Interview with Robert Hays

By Elizabeth Milo and Sarah Schiavoni

We recently spoke with author Robert Hays about his latest novel, The Baby River Angel, and his other stories, Circles in the Water and The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris.

WNW: Your three novels cover a fairly wide range of topics, but are there some common themes that they share?
Hays: Yes. One is that actions have consequences. This is most vivid in Circles in the Water and The Baby River Angel, where characters are both rewarded and penalized by their own behavior. But it also is important in The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris, in which Bradley Morris faces a very difficult decision knowing that his choice will make a profound difference in what happens next. Another important theme is that life is continuous. This is the central theme in Lizzie, in which the continuity is generational, and a lesser theme in the other two books

WNW: You’ve held many jobs within the writing and publishing industry, as well as jobs outside these areas. What jobs did you enjoy the most or find the most rewarding? Have any of the jobs particularly influenced your writing?
Hays: I’ve enjoyed them all, but newspaper reporting was my favorite. Reporting keeps you in the middle of things and you know that every story is important to your readers. And there’s the added satisfaction of seeing results quickly. Each new day is a fresh start. I love magazine editing, too, being my own final authority on what articles are used and how they’re treated. And of course, teaching—I take immense satisfaction in my years of work with students and hope I contributed something to their lives. Reporting had the greatest effect on my writing, as I learned to observe what goes on around me and how people interact with each other and their surroundings, vital tools in writing fiction.

WNW: What was the focus of your Interdisciplinary Ph.D.? How have your academic experiences influenced your writing?
Hays: My studies were in political science, history and communications. Communications was the foundation for all my work, with an undergraduate degree in journalism. For me, history and political science go hand-in-hand. The way government and institutions function at every level set the direction of our society. I like writing that reflects the historical background of the subject—how we got from there to here. This has been a critical view affecting all my non-fiction, obviously, but I like to bring it to my fiction as well. In our lives and in the broader society we are products of what has come before.

WNW: What writers have influenced you?
Hays: I’m old, and I was influenced by writers like Steinbeck and Hemingway. I still consider The Grapes of Wrath the most important American novel. I would like to write like Harper Lee, of course, and I think To Kill a Mockingbird is an almost perfect novel. There’s always a book of Flannery O’Connor stories on my reading stand. Among contemporary writers, I especially admire the work of Kent Haruf.

WNW: In The Life and Death of Lizzie and Morris and Circles in the Water, you approach the life of a soldier from two seemingly opposite viewpoints: that of a veteran, and that of a young man. What is the importance of seeing war through these two different lenses?
Hays: Lizzie Morris is the story dearest to my heart. I’ve written some military history and as a child, I lived through World War II. WWII’s impact on those who fought it was profound. We have lost most of those valiant men and women. I wanted to tell the story of one of these men, and to be a true life story it necessarily included dealing with the loss of a mate. In Circles, the story centers on childhood sweethearts whose difficult youth comes back to haunt them as young adults. The contemporary timeframe, however, is such that the prospects of coming face to face with war are as realistic for young Jimmie Broder as they are for Bradley Morris in Lizzie. Even though Jimmie never makes it into combat, he comes to understand how the war affects the lives of innocents and understands he can’t be a willing participant. My hope is that, through either lens, it is clear that war is a horrible and costly waste that leads to immense human suffering.

WNW: Were you trying to convey a certain message by utilizing the Moses allegory in The Baby River Angel? If so, what was your intent?
Hays: I must be honest—I never even thought of the allegory when I started. When I began Baby Angel I had no idea where the story was going. The allegory is more obvious after the fact.

WNW: The baby in The Baby River Angel seems to be the catalyst for change and improvement in the town of Cambria and there seem to be lessons to be learned by the Cambrian townspeople and perhaps even the reader. What do you hope your readers walk away with after reading this book?
Hays: My best hope—and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how readers have picked up on this—is to show that when people pull together instead of against one another, good things happen. Baby Angel seems to leave people feeling happy and satisfied. One reader told me, “I’d love to see it made into a movie. How good people would feel walking out of the theatre!”

WNW: The concept of love seems prevalent in all three of your novels, whether it’s an “until death do us part” love, a love connection lost and found, or the love a parent feels for a child. Likewise, the concept of loss, whether due to death or abandonment, is featured in all three. How are these concepts important to your novels? How does your handling of them affects the reader?
Hays: I consider the love of one human being for another the most universal human experience. At the same time, every life ultimately ends in death. Although the death of one individual may be felt by only a few, it most often is a profound loss for at least one other person. How can this not be considered a common thread for all humankind and thus an ideal theme in fiction? I hope my readers can identify with my characters through this universal experience, realize that an individual lifespan is finite but life itself is continuous, and see themselves in my stories.

WNW: How has writing novels differed from your other writing experiences?
Hays: I love the freedom of creative writing. As a journalist, I have to be accurate and objective in writing facts, with no room for telling things as I would like them to be rather than the way they are. Fiction allows me to create settings and timeframes of my own choosing, come up with characters I like and offer my own version of how they are dealt with by fate. As an example, the character Mack Brown in Circles is one of my favorites, and he came about merely as a means to move the story forward. He could be anyone I wanted him to be and I made him someone I like. Apparently, readers like him too. And that’s very satisfying.
WNW: How would you describe your approach to writing? What are you writing now?
Hays: I like to start several stories and develop each to a point where I can see whether I like it well enough to continue. About one in four makes the cut. Right now I’m working on three novels and two short stories and so far I like them all!

WNW: Where do you get your story ideas?
Hays: In general, I’d say from reading. The idea for Circles in the Water, for example, came from a newspaper story about a police officer who killed a drug dealer who turned out to be his best friend from childhood. This gave me the idea for a novel about a tight-knit group of youth whose lives took different directions. Lizzie grew out of my own earlier writing. Research for a military history book, G-2: Intelligence for Patton, gave me factual raw material for the realistic setting I needed for the story of a World War II soldier’s combat experience.

Robert Hays is the author of The Baby River Angel, The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris, Circles in the Water, and other works. For more information about Mr. Hays and his works, please visit his Twitter page.