Image courtesy Algonquin Books
In David Williams’ debut novel, “When the English Fall,” his Amish father protagonist, Jacob, watches an autumn leaf seeming to act on its own, restraining itself from wafting down, “Like a fallen angel, repentant, straining back toward heaven.” Jacob soon realizes what he’s experiencing is the engineering of a spider: “That cord was there, though I could not see it, strong as steel, light as air. … But it still seemed magical. Just like everything in our world.”
If this moment intrigues you, then you should go to Fountain Bookstore at 6:30 p.m. Thursday for an interview with Williams by former journalist and current novelist Howard Owen (his latest is “The Devil’s Triangle”).
Author David Williams (Photo by Joseph LeBlanc)
Williams’ story is another contender for the crowded contemporary shelf describing The End of the World as We Know It. The difference is, his characters are Amish, people who eschew most aspects of technology and describe that world beyond theirs as that of The English. When an electromagnetic pulse event shorts out most of today’s devices, large and small, the Amish do as they’ve done for centuries: They make do, as best they can, guided by their community bonds and faith. But the English aren’t as fortunate.
“It’s not the nuclear bomb blast, it’s not the robots harvesting us, it’s not the shambling zombie hordes,” Williams says of the world-ending occurrence from which springs the action of the novel. “When you have a strong community, this is something that eventually they can work their way past; however, in a system of so little trust and so much tech, it would hit hard and the effects become far-reaching. From my research, the expectation is that after something like this happened, it would take six to 18 months for us to get back on our feet. That’s a long time for a system to be interrupted, and shows how easily things can fall into chaos.”
Like the upcoming total eclipse, a great darkness falls across the landscape outside the Amish community that threatens to breach their serene sense of living apart from the confusion. The blotting out of light is both physical and metaphysical. This terrain isn’t unfamiliar to the writer, an Annandale resident who is an elder in the Presbyterian Church and minister to a small congregation in Poolesville, Maryland. He also blogs at the Beloved Spear.
Previous to this novel, like many writers, Williams wrote about this and that, here and there, including collections of his sermons and theological musings. But an eBook about the intersection of Christian theology and the theory of the multiverse — you read that right — led to, as Williams describes, “I guess what you’d call a series of fortuitous and providential events.”
He sent “The Believer’s Guide to the Multiverse” to an acquaintance, Phyllis Tickle. She liked the book, although she admitted to not quite understanding the finer points. If he had something else, she’d read that, too. Wiliams gave her a manuscript for the novel, not realizing that Tickle had founded the religion section of Publisher’s Weekly and also authored more than 40 books of her own. Through her, “When the English Fall” came into the hands of Austin, Texas, agent Kathleen Davis Niendorff, who contacted Algonquin books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, now an imprint of Workman, wondering about where to place a well-written book for the narrow genre of “Amish post-apocalyptic fiction.” The Algonquin editors took a look and decided that they could give these Amish a home.
The story of Jacob and Hannah and their family in the End Times came years ago in reverie when Williams and his family visited their in-laws in Western Maryland. During one such visit, they encountered some Amish folk at a county fair. They made an impression because afterward, while passing a certain hillside, Williams imagined an Amish father sitting beside his daughter, discussing the people who were driving past and where they were going. That kernel scene made it to the novel, and the daughter, Sadie, is afflicted with seizures and visions.
Williams started the novel in 2012, but Jacob’s voice in that form was too laconic and spare. “After 10,000 words I’d realized that I didn’t want to follow this voice; if you’re bored with your own story, that won’t work.” Hitching his motivation to National Novel Writing Month in November 2013, Williams set to work, and Jacob’s unadorned but fluid and warm voice — written in journal entries — came forth.
“I went back and read more Amish and Mennonite works to get a sense of tone. The Amish are indeed spare and laconic, but they also possess a wry wit and insightfulness that my first draft lacked. It wasn’t just having to be simple but also imbuing him with a certain wisdom.”
For most of us English, the Amish are defined by the film “Witness,” maybe that documentary about “Rumspringa,” and how in 2006, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a mass shooting occurred in an Amish schoolhouse.
This latter tragedy informed Williams' work. “What’s key in that horrible instance is how the community not only rallied in support of the families of the victims, but [also] the widow of the man who slaughtered their children. It’s so hard for us as a culture to process that way of thinking. Anger and vindictiveness rule the response. That kind of violence is anomalous to the Amish.” Jacob keeps a gun to slaughter cattle or pigs, but even when thinking of protecting his family, he will not use the weapon against another person.
Wiliams is enjoying the somewhat surreal experience of not only getting published but receiving largely favorable and praiseful reviews. “You start out, and it doesn’t seem possible, and the publication date then seems an infinity away, and then it’s here.”
His next novel, set in 539 BCE, concerns the fall of the Babylonian empire. This will be an addition to the shelf of the “mystic-theological spy-thriller,” which sounds like a great read, either in this universe, or the one next door.
