J.E. Weiner first got the idea for her debut novel while visiting her sister just outside San Antonio.
“It goes back to a beer at a honky tonk in Bandera, Texas, a place called Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar Saloon in the self-appointed Cowboy Capital of the World,” she said. “And I looked around and I started asking myself, what is this place?
She walked around the town and came upon a monument with the names of Polish settlers who arrived in 1855.
“I was thinking, why on earth did they come here? And then I heard a good old-fashioned ghost story, as one does in Texas. And I said, you know, this is a story that needs to be written,” she said. “And I just started thinking about it and putting keystrokes to screen. And, uh, next thing I knew, I was in the middle of writing a novel.”
“The Wretched and Undone” is a blend of several genres, a bit of a Western, a bit of a ghost story, but it primarily holds the Southern Gothic genre in its pages.
“In terms of genre for this book, I don’t think it fits into any one lane,” she said. “But of the Southern gothic, supernatural – there are forces out there beyond our control who manifest almost intentionally to mess with us, to make us question ourselves and to lead us astray. And, it creates real kind of moral challenges for the characters in this book.”
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The story is about a family of Polish immigrants that arrive in Texas on the precipice of the Civil War. When one of the family members is conscripted to the Confederate Army, a series of events causes him to provoke a demonic spector that chases him and his family across three generations.
“ This is the story of how the family deals with that and maintains hope and optimism despite some pretty significant challenges from forces beyond their control,” she said.
Weiner says readers can expect a mix of storytelling styles to keep them on the edge of their seat.
“When I think of what would be the mashup of styles, it would really be sort of the Larry McMurtry, ‘Lonesome Dove’ meets Cormac McCarthy, ‘Blood Meridian’ meets Flannery O’Connor, and then a little dash of the Coen Brothers’ ‘Ballad of Buster Scruggs.’ That’s really kind of where this novel sits.”
Weiner will have book signing events in San Antonio on Thursday, March 27, at 6 p.m. at the Nowhere Book Shop and in Austin on Thursday, May 29, at 7 p.m. at BookPeople.
