Author Jessica Vitalis talks Coyote Queen and writing compelling stories around difficult subjects
It's 'important for kids who are experiencing difficult situations to see themselves,' Vitalis says
An award-winning new book aims to give young readers in difficult situations hope for the future, examining serious subjects like domestic abuse and alcoholism through a story about a young girl, a beauty pageant, and a mysterious pack of coyotes.
As part of a CBC Kitchener-Waterloo summer series speaking to local authors, Jessica Vitalis of Waterloo spoke with The Morning Edition's host Craig Norris about her latest book, Coyote Queen.
Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Craig Norris: How do you describe the book to people?
Jessica Vitalis: This is a story about a young girl who is stuck in a really difficult situation and she is trying to figure out a way for her and her mother to escape.
So she decides that she is going to join a beauty pageant, even though she is very much not beauty pageant material. And she starts to discover ... a really weird connection with the local pack of coyotes and she starts to notice strange changes to her body.
She goes colour blind and she develops a really good sense of smell. And then eventually she has to figure out how she is going to win a pageant, even though she has grown a tail.
CN: Why was it important for you to to write about the difficult topic of of alcoholism and and domestic abuse?
JV: I think it's really important for kids who are experiencing difficult situations to see themselves in stories. So often when you're experiencing something difficult, and this holds true for adults as well as children, but you very often feel really alone and really isolated.
And particularly when it comes to domestic violence and abuse, this weird bifurcation happens where on one hand you desperately want to be seen and heard, and you want somebody to reach out and help, and on the other hand, you're terrified somebody is going to see you and reach out because that might make the situation worse.
Through books, kids can see themselves in difficult situations, or at least aspects of their life, and that can help model how to make it through. And most importantly, it gives them hope for the future.
CN: As you sit down to dissect these topics like alcoholism and and domestic abuse, is your approach different because this is a preteen book?
JV: Not really. I think at the end of the day, you want to write a really compelling story.
And for me, it's not so much about focusing on the difficult topic as it is writing a story that's really going to be captivating for readers, whether or not they identify with that topic. I always want to write a compelling story with a character that readers are really going to care about.
CN: What inspired you to write this?
JV: It was definitely inspired by my childhood. So I had a difficult childhood, much like Fud. I moved almost 24 times before fourth grade, and we were poor and we lived in a situation where we were cold and hungry a lot.
And there was an adult in my life who didn't treat me the way that adults should treat children. So I definitely wanted to explore that and show kids that they are not alone.
CN: Was this a difficult process for you emotionally or was it therapeutic?
JV: A little bit of both. The difficult part was that I wrote this story many, many times over the course of several years, and I could never get the story quite right.
And it really wasn't until I fictionalized the story and added that little bit of magic that kind of came alive. And I think that's because it allowed me to step back from the story and disconnect a little bit emotionally.
At that point, it really turned into Fud's story instead of me trying to rehash sort of traumatic events from my childhood. And I was able to let that go and just have fun with this.
CN: How did the coyotes play into this?
JV: I knew that I needed something to lighten up the story and I made a list of all the things that had happened in my childhood and I was trying to figure out what I could incorporate. And I kept coming back to this idea of the coyotes that had surrounded this cabin that I lived in for a point as a child.
It was a one-room cabin with no electricity, no running water. And the really wild thing about this cabin was that to use the washroom, we had to walk across this field and this adult in my life had set up a piece of wood between two rocks and cut a hole in it, and that was our washroom.
There were some problems with that besides just the obvious. The first one is that this was in Wyoming, and there were rattlesnakes everywhere, and they loved to sun themselves.
The bigger problem for me was that there were coyotes all over the place, and so I would lie in bed at night as a young child and need to use the washroom and be very, very scared of these coyotes. And so as I was thinking through how to, believe it or not, lighten up this story, I kept coming back to the coyotes.
And I thought, what if I took something that was frightening and I just put a magical twist on it and I turned it into sort of a metaphor for Fud's desire to escape?
Listen | Author chat with Jessica Vitalis:
Throughout the summer, CBC K-W will be speaking with local authors. If you're a local author who has a new book or event you'd like to speak to us about, let us know by emailing the newsroom at yournewskw@cbc.ca.