'Treeborne' author talks loving and leaving Alabama, falling prey to nostalgia

Caleb Johnson, above, is author of "Treeborne." (Photo by Irina Zhorov/Courtesy of PIcador)

With little else to do in the woods of North Alabama, Caleb Johnson spent so much of his young life telling stories, he thought he might as well make a career out of it.

He grew up in the rural community of Arley, Ala., where he spent his first eight years an only child, kicking around in the woods and climbing trees all day before his relatives insisted on stories of how he spent the day. Johnson had no choice but to oblige, and he liked it enough to keep going until he wrote a book one day.

He graduated from the University of Alabama and was awarded a Jentel Writing Residency after he received his MFA from the University of Wyoming.

He's worked as a newspaper reporter, a janitor, a butcher, and an arts administrator, and currently lives in Philadelphia where he teaches while working on his next novel.

Now the author sets out on tour, promoting his debut novel "Treeborne," from Picador (of Macmillan Publishers).

The 320-page novel follows a family in the fictional town of Elberta, Ala., and works as a celebration and a reminder of how the past gets mixed up in thoughts of the future; of how home is a story as much as a place.

And before you ask, he knows. Johnson didn't realize Elberta, Ala., actually existed. But changing his town's name would be like a parent suddenly changing a child's name. So now, we'll just live with two Elbertas in the state.

Johnson will appear for a reading and release party at Druid City Brewing Company in Tuscaloosa on Saturday at 6-10 p.m. He'll read from the book, while musician Doc Dailey will also perform. A special keg of Chilton County Peach Wheat will be on tap, and New Orleans-based chef Nate Barfield of Turkey and Wolf will be providing complimentary barbecue. Blaine Duncan will moderate a Q&A with Johnson.

We caught up with him to talk about writing "Treeborne," leaving and writing about the South, helping others understand the region through his art, grinding while finding breakthroughs as a writer and growing up in Arley, Ala.

Listen to the full interview, or read an abridged version below:

A pretty well known Alabama musician Lee Bains went to bat for your book. He said it "evokes Alabama as only a native child can." He's a proud Alabamian and a guy with a pretty unique sense of place that translates vibrantly through his art. So what do you think he meant by that?

Caleb Johnson: He and I both have a kinship in our love of art that is of a particular place and evokes that idea, the good and the bad of being so wrapped up in a place. The place in the novel to me is a character in its own right. What I mean by saying that is it impacts other characters in the novel, the story and the way it's told. That's something literary heroes of mine, whether it's Zora Neale Hurston or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that's something I enjoy and admire in great art, and it's something that influenced me with this book.

Caleb Johnson's debut novel "Treeborne" is now available wherever books are sold. (Picador)

Given there's so much rich familiarity and specificity with the towns and cities that already exist in Alabama, why did you choose to create your own place there?

CJ: Partially for that reason because I didn't want to be bound by that specificity and by the passion of Alabamians for their home and their places. One reason I wanted to write a novel was because of how much freedom you can have in terms of sprawl, where you go and what you create. That appealed to me, especially coming from a journalism and nonfiction background earlier in my time as a writer. I didn't want to be bound by that. In the novel, in the fictional town of Elberta, Ala., peaches and peach-growing business are super important to the people and place. They drive the economy of the town. The mythology of the peach being brought to the South by Hernando de Soto and the Spanish by way of the Silk Road in China. That mythology looms large over the town. Early on drafting this book, I knew an Elberta peach was a type of peach, and I knew that this was going to be the obsession of this town. I felt like I was the brilliant novelist because I wasn't aware there wasn't an Elberta actually in South Alabama. So I'd name the town after the peach. This is a perfect idea, fits thematically. It wasn't until a couple of years into writing the book that I was aware there was an Elberta, Ala., already. So I've had to explain myself at a few events. I had no clue. I'm from North Alabama. We go to the beach, but we don't go through Elberta. It didn't occur to me.

You went to grad school in Wyoming and now work in Philadelphia. You've said there's a misconception you've encountered where people you meet sometimes think because you moved away that you must not like the South, but it isn't true. How does leaving the South change how you feel about it? Does your memory of it grow into something more romantic, or maybe the opposite?

CJ: I'm easy to fall prey to nostalgia and looking through rose-colored glasses, which I try my hardest not to do, especially in my writing. I don't think it's very interesting to write that way only, and there's a danger in that in that kind of representation of any place, especially one as complicated with the history the South has. But that's the direction I lean towards. In the book, you can see that struggle with the characters as well. Even though a lot of the characters stay at home, maybe some of them want to leave, some defiantly never want to leave. That idea of leaving or not, what it means for you as a native person of a place that you're so tied to was something I wanted to explore in the book, for sure.

How do you think the literary world sees Alabama? Are you trying to change any perception readers might have of your home state, or just contribute to it?

CJ: I wouldn't say "change" perception because to me that seems a little more political than I see my art being. More than that, I just want to show a particular place and people with particular voices which are largely inspired by the voices, place and people I grew up around in rural North Alabama, and let people take those for what they will and make their own decisions. I would never want to be pedantic or try to teach a lesson of some kind in my fiction. I'm not interested in that as a reader of it. I just want to have a compelling story and interesting characters you want to spend time with. Hopefully they're fully drawn and complex enough that you question, maybe not Alabama so much, but yourself. I think that's where the humanity and universality of literature comes from for me.

What can you tell me about your hometown Arley, Alabama?

CJ: It's in Winston County, located on beautiful Smith Lake, a deep-water lake made by Alabama Power. It's gorgeous. The Bankhead National Forest is nearby. I mention these natural areas because I grew up in the woods as a kid. I was the oldest grandchild and an only child for the first eight years as a child. I spent a lot of time alone in the woods, roaming around, playing, building forts, cutting down trees. It was really those woods and places where I started telling stories. When you're young, you see things whether it's trash washed down a hillside, some animal bones, a strange rock formation. I wouldn't really have an explanation for it, but I would wonder. I'd just make up stories for myself to answer my curiosity for why these things were there. I was lucky to have a mama, a great grandmama and great aunts, when I got back to the house to have something to eat, they'd ask me what I'd been doing. It wasn't enough for them to say playing in the woods. They'd want me to tell them a story, so I would do that. From a really young age, they showed my there was a cultural value in telling stories. That was something those women in my life who largely raised me taught me early on, and I think it's served me well as I've become a writer of fiction and something I wanted to pay tribute to in this novel.

You're certainly a writer's writer in that you've been doing this for years now. You've put in plenty of blood, sweat and tears, thrown what you can to see what sticks to the wall and I'm sure in some cases beaten your head against it. Describe those moments, whether it's releasing your first novel or making a minor breakthrough, when the pain is worth it?

CJ: Early on, it's not too painful for me, to tell you the truth. I'm at peace with the fact that it's not going to be that good or polished, so I can just have fun discovering the story and the characters. Later on when you've got to revise and figure out how to put things together and what to get rid of, that can be tough. And I did, I just lowered my head for so many years and hardly worked on anything else. I knew I had a novel. I knew if I kept at it it would be a novel that could be compelling and that I wanted to see through. I remember moving to Pittsburgh and I finished the latest draft, I took my dog to a baseball field for him to run. It dawned on me standing on that field that I'd finished a draft that was the most polished yet. And I could see that I was getting close to the end. It was one of the first times I felt kind of emotional about it. After so many years, that was an important moment for me, that I was on the right path. I was just going to have to stick it out.

And on Saturday, you come back to a place you spent a little time in your life. What do you remember and like about Tuscaloosa?

CJ: Oh man, I love so much about it. It's one of the most important places to me in my whole life and always will be. It's where I met so many of my closest friends that I'm still close to today. Oftentimes I'll talk about the college experience and I'll say I wish I would have waited a year or two out of high school before I started because I didn't take advantage of the academic side of being at UA, but I did take advantage of the social and art sides. I wouldn't change a thing about it. I'm excited to be there in the summer. The town clears out. There's no traffic, you can park. Best of all, there's plenty of pools and swimming pools and rivers you can carry a 6-pack to, go with some friends and beat the heat a little bit. So I'm hoping to spend enough time in town to do a little bit of that, too.

"Treeborne" is now available where books are sold. Learn more about the book, and buy it online. Johnson will appear at Druid City Brewing Company in Tuscaloosa on Saturday for 'Stories and Songs,' a reading and release party at 6-10 p.m., featuring live music from Doc Dailey.