Set in Seattle in 1973, the main character, Lizette Karlson, is a homeless street artist looking for a place to crash. She shows up on Franklin Street and hooks up with The Dogs, a rag-tag tavern softball team spun out on alcohol and drugs. After The Dogs throw her out, Lizette’s journey to stability and success involves a variety of mishaps while crisscrossing Puget Sound between Seattle and Orcas Island. Along the way she finds love and acceptance from Poland and Abaya, Lummi Indians; Marian a gifted midwife; and she reconnects with her estranged father, a famous anthropologist. She eventually finds the only thing that really matters. When the story begins, Lizette has few options and her survival is in doubt, but by the end she has entered a new era in her life finds herself with many exciting options.
The story draws heavily on social/political events of 1973; Native American folktales, art, and culture; a wayward orca and marine science; tugboats; baseball; yoga; a magnificent grand piano; a topless snake dancer; and the birth of a beautiful baby. In the end, Lizette gets her feet on the ground and finds that through the help of an odd-ball benefactor her paintings have made a splash in the New York art world. The book is madcap, deadly, and presents grim details in rough language, as well as in lyrical prose. Adrift in the Sound is a literary novel with historical, social, and political underpinnings.
The early 1970s mark a social/political sea change in America – Janis and Jimi are dead, the “Summer of Love” has turned malevolent, the Vietnam War is over, Nixon resigns during the Watergate scandal (1974), the women’s rights movement takes off, the Supreme Court legalizes abortion in Roe vs. Wade, the Endangered Species Act is passed by Congress. The Native American, Chicano and Gay rights movements gain momentum. The U.S. is struggling with recession, simmering with anger, brimming with change. Plunked in the midst of this turbulence is Lizette—beautiful, talented and dangerous in her desperation.
Targeted Age Group:
adult, over 18
What Advice Would You Give Aspiring Writers?
There’s so much advice available to writers it’s hard to sort out the duff and get to the heart of the matter. The best advice for me is “seat of the pants to the seat of the chair,” but actually what spurred me to complete my first novel was a point made by detective writer Walter Mosley in his book “This Year You Write Your Novel.” He said if your dream is to write a novel, do it. Make it a priority, otherwise stop kidding yourself and go do something else, something you actually will to do. For me the idea is simple, don’t be a poseur. Get on with it. Not exactly warm and fuzzy sentiments, but it was the kick in the pants I needed at the time.
Author Bio:
A native Californian, Kate Campbell grew up in San Francisco and on family ranches in Marin and Lake counties. She holds a journalism degree from San Francisco State University and has worked as a reporter and freelance writer for newspapers and magazines throughout the West. A fellow of the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, she writes frequently about the environment and maintains a weekly blog focused on the arts, gardens, and the environment at www.kate-campbell.blogspot.com. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and has studied creative writing at American River College and the University of California, Davis. The mother of two grown sons, she lives in Northern California at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers.
The novel sprang from a short story, the result of a class assignment about writing something we didn’t understand. Although I lived through the era described in the story, I didn’t understand what was happening in a larger context of social-political history. The basic impulse was to understand through story what was really happening to the people at the time and in the book. That understanding was hard fought, taking five years of writing work to come to conclusion and publication.
Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Buy Book On Amazon
Social Media:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14514356-adrift-in-the-sound
http://www.facebook.com/AdriftInTheSound
http://www.kcamp300
