A Word on Words; 3626; Susan Gregg Gilmore

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with johnson and johnson and the law once again welcome to word on words our guest today is susan gregg gilmore visited talk about a new book her first book it's called looking for salvation at the dairy queen susan welcome to word on words

but i do what a book and you have created a young new creative de young a young girl whose life is caught in a trap she wants out of she got no milo and see the problem was a preacher on end she lives in ringgold georgia <unk> she wants the workers she can tell you i think she comes from a place inside of me that just always wanted something more and wanted to know something bigger i was not raised in a small town i was raised here in nashville and washington dc a bed and the great fortune of spending my summers with my grandfather out an old hickory like not far from here so in the summer i knew this very different places very small town world bank i think kathryn grayson are

very much a white chest and that sense of wanting to know something bigger races loses to two years younger mum and the sister is sort of the am an important minor player in the plot along this is a a story that i think it'll help people relate to people who at had aspirations and ambitions very young you know in the end in the talented the story was necessary for you to create crutches for leno and her next door neighbor is will rogers papa the preacher is another around and shooting for a heavily on extra labor where does that unique

interesting bowles is almost challenging character come from and gloria chain five times married five times married she is very much inspired by my aunt gloria chain who also has been married five times and where is catherine grace's gloria jane talks about collecting wedding dresses for the girl so they'll have one to choose from my aunt always said she was collecting engagement rings and sea snails while my hands my aunt eye has an ordained through the mail now and is performing wedding ceremonies and wisconsin she's practicing what she she knows so well the region would you brag who cfl is apparently re way that another family member recently that shots have a come to jesus meeting with new rule saying about what

is the accurate and what is not what he believed were killing far it's just that best ice cream confection that dairy queen makes it a round ice cream week with the a stick inserted in the middle of the ice cream and then dipped in chocolate and if it's done here made it has that the de que curl right in the center of it and maybe generational i never had a dilly bar elias cream filled chocolate but i never had a dilly bar and i to bumping into any making of billy barnes any made billy barnes button in a bar what i made one recently that and then i found out it's a lot harder than thing did that teach you curl just right dilly bar and the dairy queen that's her hang out there that's about the only place and lingo where she get away from other couples religion

losers of problems and an extra layers of intrusions into life those intrusions were welcomed most often let's talk about this five times married woman next door because while she loves her next door neighbor she also understands that she is very different different in the way she dresses different in the way she makes up and different in a way she looks of long life and yet in a real sense she's about the best friend possibly why did you make of such a character i'm amused and condemned and criticize by a window people two named cory jane

had to be this rich bold woman to inspire or catherine grace i think to move forward had she not had somewheres i think in that much color in doubt and her life i don't know that catherine grace really would have been able to sustain a dream i think henri je always allowed her to think in a slightly different way billie jean is pushing you wanna get out spread your wings and fly and in popular vote does not want a dollar before he wants it right there in the ring don't know where he can love and nurture and protect her and she got no mama as we said at the outset and therein lies a great mystery moman died in an accident so long ago and that she is just more

division than anything else and a facial photograph on the juno what you into a moment you know shoot us live on iraq yes is specifically you know at first not not really and i've always thought that sounds a little bit trite but i found it to be say a trio that the characters really do become so vivid and so real that they begin to take you on this ride ended just became inevitable that that was what would happen to her mother the judges get away from the way they do and i had taken a times i've sat down and really in love with this character and then the next day and he's gone he's dying or used in a tricked out why the stingers i think what what happened here really want and i wanted to spend more time with him but that they really do show

you where they need to go you don't own or control you give her romantic interest and he is the all american born is there was ever a jack armstrong now and he's a football hero that he's through he's king of a king of king of it female and it has everything a good decent christian upstanding athletic a star athlete should be an end of angola's terrible high school football game but if there is a start and there is one is it end but it turns into summer loving relationship with her own fly hank to me i didn't date much in the high school

or college really and to me he was a scholar consummate boyfriend the one i think i had always imagined and yet here he was this perfect date this perfect boyfriend and yet he was going to keep catherine grace for what she really wanted it just seemed for a teenager the ultimate dilemma do i choose this boy that's so cute adorable that i love or do i choose the life that i've really dreamed about for myself and i think for me they don't know that i would have had the courage to catherine grace had to go online and and leave him and go on to atlanta nominate then you know hanging out that success really just has to go the maersk about this moral dilemma but she also loves the idea of a hundred miles down the pike there is atlanta in a dream world a place where she's found herself in the song a

job that is exciting and phone and she gonna be a high achiever as she has all the staff it takes to make that and indeed during the trip she proves i am on the other hand she's there i guess a bomb and seasoning up there with the queen of them and done now i don't know whether because you don't tell us i was she breaks up with it because she really thinks makes better off with a competitor or was she breaks up when i suppose he may even without realizing it he got an extension tango davidson cinema and to come home so do you judge which is i like things safe safe sex all that out says she has an easier way out of town and that's a waste that's my feeling that that's what she's

doing a lover's quarrel and do it and i guess that's really an area that's not the appropriate term because you know moments when she badly wants to be an hour but the show's great sow for restraints a ha ha which makes me wonder well later on i'm going to find out that the football heroes is day not but i mean you've crossed my mind i thought you know she's going to come back in and megan and those great disappointment but knowing he's really know what's going to turn me even the day but you know it's a classic you want thinking and that damages our eyes and the boys really wants to pursue that and then the girl is the line you know coming up the barrier it's a narrow and i just want to flip out a little bit where the girl is the one who would want that and it

is the wind that is being more restrained then she knows most about the moment you know what she learns is in the same way we learn she was in the same way today and urged her to get out virginia done the same thing a little more money that such a beautiful voice you'll be a national grand ole opry and blow this pop stand in the pulpit and the preacher get it thrive and that's what she says to end i'm suspicious of your motives here for and that actually that you know i think by having had a grandfather is a preacher and saying that though wife and the preacher has a position where they're really she wants it or not she

becomes the preacher's wife with responsibilities and duties that you are all in because of his his role in the church and so i can see her mother just feeling and she marries this man out of love that then is completely consumed by his position that becomes her position and that gloria jane is just able to see you beyond that that this girl can be this this mother catherine grace can be more than a preacher's wife if she wants it for those of you just tuned in that we're talking to susan gilmore about her new book looking for salvation at the dairy queen and the end is video creator of a billy barnes is not so mission by enemy body is wiser than we think now sheely a strangled go to atlanta come back then and there is a moment when any simon revealed himself a deeper

and more perceptive am on all into what's going on in that sounds well maybe anybody else there that perception the dairy queen and only second about the social knowledge and store i must say that that win at the size of your lives doctor from shoulder on prices are open gangways that would've been a window on us no we're all human own if we are believers we know we're all sinners and that even preachers and senate thrive on how long did she believe how long did she really believe or that she ever really believe that the baby was not of your

father's the father a hero has an affair with the and sunday school teacher yes her beloved sunday school teacher her beloved songs and i think she doesn't want to believe it but she saw a politician wants with his magazine knows that yet so she says she got the sense test that shirley had had a yeah yeah yeah but she didn't want to you know one of the wave in a year your preacher your airmen died is it is healing and hathaway are and your derriere and she and she sees as woman who suddenly has more from nobody ever knew about this down the road and this year there are doubts all along and everybody in

town and community or certain of it that's interesting is more aware but i know that nobody talks like to have been a person who would be most likely to know is the last person to you i don't wanna know so she goes off she leaves her father two years earlier knowing she wanted to go but hoping she would leave either they really handsome so the luggage model but they look like whether the beautiful and that and then you take it all in and where visitors come from i mean you write about that experience vivian been there had the job thomas promotion what had all the bits and pieces of it and i discuss strong and together i'll never forget my dad taking me to atlanta for the first time and going to the varsity in the peach bowl we went to david sims department

store and my eyes were wide open like catherine grace's i just thought this was you know like build the land of oz and then on you know her experience they're out of work and worked retail i've done all that so and from a it was just a matter of kind of putting that the pieces of the puzzle together to create this experience for catherine grace when you write you write about now do you have a minute advantage you have applauded not really did you know we were the moment now you did not i don't think i think that our praise saying that i did i started which is this it was more a place a story with this place ringgold and then i started with a couple of characters letters of the movement a book about wage well and for me it's very southern and we were living in la at the time and so i'm talking about the south and write about about the south

was very comforting for me and then i had these characters start to haunt you and we wish you and the meter spinning so much time with them then it all started to flow i'd never had an outline an award from wind and i know there's a lot of writers who believe you need to know to have the island had the ending scene can work toward something that just for me that limits the characters in and what they're going to do well you know i i hate to give away the secret to our viewers but on but i have to ask you when did you know when most common home i think that that day seeing are flooded down that great condition singing to become vaccinated but she would have to come back as a mother from my experience i just thought she would have to come that she'd have to know what happened to the girls

keep that secret she ever really knew for sure i think she had doubts and she had concerns that she didn't know for sure i think that's why she always felt a little apprehensive and then towards the preacher she just felt like there was something not right here but she had no proof so i doubt is well liked in those decked it in and it turned out to be such a coward warm why not marry her why not well again i'm wondering did you know did you know that this beautiful young wife of his restless as she was was out there somewhere and he couldn't hear i think you know in

any mary was still married sen and he couldn't believe that in the most they had a predicament and he doesnt schoolteacher so yet their predicaments math and then the sunniest view of the truth primary becomes three britons us a perfect storm well i mean i you know it is it's done so as such a simple change that doesn't happen i'm still a young girl small town you want to go somewhere else and do something else and other candidates who when you have it and not surprised that it's on the bestseller list of and thank him police snapped herself in and said you know it's it can be such a simple story if you wanted to date that and there's all sorts of layers that you can start again until it will use them as a great lawyer not just a great southern one of a great ride outside in that year's midterms and when she puts over my uncle you know it's worth reading now well it leaves me asunder worry in

common about this book only was my seventh grade english teacher is here with her and as beautifully as she writes she also can diagram the heck out of a sentence and she's just she was a wonderful english teacher who really allowed us even a twelve to start looking at the world through this wider lands and she's just an inspiring and motivating in all those years when you presented in new york publishing assad dominates the field in literature typically fiction these days and they want and there are those who have been bestsellers once a year then they expect to produce as conventional mobsters gangsters doctors lawyers

heroes of professions even athletes and they want their characters down underneath the mold or whether publishers say when you brought this storytelling from a place most of never heard of lesotho durango now it's really very fortunate that wayne landed a crayon would say or her perks and say is there such as south carolina girl so even though i think i may be one of her only southern writers in the story elaine elaine resonated with her father felt very welcomed in the new york scene using the house well i mean it in the book itself in that you're not too long those characters who has retired

ceo of a dollar general and her and what la getting raises davis making strawberry jam and in this attack or co authored two dollars in more customers come up with the knowledge of you makes john bartlett first but first to sell her and i said it would this doctor be allowed to knowledgeable on to sell a jam just a young girl in town so i was always in a lot about ceo which was a way of saying yes she's right was that it couldn't get away with that probably not a big of a cut matter which he didn't come you know you work her between the dairy queen in the dollar general

store was such facility did you have to make that trek where you were from one to the other i don't think the check to the dairy queen on a very regular basis my grandfather take this after every sunday morning sunday evening wednesday night you around the country with hamm actor service that's where we went and then there was full dollar general store in tehran and yeah that's really good rats to fly away center find fond memory for for both places you know this is a mystery hidden oceans is a tourist packed into simple story and it's loaded with complex moment and then and there's a certain being the bestseller list well so certainly didn't surprise me that your first i wasn't here you know how lucky you are less so you've done it once and now again is there another book yes there's

another but it right now i'm calling in brasilia growth and it's about this national girl actually with this very big wide name is ilya and she's also a fifth generation brasilia so she has grown up with a lot of affluence that from a very wonderful a dysfunctional family which are always the best dysfunctional <unk> and do just that asked to write about so you know she has the odd peculiar sister the alcoholic mother bit of a spineless philandering father so either racial a love affair what's on our right here what's wrong and what we've run out of time and i hope when you write that book you come back i will give i'm here hey andy i never know about next year but one thing that you think tanks are coming tanks all of you for watching the world words and john single or keep reading