Can we just talk about how good this book is??

My friends at Books Forward sent this to me and I just could not stop reading it. It is a fascinating account of a missionary family in India during British colonial rule with a secondary viewpoint of their Indian servant “Arthur”. It was reminiscent of one of my favorite novels: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (so – big compliment there!!). This novel is a mash up of genres – part historical fiction, part romance, part coming-of-age story, part mystery. It was beautifully written and the characters are unforgettable.

Highly recommended!! Thank you so much for my copy!

Here’s the scoop:

Whisk away to India in this compulsive novel of two unlikely people who discover hidden truths about a high-ranking British official set against the backdrop of  colonial rule. Sleeping in the Sun (October 22, 2024, She Writes Press) transports readers to the past where a young American and his Indian servant must face the reality behind a faithful family friend and the consequences of knowing this truth. A must-read for fans of The Poisonwood Bible and The Inheritance of Loss.

While originally a part of her MFA thesis at Pacific University, this explosive novel dives into the author’s own grandfather’s story of living as a Christian missionary in British India. Through her extensive research on the British Raj, the work of her grandfather’s missionary group, the effects of colonization in India, and the rich descriptions of India in the early 20th century, Joanne’s story weaves a cinematic tale of discrimination and privilege showcasing the enduring impact of imperialism and the spark of revolution.

In the last years of the British Raj, an American missionary family stays on in Midnapore, India. Though the Hintons enjoy white privileges, they have never been accepted by British society and instead run a boarding house on the outskirts of town where wayward native Indians come to find relief. Young Gene Hinton can’t get out from under the thumb of his three older brothers, and the only person he can really relate to is Arthur, his family’s Indian servant. But when Uncle Ellis, a high-ranking British judge, suddenly arrives and announces he’ll be staying indefinitely in their humble house, far from his prestigious post in Himalayan foothills, life as Gene knows it is interrupted. While his brothers are excited at the judge’s arrival, he is skeptical as to why this important man is hiding out with them in the backwaters of Bengal.

Also skeptical is Arthur. Then an Indian woman appears on their doorstep—and, after growing close to her, he learns the sinister truth about the judge. Torn between a family that has provided him shelter, work, and purpose his whole life and the escalating outrage of his countrymen, Arthur must decide where his loyalties lie—and the Hintons must decide if they can still call India home.

“Sleeping in the Sun”

Joanne Howard | October 22, 2024 | She Writes Press | Historical Fiction 

Paperback | 9781647427986 | $17.99 

Joanne Howard is an Asian American writer from California. She holds an MFA in writing from Pacific University. Her poetry received an honorable mention from Stanford University’s 2019 Paul Kalanithi Writing Award. Her fiction has been published in The Catalyst by UC Santa Barbara, The Metaworker Literary Magazine and the Marin Independent Journal and her nonfiction has been published in Another New Calligraphy and The Santa Barbara Independent. She lives in Santa Rosa, CA. Find out more at her website.

Follow Joanne Howard on social media:

Instagram: @joannesbooks

Books Forward also share an Interview with Joanna Howard, which I’m including below. These are not my questions, but they are good ones and I find her answers so interesting. I do admit to being fascinated by how authors craft their stories!

An Interview with Joanne Howard

1. What message do you hope to convey about colonialism and identity through the Hinton family’s story and interactions? 

It’s definitely not a favorable portrait of colonialism; even though the main character, Gene, is a young boy with a naive view of the world, I didn’t want it to come off as unserious or easy going on the British Raj. But I also didn’t want history to be front and center to the book, but rather serve as a backdrop for the human story going on between the Hintons, Arthur, and the judge. Even though the novel is influenced by these huge forces of historical events, what I still hope readers take away is the detail of the everyday. When doing my research, my grandfather’s diary was filled with trivial but relatable things like feeling bored over the school break, being bewildered by the girls in his class, or getting jealous when one of his brothers got a new pair of glasses. I wanted to be sure to zoom in on details like that and see how they may actually convey the messages of the novel better than a more straightforward historical account. 

2. How does the Hintons’ family story relate/differ from your own family’s history?

It certainly wasn’t as traumatic as the novel’s plot turns out, but there was still a lot of tension and uneasiness during that time period. And as my grandfather and his brothers moved to America and established families of their own here, the question remained: how do they think of India? Can they call it home? My grandfather was born and raised in India, and his first language was Bengali, but for the rest of his life he never returned to India because he knew it would have changed so much, and the India of his youth no longer existed. So this idea of “is India home?” I think was a question in real life for my grandfather and for the Hintons. 

3. How does your background as an Asian-American writer influence your portrayal of cross-cultural interactions and historical events in your novel

I was able to draw from my own experience as a mixed-race Asian American to inspire this dual reality that the Hintons occupy, and to a lesser extent the space Arthur occupies as a converted Christian Indian who both works for the Hintons but wants to stay connected to his Indian identity. The novel’s setting where a range of racial identities all interact with each other is a huge aspect of the story, and I’m glad I could bring my personal experience to the work.

4. What are some of the most significant historical and cultural details that you included in the novel to bring the British Raj setting in India to life?

When it comes to bringing the setting to life, it’s all in the little details, from the hand-cranked ceiling fans (punkahs) to the nightly ritual of shaking out the bedding for any critters, all things that I found in our family archives. I also loved including a scene at the Gope Gargh (The Old Gope as the Hintons call it), which is now an ecological park that preserves the ruins of an old fort from the Mahabharata. I visited this park on my trip to India and was inspired by the mythical atmosphere and the way the forest had grown over the ruins of ancient civilization.

5. What did your research process look like when building the world of Sleeping in the Sun?

I have some amazing family members who have taken on the task of archiving a lot of our first-hand accounts, from autobiographies to diaries to just a treasure trove of well-preserved photographs. So I had a lot of historical material to work off of when it came to bringing the Hinton family to life. For Arthur’s character, I just tried to expose myself to as many literary works that matched his background and the time period, and two books especially inspired his character: The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri and Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. And lastly, I took a 3-week trip to India in 2018 to visit some of the locations that appear in the novel.

6. What advice would you give to a writer who is trying to write beyond their own lived experiences? What is important to remember regarding sensitivity in writing?

My view is that art does not require permission, but it does require respect and compassion, especially if it’s a loaded topic like colonialism that may still leave scars on potential readers. I think writers should be able to write whatever they want, and we see plenty of celebrated works out there that don’t align with the author’s lived experience or identity. It becomes problematic when there is a kind of deception on the author’s part where they try to sell themselves as part of that identity, or when there is a disproportionately large amount of publishing dollars allocated to an author from a more privileged background while works by own voices don’t get that same amplification. Historical fiction specifically is tricky because it is often pointed to as a source of truth for what that time period was like, when I don’t think it should be, since it is fiction after all.

But as for what a writer can do: do your research, write with respect, and work with a sensitivity reader who can catch any of your blindspots. Understand that you will never be able to relate 100% to the identity or community you are writing about, and that’s ok. If you have done it well, the work should stand on its own merit, regardless of who the author is.