South”?
A** I hope!
**Q You weren’t all that confident of the book’s reception?
A** To me, the minister’s wife, Dean, could be any wife, but I wasn’t sure if people would be comfortable with that idea of her being married to a minister. I wasn’t sure if it might limit my audience. I’m very pleased that I’ve got such good responses. I just got a letter from a woman who wrote to say thank you for my book and that it gave her the courage to change her life – she’d been in an unhappy marriage for a long time.
**Q The book is partly autobiographical?
A** That’s right. I found myself, to my big surprise, to be a minister’s wife for over 20 years. Unlike my character, Dean, I did know what I was getting into in some ways. I was raised in a small town where the central focus was the church and the family – that was all we had to focus on.
**Q You grew up in Alabama?
A** Yes, southern Alabama, deep, deep Alabama, and going to church was so much a part of my upbringing. Living in a small town, I had seen ministers come and go and I had observed that that would not appeal to me at all. Women always gossiped about the minister’s wife. Talked about her hair and clothes, how she behaved and how she raised her kids. They had her either up on a level with her husband or she would not quite make it. I grew up and got engaged to a young man who had been in the peace corps. After that he went to theology school. I said I just don’t think I’m cut out to be a minister’s wife, to tell you the truth. He said, well, I’m not cut out to be a minister. We were in Atlanta in the 1970s – it was the place to be then. My husband ran a youth centre attended by Martin Luther King’s children and he was interested in civil rights and social action. It was wonderful and interesting until one day he said, “I have been fooling myself. I thought I could run away from my calling, but I can’t and I have accepted a church in Alabama”. This was before women’s lib had hit in the south. It never crossed my mind to say you didn’t think about talking to me about it first. It was a momentous leap, a major life change and he hadn’t even thought to discuss it with me – that should have told me something. I’m a slow learner (laughing).
**Q In the story, Dean’s journey to independence is aided and abetted by Augusta, who was a fabulous character, outrageous and free-spirited – was there an Augusta in your life?
A** We went to about five different churches and in each one of those churches I had different women friends who were in some ways Augusta figures. I also have several friends from my college days who were also Augusta styled women. These were women I’d known from before I married. So Augusta was a composite of many women who were supportive and a catalyst for change in my life. I think I really began to change the day a woman I knew said to me, “I can’t believe that everyone thinks your husband is so wonderful – I think he’s such a jerk.” It was kind of eye opening for me, because it my husband was revered as a minister.
**Q If he was so admired, it must have made it harder for you to be critical of him?
A** Yes, he was surrounded by so many starry-eyed people, you begin to lose your perspective. Then you begin to think “oh, he’s tired, he doesn’t really mean it”, and he has certain demands on him and pressures.
**Q Why is it, do you think, that women stay for so long in unhappy relationships that are patently very bad for them?
A** I think it is so common, it is heart-breaking. For so long I thought it was confined to women of my generation. Coming along on the cutting edge of women’s lib, I thought that things would change. I’m 58 and this was in the days before women’s lib had really hit the south – things are always a bit slower there. But I am surprised to say that I have heard it from young women. Heard them say they think they can change a man. That there’s this optimistic thing that all he needs is a good woman. He’s misunderstood etc. It also has a lot to do with women’s infinite capacity to have low self-esteem. I don’t know where that comes from. Except none of us ever think that we look good enough, that we are good enough and that has to be a factor. That’s one reason why I made my character from a poor background where she didn’t have the kind of upbringing people would expect of a minister’s wife.
**Q When you set out to write the book, what did you set out to achieve, outside of telling your story?
A** My priority for me is always the story. I was at a book fair recently where we talked about our writing and one of the questions was, do you have any agenda? Of course we do, but I hope that it is sub-conscious. What I hope is that my story will help women free themselves from oppressive men. Or at least, question their lives.
**Q You have three sons from your previous marriage – did you have to talk to your children about writing this book?
A** I did tell them about it. They have had great, great difficulties with their dad. But the book wasn’t a pay-back. I didn’t have that attitude going on. Oh no, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, after my sons read the book, they said, “you made him much too nice. Dad was a much bigger jerk than that.”
**Q Is it true that you met your second husband, the author Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides), after asking him to write a blurb for your last book?
A** No, it’s not. I’ve read that myself though, and somehow it has gotten around. No, I would never have had the nerve to ask him (laughing). I met him at a reception for him that was held in Birmingham. He came to give a speech. I had done my Masters degree and my creative writing director had already met Pat. He introduced us and told him that I had written a book. Pat said, “you didn’t mention anything about a book!” I said, “Well of course, I wouldn’t tell you!” I loved his work but that was the last thing I was going to tell him. He offered to give me a blurb. It’s a fine distinction, but I certainly didn’t approach him and ask for it, I’m way too shy to do that.
**Q That was the book Making Waves in Zion?
A** Yes.
**Q Obviously there was an attraction then and there when you met?
A** Well, he swears to me that that was the case. The only reticence on my part was that I was still married. I met Pat in February 1995 and my marriage fell apart a few months later, in May. I didn’t know much detail about his personal life. I knew he had a family and had kids, but he was divorced that summer as well, so he had already been separated from his wife. He called up and asked about me, got my phone number. He said he’d liked me right from when we met and wanted to know more about me.
**Q It seems amazing that you met at just that point your lives?
A** It’s unbelievable. Pat is very gregarious. He’d get on the phone and talk to me for hours. So, of course, he gave me a blurb for my book. He got my number, I got his and I thought that was that. But he would start calling me and just talk and talk and talk for hours, and we really became friends, before a relationship developed. One of the times he said something about having a rough time after his divorce. I said, “No kidding, I just went through one, too.” So that’s how it began.
**Q Are you married or living together?
A** No, we’re married, five years in May.
**Q I know you worked as a writing teacher. Are you still doing that or writing full-time now?
A** I’m writing full-time now. I had every intention of teaching but Pat said, “Oh, why don’t you do something for me? Before you go back to teach, why don’t you take a year off? Work on your manuscript and see how it goes?” I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a go.” I actually did quite well with selling the manuscript. So I thought I could make this work.
**Q In the midst of everything that happened, it must have taken you a while to write the book?
A** Yes, it did, and not only that, it was difficult for me. I didn’t want to re-visit it. I had just gotten out of this marriage that had ended painfully and I didn’t want to go back there.
**Q You live in South Carolina – describe the surrounds?
A** We live on the Atlantic Ocean and it’s very pretty. We love salt water, we both love to swim. So we do that in our down time. We both love to cook. Sometimes we’ll have friends over, sometimes we’ll have no-one but ourselves. Sometimes Pat will flip through a gourmet magazine.
**Q When you completed the manuscript for The Sunday Wife, who was the first person to sit down and read it?
A** Pat did. I was very careful not to bother him about it for two reasons. He was, as usual, way behind his deadline on his book. And I mean way behind, years behind. And getting pressure from his publisher. He had all this going on, so I wasn’t about to put something else on him. And plus, I can’t really talk about something while it’s still being written – something about dissipating my creative juices – I don’t know. So I had to get it totally completed so that I had a manuscript from page one to the end, before I wanted anyone to see it. Pat had some excellent suggestions. About a small cut here – or you do need a scene here. He is very blunt – plain spoken.
**Q Have you become a celebrity in the US with the great book sales that The Sunday Wife has achieved?
A** God, I hope not.
**Q In the book Dean plays the dulcimer – do you?
A** I’m not any good. I am not musical and it’s one of the great heartbreaks of my life. I love music. I tried to play guitar, tried piano lessons. I can’t dance either. I tried so hard and have no gift for it. But I can play the dulcimer, it really is not difficult.
**Q You sound very happy with your new life, which must be great after so many years of difficulties?
A** I really am. But I’m afraid to say it in case the gods punish me – they may be lying in wait thinking, “aha! You’re going to be sorry you said that.”
**Q Your star sign?
A** I’m on the cusp of Aquarius/Pisces but because I was born just before midnight, on February 18 and Pisces starts February 19, when I read description of star signs, I find I am much more like a Pisces than an Aquarian.
**Q Did you dream about writing from a very early age?
A** Absolutely. And I wrote. I wanted to write plays. I put on plays with my dolls.
**Q You are the eldest of three girls?
A** Yes.
**Q And what did your parents do?
A** My dad’s a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia, almost the same area as Jimmy Carter.
**Q Mum did home duties?
A** Exactly. And then after all of us kids were grown, in the last part of her life, she became a volunteer working at a retirement home and started working part-time with them. She was like the activities director. Took them on trips, did ceramics, started an exercise group. So she had a late life career. She was so robust, she was never sick.
**Q You’re now working on a new book called The Same Sweet Girls?
A** I’ve worked on it some. I haven’t done as much as I’d like to.
**Q If I said Cassandra King loves?
A** Trees, birds, the ocean. I love the world that God has provided for us and I love the people who take care of it.
**Q And believes in?
A** Fate and I do believe in God. It may not be the traditional image of God, but I do believe there is something greater than ourselves.
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