We are kicking off this year’s Mother’s Day Author Blog series with Devi S. Laskar. Her third novel, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, is about a reporter chasing the biggest story of her career as she contends with a tense newsroom, a dangerous global conflict, and all the problems she’s running away from at home. The book’s release has been bittersweet for Devi, as she explains in this heartwarming tribute to her family of voracious readers. She is especially eager to hear what her mother thinks of her latest work.
This little girl loved to be read to --- and later, to read herself. GREEN EGGS AND HAM and THE GIVING TREE were among her favorites. She was especially delighted when she was introduced to timeless classics like WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.
Years later, she devoured ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA and the Earthsea Trilogy, and relished talking about new books in her English classes. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine and her first short story at 11. She loved poetry and filled a slate gray journal with her words. When she visited India in the summers, her grandparents gave her Mahabharata and Ramayana comic books.
As she grew older, this little girl wept over TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, BELOVED, THE COLOR PURPLE and THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET --- and, many years later, over the first drafts of her own novel, THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES. By the time her debut was published, she grieved the loss of much of her own work, lost nine years earlier through no fault of her own.
She took a few recovered pages from a quarter century before and rewrote and reimagined them into a story that became her second novel, CIRCA, all the while reading and rereading books like LEAVING YUBA CITY, THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC, AS I LAY DYING, EUPHORIA, CITIZEN, THE BOOK OF LIGHT, THE SECRET HISTORY, and I, THE DIVINE: A Novel in First Chapters.
This little girl --- now grown, and after years working as a newspaper reporter in the United States --- channeled the outrage she had felt watching TV news for 25 years after September 11th into her third novel, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR. She still carried with her the influence of books like INVISIBLE CITIES, MAO II, MIDAQ ALLEY, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS and THE STORY OF ZAHRA.
Decades before, while she was a graduate student, she lost her beloved father-in-law to cancer. In the years between her first and third novel, she lost her dear father, also to cancer, and then her wonderful mother-in-law.
This Mother’s Day will be the first time my mother is the only one of the four parents --- my parents and my beloved in-laws --- alive to read my new book. At the heart of MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR is a story about love and grief, facts and truth, and the bond between a daughter and her mother.
Reading has always been a family affair. I grew up in a family that loved books, in both English and Bengali, and I married into a family equally devoted to reading and the arts.
I grew up in a college town in North Carolina in the 1960s and ’70s. I have fond memories of the public library and of my parents, who instilled in me a love of reading along with a sense of autonomy and independence. I still remember my father showing me the bus route, placing the correct change in my hand, and sending me off to the public library so I could attend after-school programs on my own.
My parents had many obligations to their families back in India, yet when the Scholastic Book Fair came to my school, they never hesitated. I would come home with a cardboard box full of books and disappear into strange and wonderful worlds for hours.
I had a great language arts teacher in elementary school, Mrs. Heath, who encouraged a love of poetry and literature and introduced us to an eclectic range of voices. Years later, when I married into my husband’s family, my father-in-law started a book club with me. It was just the two of us --- voracious readers --- plowing through everything from westerns to vampire novels, science fiction to “classics,” that neither of us had read before.
After his death, my mother-in-law took up the mantle. She was as steadfast a supporter of my writing as my own mother. Both women were deeply encouraging, though they balked --- like proper immigrant mothers --- at my lack of restraint in bookstores. I am always buying more books than I could ever finish in two lifetimes. All three of the remaining parents were so proud when my debut novel, THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES, was published in 2019.
My father and I corresponded in verse for decades, exchanging thoughts on everything from poetry to creative nonfiction, journalism, biographies and, of course, novels. He was always reading, whether academic texts or Rabindranath Tagore, and was constantly composing poetry himself.
I regret that Baba did not have a chance to read MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, but he knew I was writing and revising the story in the months before he died, and I take comfort in that. It has been bittersweet to see my new novel out in the wild. I’m especially looking forward to hearing what my mother --- now reading on behalf of all four parents --- will think of it.
