The most popular question I was asked at the California State Fair Author’s Booth two weeks ago was, “Is this story true?” The person before me would often be holding a copy of my novel, Dreamers, A Coming of Age Love Story of the ‘60s that they had just picked up from the display. On the cover is a close-up of an intense, attractive African-American male and a lovely, smiling Caucasian female.

Also displayed on the table is my first novel, Sundagger.net, a story of one family, two worlds, and many lifetimes. But no one seems to ask if Sundagger.net is true. It is only Dreamers that prompts this question.

I felt put on the spot.  Did I hear an assumption that a book is better if the author says it’s true? Is non-fiction better, more serious, more worthy of attention than fiction?  With the exception of writers who specialize in niches like thrillers or children’s books. the best sellers at the CA State Fair Authors Booth appeared to me to be the writers of non-fiction. After all, readers were excited by the accounts of authors who stood right in front of them speaking to the truth of the tale.

Is Dreamers fiction or non-fiction? More aptly, did it really happen to me? You might think that given the frequency with which I was asked, I would have a  short (or long) definitive reply that resolves the issue. But the truth (!) is, I anguished over my replies and each answer I gave was different.

It’s not an untenable question to ask.  Anyone can infer looking at me that I was coming of age too in the ’60s like Annie Ryan, the young white woman in Dreamers who falls in love with the black actor, Thomas.  And then, flipping through the book, you can see that Dreamers is full of many well-known facts of the era, for example the Birmingham bombings, Watts riot, Martin Luther King, Jr’s, “I have a dream” speech and Johnson’s landmark civil rights legislation.  But the question carries a special importance to the person asking.  I can feel that their urgency. It’s not a light matter.

Sometimes I said jokingly, “It’s all lies. ” Sometimes I threw caution to the wind and struggled to explain what I meant.

I mentioned whole scenes in Dreamers that I remembered as true. Not only did they happen to my character, Annie; they also happened to me. One such scene is where Annie goes to Midnight Mass alone and reflects on the beauty of the traditional Catholic Christmas ritual, holding her nostalgia for the faith of her family and her youth like an old, precious doll. This happened to me–not the doll part– but the nostalgia and sense of loss.  But then (I have to confess) I gave the church in Dreamers a different name from the one I was really in that Christmas eve back in the sixties. Why? I wanted a bigger truth than fact. I wanted  the truth of fiction.

I could have marked whole paragraphs of Dreamers with colored markers; pick one color for truth, another for fiction. Each page would be checkered in both colors! The same with each sentence, even phrases.

It started in high school when I determined to be a fiction writer rather than a journalist, taking Hemingway as my example, because the prospect of being accountable for the truth of any set of facts, any situation, seemed just too big and impossible to take on. This book was years in the making; finally I began to trust my own inner eye, looking for the other, better story than whatever I remembered had really happened, a story that came through fiction like a phoenix rising from the ashes. In short, I lied as much as I could.

It was easier to talk about the truth of the times in Dreamers.  I had one great conversation with a man from Youngstown, Ohio, right down the river from Pittsburgh where I was born and grew up and where much of Dreamers takes place. We both were excited by the similarities between those two steel-driven cities, now dinosaurs of the coal industry. That led to good talk about gentrification and the destruction of the inner city.

At the fair I had many people tell me that it could be their story or their mother’s, an aunt or their best friend’s, even the mother of a best friend. One woman asked me if I had had the baby, referring to the obvious outcome of Annie and Thomas’ romance being the birth of a multi-racial child. This led to an intense conversation about the dilemma of being multi-racial in America today (as if we all aren’t in fact relatives, descended from that one dark couple in Africa eons ago.)

I was amazed by the deep emotions I saw on all their faces. Humbled too. Along with nostalgia and a pervading sadness at  loss, I sensed fear–not of the story, not the romance, but a fear of hope hovering over the book. “After all, I’ve worked hard to put all that behind me,” I imagined them saying. There was a sense that the story wasn’t finished, that somehow it shouldn’t be over. One person asked when I would write the sequel. As it was, it took me too long to write Dreamers I replied.How many more lies I’d have to conjure up! We both laughed at that and for just a moment I thought, Yes! I found the right answer. The answer to “Is it true?” is “I hope so.”

As I wrote yesterday, I just returned from a trip to South Africa with my two sons. I wish I could do it over again, not to change anything or do it differently, but because I still want to be there.  So today I’m bringing back Africa again.

First I’m bringing back tolerance for myself for sending out an old, outdated email last evening to you, my readers, by mistake. The email was to be an introduction to this web post but instead it announced my Dreamers book launch of last month. I’m sorry! The forgiveness I’m intending for myself goes beyond this incident, this small self-involvement. I’m really talking about, bringing back if you will,  the tolerance–the forgiveness–shown by South Africans I met, a freedom and lightness I saw in their eyes. It was everywhere–in the malls we stopped at, the restaurants we ate at, in the small stores in Ladysmith and Durban. Often I was asked where I came from.  When I answered “United States”  or “California”, I was asked if I minded being hugged. Of course not!  I love being hugged!  “If I could only put my foot in America once,” I heard one young grocery clerk say.

It was amazing to see so much faith and tolerance in light of South Africa’s legacy of apartheid, colonization, imperialism, and slave trafficking by people of every color and background. And this terrible legacy is amplified by the present AIDS/HIV epidemic.

I visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, a work of art and monument to Life by Skin Color, a different life for each.  As you enter the museum, you randomly pick a ticket that identifies you as white, colored or black. Then you go through the door that matches your ticket. Even though I had shown the movie, Invictus, when I taught English Composition to college students a few years ago, this one visit to the Apartheid Museum taught me so much more–how the Africans and their wise leaders like Nelson Mandela stood up over and over again, evolving into tolerance and inclusion–democracy–over the last century and how they stand tall today in forgiveness for the past injustices.

I’m bringing back Peace too from Africa–the peace that happens when you have nothing you have to do except watch a hippo slowly walk across the sand, one huge foot at a time, and slowly lower itself into the Letaba River. The hippo will stay submerged in the cool water  like this all day with only its two round humps of eyes showing and you can stay too, just watching, just being there. Or wherever you are right now, watching hippo eyes.

I’m bringing Happiness, the feeling you had as a child, the kind that makes you laugh at anything, like when you turn the corner and come upon a group of six young African maids in crisp, laundered uniforms at the foot of the stairs in a Polokwane hotel. They laugh aloud when you tell them they look pretty, and say you look pretty too, making tears come to your own eyes then and whenever you remember that hot morning, that corner of the stairs, those lovely dark faces laughing with you.

And  Awe, the majestic sensation of watching a pride of  lions saunter by in a line. You count them one-by-one, ten lions in all, pacing intentionally and very slowly along a grassy ridge at dusk. “They’re hunting,” says the expert Kruger Park guide. “The females are taking the young males out for their first hunt.” You realize you aren’t breathing and make yourself take a breath. You can do it now.  Just breathe.

Of course, Gratitude, the abject gratefulness of a privileged American, getting what Africans have in their bones, their acceptance of life, of how close we are, all of us, to each other and to the animals. How amazing to realize we both love and protect our offspring. You know that when you repeatedly see adult elephants, giraffes, and white rhinos in the bush hover over those fabulous curious babies of theirs. You watch the adults stay close to their young, guiding them away from the road and you, sitting in rented cars, jeeps and SUVs, exclaiming and holding out your cameras or cell phones, attempting to capture it all forever.

If only I could experience the whole epic adventure again..and again..and again. Yes, it was the trip of a lifetime. How fortunate I am it was mine.

Tonight I’m driving into Sebastopol to pick up the chocolates for my Dreamers book event tomorrow. Yes, I’m going all out showcasing my new novel, Dreamers, with dark chocolate, live music, and authors Shelley Buck and Alice Rogoff reading with me. It would be great to see you there too.

Dreamers Book Launch
November 10, 2011, 12:30 – 1:30PM
Alexander Book Company
50 Second Street, San Francisco

It’s the 1960s in America at the height of the Civil Rights showdown. Street-savvy Thomas, desperate for stardom, meets music student, Annie, desperate for love. To impress his struggling family, Thomas drives a flashy borrowed car home to Pittsburgh and is involved in a minor accident. What was a fender bender in a Christmas storm escalates into a confrontation with police and he becomes a fugitive.

In the suburbs, Annie evades yet another Christmas family fight by going to the theater, bumping into Thomas afterwards and mistaking him for the star. They’re both in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they’re dreamers.