Excerpt from LEAVING THE PINK HOUSE, by Ladette Randolph

Leaving the Pink House, by Ladette Randolph, describes how, on September 12, 2001, Randolph and her husband bought a dilapidated farmhouse on twenty acres outside Lincoln, Nebraska, and set about gutting and rebuilding the house themselves. They had nine months to complete the work. The project, undertaken at a time of national unrest and uncertainty, led Randolph to reflect on the houses of her past and the stages of her life that played out in each, both painful and joyful.

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We weren't hopeful that day in September as we headed south of Lincoln, Nebraska, on Highway 77 to look at what the ad had said was a "farmhouse on twenty acres fifteen miles from Lincoln." We couldn't help but notice as we drove, though, that instead of the usual suburban muck, the highway was lined by rolling hills, trees, well-tended farmsteads, and lovely vistas spreading out before us at the crest of each new hill.

I'd been doing this periodically—going to look at acreages—for the sake of my husband Noel. When he'd moved to Nebraska from San Francisco eleven years earlier, he'd fallen in love with the countryside in southeastern Nebraska, but he'd never particularly liked Lincoln. He preferred to live in either a large city or in the country. Not surprisingly, his dream since I'd met him had been to live in a house in the country. But at the time we married I'd protested I wasn't going to put my grade-school children on a bus to attend a consolidated school. No matter what Noel felt about Lincoln, its public schools were among the most progressive in the state.

Despite this, in recent months I'd been humoring Noel with these occasional forays into the countryside. Indeed, my argument about the children's education was growing obsolete as the elder two had already left home for college and the youngest was a junior at Lincoln High School. This was clearly something Noel wanted, and I, at times begrudgingly, admitted to myself it was his turn.

We'd seen property after property in various states of disrepair, or worse, old houses remodeled in "country" decor. Like many midwestern cities, Lincoln was developing irresponsibly, and almost every direction out of the city was lined with miles of development acreages, tract malls, and other evidence of sprawl. Our aversion to the unappealing drives and the inevitably disappointing properties on the other end had finally led Noel himself to conclude that owning a country house near Lincoln was probably impossible.

Interview with Ladette Randolph, pt. 2

Ladette Randolph is the author of Leaving the Pink House, published just this month. University of Iowa Press acquisitions editor Elisabeth Chretien asked her a few questions about writing her book, growing up and living in Nebraska, and her life in Boston now. This interview is continued from the post on Friday, September 5.

Elisabeth Chretien: You’ve lived in Nebraska most of your life, but you now reside in Boston. How did it feel to make this transition and leave the country house you worked so hard on?

Ladette Randolph: First of all, I moved to Boston because I was offered a fantastic job. It came at a good time for me when my book was coming out and it provided a way for me to be both a writer and an editor more comfortably than my previous work had allowed. It was, though, as you might imagine after having read this book, a very, very difficult move, and not only because of having to leave the country house. I have a lot of life still in Nebraska and I miss my family and friends. In fact, we weren’t sure at first that Noel would follow me to Boston, but after two years of the long distance thing, we decided it was best to sell the country house. We grieved (and still feel homesick) for it, but we were fortunate that our daughter-in-law’s parents were planning a move to Lincoln around the time we were leaving and liked the place enough to buy it from us. So, our two little grandchildren now spend time there, which makes us happy. We love hearing about their adventures, building fires in the fire pit, walking through the woods and meadows, watching the birds and looking at the stars.

EC: Who are your inspirations among nature writers and writers of place?

LR: Cather’s depictions of landscape (not just Nebraska) are influential as is her plain-spoken prose. I’m also influenced by Western writers like Terry Tempest Williams and Teresa Jordan, among many others--too many to mention. I do think of myself as a western writer, though it may be pretentious of me to make that claim. I was inspired by these books to include some of the history of Nebraska in Leaving the Pink House. Alice Munro has been a huge influence. The way she trusts herself in depicting out of the way places and everyday people (many of whom I identify with because of their farm and small town connections), and to write it all in a way that feels simple but is in fact very complex is continually a challenge to me. I’m also a big fan of Chekhov’s short stories (for many of the same reasons I admire Munro). Chekhov was masterful at capturing just the right detail about a person or a place. He was deeply aware of landscape in much of his work and used it well to depict the emotional tenor of his stories. Again, his writing is deceptively simple. The more I read him the less confident I am about what he might be trying to say. 

EC: As your editor, I appreciate the fact that you are an editor yourself. How has this kind of detailed work on others’ manuscripts affected your own writing?

 LR: Again, like the landscape question, I’m not sure if I have enough perspective to answer this properly. I was a writer first and became an editor after I finished my PhD, so although I love my work as an editor and take it very seriously, if pushed, I would still identify primarily as a writer in a way some editors who write might not. I like to think I’m more ruthless in editing my own work because of my experience as an editor, but I’m not sure that’s quite true. I think as writers we all have difficulty seeing our work clearly, and an editor who writes needs an editor as much as any other writer does, so, thank you, Elisabeth, and everyone else at Iowa (Rebecca and Charlotte!) who worked so hard to help me with the edits on this book.

EC: What are you working on now?

LR: I’ve finished what I call the “Zero Draft” and the “Dirty Wedding Draft” of a new novel. (I always generate a lot of pages that help me create characters and plot.) I’m hoping by the fall to have a proper “First Draft.” (I’ve learned to avoid becoming overly attached to generative drafts by using these distancing terms.) I’m still at the point in this project, though, where I’m feeling like the whole thing is a complete waste of time; it could all end up in the wastebasket yet, but for now I’m still engaged with it. 

Interview with Ladette Randolph, pt. 1

Ladette Randolph is the author of Leaving the Pink House, published just this month. University of Iowa Press acquisitions editor Elisabeth Chretien asked her a few questions about writing her book, growing up and living in Nebraska, and her life in Boston now.

Elisabeth Chretien: What drew you to write about your life through the lens of houses?

Ladette Randolph: The structure of this book arose organically. I kept careful notes throughout the process of our gutting and rebuilding the house in the country, so that formed the core of my inspiration for this book; however, the story of the house project wasn’t quite enough (or so early readers told me). Years before I wrote about the country house, I had written a series of essays, and when I looked back through them I realized many of my memories had been archived through the various moves we’d made in my childhood and later moves in my adulthood. When I started playing with combining the two stories, it seemed the best way to tell what turned out to be a complicated story about the meaning of home.

EC: What was the most difficult thing for you in restoring the country house? What was the most rewarding?

LR: There were a lot of difficult things about restoring the country house. It was financially very risky and the time involved to pull it off was almost inconceivable. It was painful and exhausting work. I still don’t quite know how we (mostly my husband Noel) did it. I would say, though, that the most difficult thing and the most rewarding thing are the same. We jumped into this project (and we aren’t usually such impulsive people) and then came to see how we’d need the help of other people if we were going to meet the deadline for the bridge loan. While it’s true if we hadn’t met that deadline we could have extended it, during the volatile period after 9/11 we were very anxious to lock into a permanent loan. Friends, family, and our neighbors at the country house were wonderfully generous to us, as the book makes clear, and that was incredibly affirming, but it also felt at times like we’d created a burdensome situation. People never made us feel that way, but we were very humbled by the experience.

EC: You’re a native of Nebraska. How has your homeplace influenced your writing?

LR: I’m not sure I have enough perspective to answer this question, but I know that I can’t seem to stop writing about Nebraska. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a landscape that has shaped me; it’s in my bones, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Nebraska remains imaginatively important to my work (at least so far it has). I keep wondering at what point I’ll start writing about New England with as much familiarity. It’s something of a puzzle to me.

This interview is the just the first part! Check out the rest on Monday, September 8.