Why Karma Brown is drawn to writing female characters who survive and thrive
The bestselling Ontario author talks about her latest novel What Wild Women Do
Deep within the wilderness of the Adirondacks lies the mysterious life of a woman long gone that Rowan is set on uncovering. Her latest novel What Wild Women Do continues Karma Brown's legacy of writing strong-willed female characters.
Brown is a writer currently based in Ontario. Her five other novels include Recipe for a Perfect Wife, The Life Lucy Knew and Come Away with Me.
What Wild Women Do follows two women: Eddie who disappeared in the Adirondacks in the 70s and Rowan, a screenwriter in the present day who's searching for purpose. When Rowan visits the cabin in the wilderness more of Eddie's life becomes clear to her in this novel about survival and womanhood.
Brown spoke to The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan about the two leading women in What Wild Women Do.
Eddie's a great character. She's dedicated to helping other women get as comfortable in their own skins as she is, but I think the most interesting thing is that she wasn't always this person. Her birth name was Edith, and nothing can be more different than the names Edith and Eddie. So tell us, who was Edith?
Edith was a socialite of a very wealthy family and she was one of those women who just had such great privilege and grew up not really having to ask for anything because everything was always provided.
Now that doesn't mean that there weren't expectations placed on her because of her station in life and what she was supposed to do, which was to also marry well and then have children and continue on with her socialite type activities, volunteering and being present in that world. But she needed to leave it. I mean, this is who she was and then a tragedy struck her and she realized this is not who I want to be.
Her transformation came when she came to the understanding that we have this one life.- Karma Brown
For Eddie, her transformation came when she came to the understanding that we have this one life. We have one life to live and is this how I want to be living my life?
The answer for her was no so she left all of that behind, moved to Camp Calloway and started running these Wild Women weekends.
You were a child of the 70s, what got you interested in this time period?
As a child, I wasn't actually involved in any of the feminist movement stuff that was going on because I was far too young but it was a very idyllic time to be a kid. First of all, there was no social media or Internet or anything like that so we were able to spend a lot of time outside with our friends, with our communities.
My parents were hippies so we lived on a farm and my mom grew marijuana between the sunflowers and I had that very peaceful, fun, joyful childhood. I think now I struggle so much with social media — I have a teenager and I worry about that all the time.
I just wanted to go back to a time where that didn't exist and it was an opportunity to sort of revisit some of the quiet that you can find in your mind when you are not on 24/7. That's what appealed to me about that era and also because it was the second wave of feminism and a lot of what Eddie is going through, participating in and being challenged by what's happening at that time.
In What Wild Women Do, a young woman discovers the abandoned long-lost camp that Eddie started. Your present-day protagonist is Rowan. She's 30, an aspiring screenwriter and is engaged to Seth — someone who is working hard at his YouTube channel and wants Rowan to do it with him. How does Rowan feel about that, creatively?
Rowan does not feel good about the YouTube piece because Seth is also a novelist with his MFA and they've gone to the Adirondacks so that he has this opportunity for this month. They're both working on creative projects, but it's to help him finish his book and he is more enamoured with YouTube and with creating content and sort of pulling her into that so that they do all these couples videos.
She feels like it is tapping the creative energy, not only from him but also from her, and doesn't want any part of it but is stuck in also trying to be in a relationship and look at what their future looks like. She doesn't want to do it but she also wants him to be happy and wants them to be successful so she's in a bit of a conundrum.
Eddie does genuinely have some tough times in her life including her husband's departure and that happens to her at midlife. What did you want to say about women at the midpoint of their lives?
Midlife is this strange time, not just for women, but I did focus on women for this book. You're raising children, you have aging parents and you have been doing the same sorts of things for some time. And then once your kids gain independence or you get a little more freedom back in your own life there's this question of "what now?"
Is there supposed to be something more if I'm at this halfway point and I have this runway ahead of me do I want to keep doing this Groundhog Day type of thing until the end? I don't want to do that, I'm endlessly looking at what are the things that I'm curious about and interested in and how can I shift to be able to explore those if I'm ready to take that opportunity.
But it is really hard to do that because you can get so stuck. I do think that [with] women it's almost like the more age experience we get, the older we get, the more we're ignored or dismissed for that experience which is so unfortunate because there is so much wisdom and experience there.
I wanted to incorporate some of those elements into Eddie.
I do think that [with] women it's almost like the more age experience we get, the older we get, the more we're ignored or dismissed for that experience.- Karma Brown
Rowan, the contemporary protagonist, discovers the Wild Woman Handbook — which was originally written by Eddie. What inspiration does she take from it?
She's very curious about it. She becomes increasingly obsessed with Eddie Calloway and who she was and what she was doing.
This handbook is written in a way where Eddie is imparting wisdom but she's also flawed. She's not pretending to know the answers to anything, she's trying to encourage women to think about their lives, to think about finding agency in their lives. For Rowan it starts to sink in – is she actually doing those things? Is she living this life according to what's important to her and where her priorities are?
Karma, you said that you write books featuring women who've survived the hardest moments of their lives. Where does that impulse come from?
I've talked about this a lot, but when I was 30, I was diagnosed with cancer and it has been 20 years now and I am well and have come through that. And so I think that I appreciate writing stories about women who are not only surviving but thriving through the different seasons of their life and the difficult seasons of their life. It's sort of my North Star in my stories and I feel compelled by that idea.
Obviously from my personal experience, but also I'm just so curious about it for other women and that extends to my characters. I'm always very curious about how my characters are going to thrive no matter what has happened in their life, how they're going to come out the other side.
I appreciate writing stories about women who are not only surviving but thriving through the different seasons of their life.- Karma Brown
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
