8/31/2021 JANE OF BATTERY PARK By Jaye Viner

 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Red Hen Press (August 28, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1597091170

SYNOPSIS:

Jane is a Los Angeles nurse who grew up in a Christian cult that puts celebrities on trial for their sins.

Daniel is a has-been actor whose career ended when the cult family members nearly killed him for flirting with her.

Eight years after a romantic meet-cute in Battery Park, both search for someone to fill the gap they imagine the other could've filled if given the chance. Jane compulsively goes on dates with every self-professed expert in art, music, and food hoping they will teach her the nuances of the culture she couldn't access in her youth. Daniel looks for a girlfriend who will accept the disabilities left from the cult attack. A loving woman will prove to Daniel's blockbuster star brother, Steve, that he's capable of a supporting role in Steve's upcoming movie and relaunching Daniel's career.

When a chance encounter unexpectedly reunites them, Jane and Daniel not only see another chance at the love they lost, but an opportunity to create the lives they've always wanted. The only question is whether their families will let them.

MORE PRAISE FOR JANE OF BATTERY PARK “A touching love story superimposed on a tale from America’s dark side. Jane of Battery Park has the propulsiveness and gripping plot twists of a thriller but also meditates deeply on loss, belonging, and redemption.” —Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters.

REVIEW:

I love reading books where the main characters are nurses and also ... cults. Cult stories are so interesting to me and that is why I gravitated to this book right away. This is a story about a woman who grew up in a Christian cult and a story about a man who fell in love, but this is also a story about the people behind these mysterious groups that are so foreign and strange to the main stay of society. 

The writing of this debut novel is fantastic - I was gripped from the beginning to the end - I was so invested in the story and both of the character's back stories. This would make for an amazing Book Club real for all the discussions surrounding this amazing story.

This is a very unique and special story - a romantic suspense and maybe even a thriller of sorts. But it is all good and amazing themes within the story - opened up my eyes to some fundamentalist's beliefs and many of the unknowns. Truly enjoyable fast read this Angeleno loved. 

IN CONVERSATION WITH

JAYE VINER
author of

JANE OF BATTERY PARK
August 31, 2021, Red Hen Press

 

Q. What inspired you to write JANE OF BATTERY PARK?

 

A. At the Backspace Writers conference in 2012, the keynote speaker, Donald Maass, encouraged participants to write what they were afraid of. I remember being on the airplane trying to think of compelling things I was afraid of. I was in my twenties, still felt rather invincible. Nothing terrible had ever happened to me. I had no good ideas. 

 

That summer, I came home from my grandma’s, turned on the kitchen lights, and found a GIANT spider just inches from my shoe. While I cowered on the kitchen counter, my husband measured it and then chased it around with his shoe. It had a circumference of his basketball player hand. It was hard to kill. 

 

This event, which led to months and even a year of not feeling safe in my apartment, of trying to explain how a spider arrived in my third floor apartment, became the seed of JANE OF BATTERY PARK. 

 

The other beginning came from watching a British TV show where ‘terrorists’ put the 1% on trial for being rich basically. I thought, ‘what if American fundamentalists put famous people on trial for being immoral?’

 

Q. Why did you want to write this book?

 

A. There’s a tendency to dismiss people who live between the coasts as unimportant, or ignorant, or just plain bizzaros. Especially after the 2016 election there was a lot of blaming the middle of the country for being backward. I wanted to write a novel that would give depth to my middle of the country people and try and explore where their values come from. I’m not sure I did this—initial drafts included POV chapters with Seth, Jane’s terrorist husband, and really got into his mindset and his struggles about American culture. But those chapters slowed down the story and detracted from the main arch of Jane and Daniel’s relationship so they were cut.

 

I still think the book does some of what I originally intended. It shows the culture gap between fundamentalist Christian values and mainstream secular values. It considers the complexity of being of two worlds, of trying to find values and rules for life after coming out of a fundamentalist religion. People are leaving the Church in droves these days. Many are looking for answers that don’t come easy. Some now, are even confronting family and romantic connections with people who stormed our capitol in January 2021 and are actual terrorists, people they love, who they are connected to in myriad ways. This book is for them.

 

Q.  What’s the story behind the title?

 

A.  Jane, the main character, is a woman in search of a new beginning and a new self to go along with it. She meets the man of her dreams in Battery park in NYC. Through him, she finds a way to create a new beginning. So the title is like an introduction. In the same way I’d say I’m Jaye of Omaha. Of course, we’d say ‘from’ instead of ‘of’ but ‘of’ is much more elegant. 

 

Q.  Many books focus on dysfunctional families. What makes JANE OF BATTERY PARK similar or different from other books that focus on families?

 

A.  So, I’m an opera lover. One of the things that appeals to me about opera is the exaggeration of drama. There isn’t a lot of nuance at least in the old classics. Instead, they focus on extravagance. I tend to write extravagance in the sense that Jane and Daniel don’t come from ordinary families. They’re both oversized in their possible drama. Jane’s family puts celebrities on show trials. And Daniel’s family basically lives to outdo each other in dangerous sporting activities. These aren’t the kinds of families you’re going to read about and easily find your family in them in the same way that the ice queen Turandot is not likely to be your estranged aunt who ruins Christmas. JANE OF BATTERY PARK isn’t that kind of family drama.

 

I think what is interesting about family is how it can keep on chugging even when everyone knows something is wrong. This novel is all about pretending. Jane gets herself into all kinds of trouble pretending to be a good Christian housewife and even though there are problems, her husband also pretends everything is okay. They go on like that for years until she just can’t do it anymore. Similarly, Daniel has a place in his family, but things weren’t like they were before he was assaulted. Everyone has bought into pretending that everything’s fine. I think this is the most realistic part of these families, the way we can find ourselves carried forward by habit, maybe even be comforted by the habit of that pretend okay-ness. Its much easier to follow well-worn tracks than push out of them onto an unknown road. 

           

Q.  In what ways are you similar or dissimilar to the main character?

 

A.  Jane and I both have substantial boobs and come from families with strong religious principles. We were homeschooled, but I did not write a book report on Juno after seeing it with my homeschool classmates. Someone else I know did that. We both, for various reasons, left those belief systems and spent our early adulthood trying to make up for the gaps in our pop culture knowledge. 

 

I am unlike Jane in that I have never had an abortion, left a marriage, or managed to move out of my hometown. I am not at all reckless even in bad moments, whereas Jane is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown pretty much all the time. She doesn’t know how to feel safe. She doesn’t know how to trust what she wants. I know how that feels because I’ve had a similar journey leaving a faith that controls every part of your life, and I’ve had lots of health problems that have shattered illusions of safety, but generally I am at peace and able to rest in my life in ways that Jane is not. 

 

Q.  On social media, you’ve been a public advocate for women and expanding gender roles. How has that shaped your writing of the characters in JANE OF BATTERY PARK?

             

A.  This novel has a lot of male characters and a lot of white characters. I’ve always been self-conscious about this because I care about diverse books and representing the variety of America in every narrative. And I care about putting women’s stories on the page. But in the case of these characters, it makes the most sense for them to be male and to be white because that reflects where America is at right now and that’s an important conversation to have. I think there’s a difference between intentional whiteness and whiteness written as a default norm.

Another thing that was important to me was for Jane to have friends with women. Often in movies and books like this—the thriller/dark past genre—a woman is alone or she alienates people as we see in Gone Girl and Girl on a Train and others. One of the tropes we have of mental illness is that it drives people away or that people with mental illness are unlovable. So ,Jane has her friend Alma at work and she has her neighbors. Even though she’s been living this fear-filled life in LA, she has attempted to make connections with people and people want to know her. Especially after the love story became such an important part of the plot, I really wanted Jane to be attractive to women and be in platonic relationships so she didn’t get reduced to being this mysterious object of Daniel’s love, or the runaway wife.

 

Q.  One of the themes in this book is about motherhood and the choice to have children or live child-free. What influenced you to create Jane’s story arc the way you did?

           

A.  When I wrote the core of Jane’s story, I was much younger than I am now. I understand the world in different ways than I did then. For instance, I never thought about the significance of Jane’s story being about her abortion. I didn’t know narratives about abortion, or what we call ‘abortion-positive’ stories were something people talked about. Or that most stories in the media that depict abortions cast it in a negative light. Where I was at then, I knew women who had had abortions and how it had been an important decision for them. I knew that I, as a someone who had just left a fundamentalist faith, could not raise a child because I had no idea what I would teach them about the world; I didn’t know what was true for myself.

 

Jane inherited a lot of those fears but in a more concrete way because she clearly wouldn’t have been able to choose what her child was taught if she’d stayed in her marriage. Now, we have a push for more positive representation of abortion and women who are child-free. Even this term ‘child-free’ instead of the more common ‘child-less’ is new. It is important to have stories about women making choices for their own autonomy without being punished for it. We have a very long history of powerful women being punished for pursing their desires (The Scarlet Letter, Daisy Miller, La Boheme, Carmen), but women who have babies are somehow pure and holy. This is a patriarchal value system that is nearly as powerful now as it was back in the day. So, writing a story where a woman has an abortion and is still deserving of love on her own terms (not redeeming love because she’s been soiled) is actually an unusual, and I think, a powerful thing.

 

Q. Tell us about your favorite minor character in the book.

 

A.  Riley is my favorite minor character. She’s the stunt double wife of blockbuster movie star, Steve. The two of them grew up together so they fight, sometimes like siblings, about the failures of the other person. They both exist in a world of really strong bodies, and high-adrenaline sports, and casual violence. Riley gives as much as she takes. In one scene she uses a steak knife to make a PB&J and threatens him with it. In another, they’re fighting in the garage and I loved writing this relationship that was a little primal. They shove each other against the car. It gets dented. They come away with scratches that are bleeding. The spouses of famous people are often overshadowed. I enjoyed building Riley into her own person who lives her life in a really aggressive way. 

 

Q.   Both Jane and Daniel are dealing with mental and physical disabilities. How did you go about representing these struggles accurately on the page?

 

A.  I have chronic health problems. So it seemed natural to me that my main characters would not be these put together fully able people. Being able to trust a person’s body and mind to tell them what is true ends up being undermined by any number of life circumstances. I’ve had it. And both Jane and Daniel feel unsafe within themselves for different reasons. Jane’s rules for correct living have been undermined by her desire to be a new person and define life for herself. But its not easy to shift from a faith system that controls everything about your life, to a life where anything is not only possible, but right. And Daniel because of where he comes from—this family of adrenaline junkies who are ‘hyper-able’ feels that his prosthetic is a huge hinderance. Not only did he experience trauma from an assault, his mind has never been able to make sense of the crime. This is also something I deal with in my personal health. Feeling one way and being told by doctors and the world something that doesn’t fit. He’s living with a missing piece of information about how this has happened to him and until he finds it, he won’t be able to accept that life with a prosthetic is really quite a fine life.

 

I’ve read widely about the of women in abusive relationships and spoken with people who have generalized anxiety disorder after growing up in the church and then leaving it. I read about PTSD and stories of leaving the church including the anthology Empty the Pews and Pure. To think about Daniel’s specific experience with a prosthetic I read several anthologies of essays and stories from the disabled community including Disability Visibility. And I worked with a sensitivity reader on lifestyle, logistical things like how Daniel drives a car.

 

Q.  Part of your public identity is as a disabled writer. What do you want readers to understand about disability from reading JANE OF BATTERY PARK?

           

A.  The first thing to understand is that disability is not a monolith. Just like with any other identity, the experience of disability is unique to individuals and fictional representations shouldn’t be expanded to say, ‘what I’m reading is true of everyone like this.’

 

The second thing to understand is that, even though I am disabled, and I understand some parts of what many disabled people experience, it was still important for me to do research and to talk to other disabled people. Jane and Daniel have been stitched together from the experiences of many people to reflect the trauma of physical injury, the trauma of leaving a fundamentalist faith, and the difficulty of living in a world that assumes a default level of both physical and mental ability.

 

The third thing to understand is that the lives of disabled people are nuanced and complicated and just as vibrant as non-disabled people. Most representations of disability fall into stereotypes that the person is pitiable, or is better off dead, or inspirational for all they’ve accomplished. These characters end up being defined by their disability rather than just being character who have a disability. In reality, we’re just regular people living our lives. The biggest way we’re different from everyone else is not about us but the expectations of social norms that only accept a narrow version of the human experience as normal.

 

Q. Do you have a writing routine? What does it look like?

 

A. I try to write in the mornings. Or at least start some form of writing first thing even if it’s just making some notes or thinking about my current project. I’m a linear thinker. If I get into the flow of the day, it’s hard to draw in book thoughts or writing pacing, if I haven’t already set the stage for it in the morning. 

 

Q. Advice for early career authors?

 

A. Make friends and write. Write. Write. Find a writing routine that works for you even if its fifteen minutes a day. Writing in terms of words on the page is something only you can do and failure to do it is one of the easiest ways for writers to fail. Obviously. Haha. Write to finish things. Don’t evaluate. Don’t get caught up in perfection. Nothing is ever perfect. But write to finish something. Because every kind of writing changes colors once it has an ending.

 

Writing professionally is not at all a solitary thing. You need to be out in the world meeting people. The Internet is full of writers. Find people who are where you’re at. Or bribe people a little ahead of you career-wise. Be a community participant. Read and review books on whatever social media platform you like. Attend workshops and classes with the intention of building relationships not just learning craft. Professional publishing whether you’re trying for the Big Five, Indi, or self-pubbing, is about relationships.

 

Q.  What kind of research did you do for this book?                                                          

 

A.  I read books about Hollywood stars and acting and life in California. I also read books about faith and its connection to the military for early drafts because Jane’s husband was originally a POV character and he had been in Iraq and knew a lot about guns and covert operations. I also read quite a bit about hunting and learned how to butcher a deer. Sadly, the scene that used most of that information was also cut from the book.

 

Q.  What is the writing story behind the book?

 

A.  This is my first published novel, but it is not my first novel. I wrote at least three complete novels before starting JANE OF BATTERY PARK, so I knew to some extent how to write a book. But this story was unwieldy, and difficult to form into a coherent narrative. I started writing in 2012 and since then I’ve probably revised it twenty times. At one point it was a trilogy (It could still be a trilogy.) and I had all these complex subplots about Jane’s family and Daniel’s family coming together and interacting in all these crazy ways. I worked on various drafts during my MFA and after that an agent in New York looked at it and said it needed to be a love story. I don’t really believe in love stories, so I spent another couple of years trying to figure out how the book could be a love story that I believed in. When it was accepted for publication with Red Hen, the editorial revisions focused on the opening and the ending. If you look in the acknowledgements, you’ll be able to find all the names of the people who had their hands on this book over its formation. It’s been quite a journey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Born in Kobe, Japan, and raised in the Great Plains, Jaye Viner has spent her life exploring other cultures both near and far. She holds an MFA and MA from the University of Nebraska and plenty of nonprofessional experience, studying the art of conveying meaning to an audience of readers. Her free time is spent at the salon maintaining her blue hair. She also worships her cats and cooks. Find pictures of food, queen cat, and small borg cat on Instagram @Jaye_Viner or Twitter @JayeViner. This is her first (published) novel. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska