Amy Hill Hearth

They were smart. Wise. Intuitive. Their stories from long ago were riveting and historically significant.

  

But what seemed to draw readers to Sadie and Bessie Delany, the late centenarian pair of sisters of Having Our Say fame, was the fact that they were utterly charming and completely genuine. In a society in which people are accustomed to artifice and manipulation, the Delany Sisters were a shock. In telling their story, they had no agenda, and readers could sense it immediately.

 

The day I met them in 1991, they were 100 and 102 years old, and I was a 33-year-old newspaper reporter. Talking to them was like time-travel. They reached back into the past with ease, and took me with them.    

 

They blew me away.

 

I was captivated by the way they interacted with one another, sister to sister, after living together for a century. When I got home that evening, the first thing I did was call my own sister, who is a year and a half older. I couldn't wait to tell her about the pair of centenarian sisters I had met that day, and how they were still giggling and quarreling about things that had happened a century ago when they were little girls. 

 

This was, I told my own sister, the sweetest thing I've ever witnessed.

 

It is this sweetness, this unvarnished charm, that flows through the book. I made sure to include it all. I didn't want the book to come across as too reverent which to me meant stale. I wanted readers to know what it felt like to be in my shoes while I observed them puttering in the kitchen, or listening from "my" chair in the parlor or at the dining room table. Happily, the sisters liked my approach. When I suggested that the book be a work of oral history rather than a third-person biography, they agreed to that as well. To me, the words they chose to tell their stories were as important as the stories themselves.

 

And so, Having Our Say is peppered with endearing expressions and anecdotes. The sisters, for example, referred to themselves quaintly as "maiden ladies," a term I had heard perhaps one other time in my life. When I asked the name of their cat, they explained cheerfully, "We call him Mr. Delany since we don't have a man in the house." When asked why they thought they had lived so long, they replied: "It's because we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!" And then they shrieked with laughter at their own joke. 

 

I could go on....and on. But it's all in the book for you to read, anyway. You'll learn a great deal of American history from the book. You'll see flashes of anger and sorrow as they tell their stories. You'll be appalled at some of it. But most of all, when you reach the last page, you'll realize you've fallen in love with the Delany Sisters.  

 

I'm so grateful to my literary agent, Mel Berger at William Morris Endeavor, and the fabulous Blackstone Publishing for the upcoming ebook and audio editions of HAVING OUR SAY. Both editions will be available January 3, just ahead of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and Black History Month. With all the strife in our society, it seems like a good time for the sisters' wisdom and perspective to receive new attention. Teachers, if you're looking for a way to help students understand the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws in America, HAVING OUR SAY is a great place to start. The book has been read by millions since its 1993 publication. 

I'm known for taking risks as a writer and trying new genres, but my next book is a leap even for me.

 

It's a historical thriller called SILENT CAME THE MONSTER: A Novel of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks.

 

Writing it was how I processed the fear, confusion, and unknown we all experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.

 

Here's a quick summary: During the summer of 1916, a surgeon at the Jersey Shore fights denial, conspiracy theories, defiance, and confusion in a desperate attempt to convince a skeptical public that the culprit behind a series of fatal attacks is a shark, not a huge sea turtle or German U-boat, and that it will strike again. Inspired by a series of true events.

 

The book deal was made by William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, my literary agency since 1991, with the fabulous Blackstone Publishing, long famous for audio but, since 2016, also publishing paper and ebooks. I am enjoying working with them.

 

I'm a little nervous as well as excited about the book, which is so far out of my comfort zone that I considered not showing it to my agent. I thought of it as an experiment and a way to deal with those grim days of the lockdown. But curiosity led me to send it to my agent after all, just to get his reaction, and he thought he could sell it. So here we are.

 

The book can be pre-ordered at your favorite locally-owned bookshop or any online store.

I wonder if a part of our national divide over culture and politics stems from the huge decline in the proportion of Americans who serve, or served, in the Armed Forces. Perhaps part of what made the Greatest Generation great was that such a large proportion of them fought in the war, and thus, got to know each other in ways they wouldn't have otherwise.

 

My dad's experience was typical in that regard. He enlisted in 1942 three days after earning his high school diploma from Wauwatosa High School in Wisconsin. His family was originally from New York & New Jersey. He knew no one from the South or West until his Army days. He became lifelong pals with men from completely different backgrounds. The ones I recall were from Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, California, and Iowa. Most were from working or middle class backgrounds. A few were wealthy. It didn't matter.

 

There were other differences that didn't matter, either. For example, Dad became great pals with a Jewish soldier from the Bronx named "Dersh" (short for Dershowitz). After the war ended, Dersh said, "If you get home ahead of me, and you visit your grandparents on Long Island, will you give my mother a call and say hello for me?" Dad, of course, being Dad, agreed. And that's how it worked out: Dad got home first and made the call. Dersh's mother was thrilled. She invited Dad to come up to the Bronx, and that's how Dad found himself the guest of honor at a family Shabbat dinner. So my point is that through the miliary and serving in the war, millions of Americans from various backgrounds got to know each other as individuals.

 

I should add that even before the war, when Dad was in basic training in Mississippi, he had a long, memorable conversation with an older Black farmer who gave Dad, who was hitch-hiking, a ride to a city. I can't remember where they were going, but it was a long ride in a slow farm truck on back roads, and they must have had quite a good time together because Dad still recalled it when he was in his nineties. ("It was swell!")

 

Now I'm not suggesting, heaven forbid, that we need another world war in order for Americans to get to know one another, but instead, perhaps it could be mandatory to serve a year or two in the Armed Forces (or some alternative) for all young men and women.

 

I often encounter young men and women in publishing in NYC who have no clue whatsoever about huge swaths of the United States of America. They do not know their own country. They only know what they know. They are far more progressive than most of the country and they don't "get" that at all. Perhaps if they were to serve in the Armed Forces or were thrown in together fighting fires in the West or helping with the massive flooding in St. Louis and Kentucky, they would see the humanity in the "other" America - and vice-versa as well.

As I sit here writing this post, I look out my office window at a gentle, soothing rain. It's a comfort, this soothing rain. I like the sound of it. I like the way it slows life down from a frantic pace. No one is mowing a lawn. Traffic is lighter. Everyone has retreated indoors.

 

There is much to be grateful for.

 

There is, also, a lot to worry about.

 

I have never worried about my country as I do now. I fear the future. Will our democracy survive? Will we split into two parts? Will hatred define us? Is anyone able to hear over the shouting?

 

Greed is, as always, at the root of it all. The richest among us aren't satisfied. They want more. And more. And still more. They feel entitled. They want to run the country. They think they know better than the rest of us lowly souls, so they give huge sums of money to our elected officials. Bribes, to be blunt about it. All this money is floating into the pockets of public servants – not all, but many - who are supposed to represent us.

 

So we have greed. We have anger.

 

And we have self-interest. All of us, not "just" the wealthiest. One person's freedom is more important, apparently, than someone else's life. It's all about "me" rather than "us." Gone are the days of my childhood when we were taught to wait our turn, to share, to respect our teacher. Gone are the days, I guess, when young men like my father enlisted to fight in a world war to keep us free.

 

People are complicated. We're all a product of the times in which we live. We will always have greed, anger, and selfishness, but right now we seem to be giving in to it, even celebrating it.

 

And yet there is one more failure – a huge one – that may define us more than any other. We have not prioritized the importance of the gentle, soothing rain. We aren't appreciating the gifts of nature and, tragically, we're hurtling toward the days when there will be nothing but drought, on the one hand, or the kind of fierce, isolated downpours that cause destructive flooding. 

 

We aren't doing anywhere near enough to fight this crisis. There is much we could do, but we haven't. I believe, therefore, that if humanity survives, our era will be remembered for one thing above all: squandering the opportunity to address climate change.

 

To the next generation and the one after that: I'm sorry.