Book Club -The Stories We Carry By Robin W Pearson

This month I’m reading… 

The Stories We Carry By Robin W Pearson (Tyndale, 978-8400501258)

This contemporary novel is set in a small town in North Carolina, where most of the action happens in a bookshop, By the Book, run by 63-year-old Glory Pryor. Into this small town arrives newly widowed single mother Adelle and her son Bennett – and Glory instantly connects with the boy. However, something is off between the women and they immediately clash. Having married Eli as an older woman, Glory has put everything into her business and drawn many from the community that surrounds it. But she has deep pain from her past, and is still holding out for the day when her estranged brother will return. While Eli wants them to sell up and head off for adventure during their retirement, Glory simply cannot let go of all she has worked so hard for. She also feels deep guilt over an event from her childhood, and struggles to forgive her parents and church for all the pain from her past, saying that neither she nor her brother “were anywhere to be found in her parents’ day-to-day worship of the God they believed in.”

The book beautifully weaves their personal journeys, and the awkward relationships that grow and develop, as both women navigate their own pain and loss to find a way forward, as well as allow others into their as-yet-untold stories. At the back are questions for book clubs to utilise if they want to.

You are an award-winning author of five novels – what inspired this latest one?

We’ve homeschooled for more than two decades, but we had never read The Count of Monte Cristo. When we finally did a couple years ago, Alexandre Dumas’ story-within-a-story-within-a-story stuck with me. All the characters carry a history that affects others, and none more than Edmond Dantès, who serves as both hero and villain. Tragically and falsely imprisoned, he finally acquires the means to right years of wrong. But should he? While his desire to avenge himself is understandable, is it right?

Such themes and questions – righteous vengeance, how the past affects the present, forgiveness, redemption, love versus hate – inspired The Stories We Carry. 

I tried to create complex, real people readers can relate to – even if they can’t always cheer them on. Adelle, Glory and Eli carry burdensome pasts that intertwine, impacting their present lives and relationships. They have to learn to trust God to use their stories for good and not harm.

The title reminds readers that we too carry our own stories (and that we choose how much or little of them to share with others). What of your own of your own story has found its way into this book?

I put my whole heart into all my writing, so it’s impossible not to leave some of myself behind, particularly my faith in Jesus Christ and my love of family. For example, in The Stories We Carry, I share some of my own wrestling when Glory debates whether God is good in the hard times and Adelle struggles with moving forward after suffering tragic losses. How do you accept what you can’t understand? 

The peace the Pryors find listening to the choir and the impact of community and “found family” reflect our family’s personal experiences moving up and down the East Coast. Readers will discover other bits and pieces of us when they witness the beauty of small-town life and the highs and lows of homeschooling (and the fun of apple picking!). 

Glory is a fiercely independent woman who loves books and her own space, but also dearly loves her husband. There are times when she struggles to reconcile all these things – what was it about that tension that you wanted to bring out in this novel?

I’ve enjoyed writing about multigenerational relationships, large nuclear and extended families, and both younger and older marriages. I thought it would be interesting to explore the dynamics of a mature couple grappling with life as newlyweds – everything from the joy of “at long last love!” to the struggle to maintain individuality. They have to figure out how to build a strong, loving union on a foundation that’s still a bit shaky. 

Glory represents that desire we all have to be deeply understood, loved and accepted – but not necessarily changed. At least not drastically. She’s very human – driven, determined and vibrant, yet flawed, stubborn and unwilling to admit her own weakness and fears. I try to use her to show how a real, everyday person honours God and loves her husband, yielding to another’s needs while still making room for her own individual goals and dreams – even if she has to grit her teeth to do it!

How did you decide what approach to take with faith in this book, as you don’t hold back from allowing characters to criticise or highlight hypocrisy?

Though we believers should reflect the love of the same saviour, how we express our faith in him is as unique as our fingerprint. And our faith journeys are just as individual. Jacob wrestled with God all night, and his ‘success’ left him with a limp. Glory’s own tusslings with her faith have left her walking wounded. While she’s no bold, outspoken warrior like Ophelia, gentle word-for-every-season friend like Noemie, or righteous Bible-wielder like Adelle, I wanted readers to see there’s victory – and peace – in renewed seeking. Nobody’s faith is perfect; not every journey leads to the mountaintop. Glory reflects the persistent hope found in Hosea 6:1 (NIV): “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind our wounds.”

Glory says: “Books help me process life. They say what I want to say, what I can’t say out loud.” Is this what drives your passion as an author as well as reader of fiction?

There’s a moment in The Stories We Carry when Glory gently calls out Adelle for lying, conceding that we’re all ‘reporters’, hunting for answers to life. Her own search for truth takes her to fiction, because paradoxically, it “often shares real elements about the human condition”. Perhaps that’s part of the reason she became a bookseller, whether she chooses to admit it or not.

As a homeschooling mother, reader and author, I have much in common with Glory. We both find refuge in the written word and can appreciate the impact of storytelling. As I try to show in all my work, a great story communicates important truths about God, people and life in general, whether it’s a contemporary or historical novel.

Sometimes I struggle to voice my thoughts, just as Glory does, but both writing and reading give me the opportunity and the means to come alongside others, to connect with people I may never meet in person. When we sit down with a book, we’re electing to invest time exploring ideas, listening to another’s thoughts and growing in our understanding. That’s something we rarely do in our hustle-bustle world.

The Famous Quotes Group are an awkward group of people, somewhat thrown together as acquaintances of Glory. The quotes that are brought up stir emotion and discussion that move the plot on and also challenge the characters – was that literary device something you always knew you wanted to include or did it develop as you wrote? 

The Famous Quotes Group may have appeared ‘thrown together’, but their proximity to Glory – physical, emotional, relational – drew them to By the Book. Deep down, Glory resists the idea of meeting; she’s more comfortable sharing her true self with pages than people. But I wanted to use their discussions to reveal my ultimate writing goal: illustrating God’s loving pursuit of all of us, not only of Glory. Our relationship with him, whether it’s strained, tightly knit or seemingly non-existent, affects all aspects of our life – our relationships, our work, our choices, our worldview, what we write, and how we write and how we interpret what we read.

Robin W Pearson on: The books that have changed my life

The Stand by Stephen King 

This novel so impacted me that my characters discuss it in their Famous Quotes Group. This is King at his storytelling best, as he describes the ultimate battle between good and evil after a deadly, highly contagious virus escapes from a lab. I read this book for the first time in college, and two copies sit on my shelf today. 

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The tortured Edmond Dantès believes he is the hand of God and has the right to punish the people who forever changed the course of his life. Written by a man of mixed ethnicity and originally in French, the themes of this well-respected classic have prompted many theological and moral discussions and inspired The Stories We Carry.

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers

This first entry in the Mark of the Lion series takes readers to the beginnings of the Roman Empire and the spread of the Christian faith. Most would classify its genre as romance or historical, but Rivers’ amazing novel opened my contemporary, literary-leaning eyes to Christian fiction and inspired me to rework my debut, A Long Time Comin’. I made sure it clearly attested to my faith.