Elizabeth Dewberry's first novel, Many Things Have Happened Since He Died (1990), introduced a distinctive voice to American fiction. That novel and her second, Break the Heart of Me (1994), both of which were published under the name Elizabeth Dewberry Vaughn, were followed by several plays, including Flesh and Blood and Four Joans and a Fire-Eater, as well as a stage adaptation of Many Things Have Happened.

In February, Dewberry's third novel, Sacrament of Lies, was published by Blue Hen/Putnam. In one sense, it marks a new departure for her, crossing into the territory of the psychological thriller—though it's not strictly a "genre" book. It is also a natural continuation of her earlier work, particularly in its attention to spiritual reality. And like Jane Smiley's novel, A Thousand Acres, which retells and revises the story of King Lear, set on a farm in Iowa, Sacrament of Lies tranposes Hamlet to contemporary New Orleans and makes the protagonist a young woman. Dale Brown, who has been following Dewberry's career from the beginning, talked with her about the new book.

There was a gap of eight years between Break the Heart of Me and Sacrament of Lies. Did you have to write a bad book or two to get to this new novel?

Sort of. For a while, I was working on a book about a woman who set her house on fire while her husband was asleep inside. Then I started writing about a woman who thinks the Virgin Mary has appeared in her bathroom window. But neither of those went anywhere. I didn't even give them titles. Sacrament of Lies was first conceived about six years ago, while I was working on other things. I guess I actually worked on it for maybe three or four years, depending on what you count as work.

And you were writing plays during those years, too.

Yes, I did several one-acts and two full-length plays, Flesh and Blood and Four Joans and a Fire-Eater. Four Joans is about a group of friends who decide to do past-life regressions under hypnosis, and they all come out of it believing that they used to be Joan of Arc. It's a comedy that asks questions about whether it's possible to have a mystical experience today— whether it's ever been possible, for that matter. I'm working on one right now called Goddesses in Distress. It was inspired by the true story of a student in England who ambushed Germaine Greer, the once-radical feminist who wrote The Female Eunuch. The student broke into her home and tied her up for three hours. I read about that and kept wondering what happened during those hours. When I started writing the play, though, I found that the dynamics became more interesting and more flexible when I changed the characters from a radical Seventies-style feminist professor and her disgruntled student to the author of a New Age feminist self-help book and a disgruntled reader. The author herself recognizes that the book is banal, but it has become a bestseller, and the reader who ambushes her has taken its bad advice too literally, so now she's blaming the mess she's made of her life on the author.

How do you shift from playwright to novelist?

They are two very different modes of discourse. One is solitary, and for your solitary endeavors you get the benefit of having complete control. And you get a book, this sensual, lasting object that you can hold in your hands and look at on your shelf and smell and, of course, read, which is a tremendous pleasure. And the other is collaborative, which is more fun, but you don't always have control. You have other artists contributing, and sometimes they contribute things that aren't what you want them to contribute. Though, of course, sometimes they bring it to life in ways that are just exhilarating. There's no thrill for novelists like the opening night of a play, but there's also no heartbreak like closing night. Going out of print feels bad, but at least your book still exists. So I find pleasures both places.

There must be some cross-fertilization. This new novel certainly has the influence of a play. Did the Hamlet connection emerge as you worked on Sacrament of Lies, or did you start there?

I started with Hamlet. That's probably one reason the book took me so long to write, because I was learning structure and some elements of character and plot development from Shakespeare. It took a while for the characters to come into their own lives, their own voices, their own souls. The book had to move beyond Hamlet and come to life for itself.

As with your earlier novels, I was struck by your preoccupation with the spiritual. In so many ways, this is a book about prayer. The protagonist, Grayson, wants to pray, wants to believe, but she finds the church "locked and empty" and there are "no guides." Am I pushing too hard to call it a book about prayer?

I wouldn't say prayer is its primary subject, but a quest for truth is always a prayer, in a sense, and clearly, Grayson is looking for truth. She wants to know who killed her mother, but she also wants to understand the nature of good and evil. She's asking, "What do you do when confronted by evil in your own family, and even in your own heart?" Those questions are always forms of prayer. I see writing itself as a form of prayer, a way of trying to connect with something powerful and loving that is both within and beyond myself, that Mystery at the center of the universe.

I remember a line from Break the Heart of Me, where Sylvia is described as being "shy around God." I felt that same thing with Grayson. And there's that business of her confusing her father with the Old Testament God and thinking she can't believe in either anymore. Where does that come from?

I think it would be fair to say that I've been on a spiritual journey myself. In the past few years, I've been trying to find a new way to approach God, a way toward a God who is less mean than the one I grew up believing in. So, maybe there's a sense of shyness in myself there, of feeling like I'm looking for God in places that I haven't looked before. I'm not sure.

I grew up immersed in Scripture and memorized a lot of it. It was part of my daily life. I went to a very religious school; my parents were very religious. And I was very sincerely, devoutly religious, believing, as I was taught to, in the literal truth of the Bible, so I spent a lot of time trying to make literal sense of Scripture. I remember being bothered as a child by the lines "In the beginning God," and "In the beginning was the Word," and thinking, "Well, which was it?" Later, of course, I would learn about metaphor. But maybe that's where my tendency to wrestle accepted sentiments to the ground comes from, my early belief that I had to figure out the literal truth in order to understand any other kind of truth.

There's a loss of faith in the church in this book, perhaps, and even something like satire on the institutions of religion. But there's a larger conversation about faith, and Grayson seems to get there. Still, despite a certain affirmation at the end, you refuse to tidy everything up.

I think of satire as being detached and mocking, and that was not my attitude. I hope it didn't come across that way. When you're searching for truth and for God, and when you grow up in a religious environment, the church is usually the first place you look, but Grayson's search had to take her beyond that. The church holds some truths, but the institution of religion is not the same thing as individual spiritual experience with God. Sometimes that takes place within the church but certainly not always.

Grayson has insisted on truth. She has decided not to live with lies, not to live with evil, and not to look the other way when she's being asked to participate in lies. So yes, she's come to a good place, a hopeful place. But it's also a messy place because life is messy. It didn't feel true to try to wrap everything up and claim she's going to live happily ever after.

Has September 11 changed the way you write?

If you had asked me this a month or two after it happened, I would have said yes. But now that the first major shock is starting to wear off and now that it's looking like we're going to be able to be safe again, it's different. This is obviously a major turning point, but in some very basic sense, the human heart remains the same century after century, and we're always going to want to tell stories and understand our own souls better through those stories. So essentially, I'm still doing what I did before.

On the other hand, I'm more aware now of my own mortality and the mortality of buildings and institutions and countries and the vulnerability of people who don't seem at first glance vulnerable at all. I think we've all changed in that way, and that kind of awareness can't help but inform what I write.

W. Dale Brown is professor of English at Calvin College, where he also directs the biennial Festival of Faith & Writing. His book Of Fiction and Faith: Twelve American Writers Talk About Their Vision and Work (Eerdmans, 1997), includes an earlier conversation with Elizabeth Dewberry as well as interviews with Frerderick Buechner, Garrison Keillor, and Will Campbell, among others.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.