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WORK TITLE: That Bright Land
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/30/1956
WEBSITE: https://terryrobertsauthor.com/
CITY: Asheville
STATE: NC
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 30, 1956.
EDUCATION:Writer. National Paideia Center, director.
ADDRESS
CAREER AWARDS:
Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, for A Short Time to Stay Here.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
A Short Time to Stay Here
Terry Roberts grew up in Western North Carolina, particularly Madison County, where his family has lived for generations. This region figures heavily into Roberts’s historical fiction. His first novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, was published in 2012, and it is set in Hot Springs, North Carolina in 1918. The story is based on a little known World War I internment camp, located in the North Carolina mountains. The camp was a converted hot springs spa, a fenced off area including the Mountain Park Hotel, and it held over 2,000 German prisoners of war. Most of the camp’s inhabitants were ship crews on commercial vessels when the war broke out, and because they were civilians they interacted with the local community and directed their own projects within the camp.
In Roberts’s fictional retelling, readers follow the efforts of Mountain Park Hotel manager Stephen Robbins. The protagonist narrates his efforts to make the camp a decent place to live (as decent as possible), but he must also contend with his run-ins with the hotel owner’s son. Robbins also struggles to stay sober as he recovers from alcoholism, and he entered into a troubled love affair with a woman is arrives at the camp to make a documentary about the Mountain Park Hotel internment camp. When a murder occurs, its unclear whether the killer is a local or a prisoner, and it falls on Robbins to investigate.
Critical reception of A Short Time to Stay Here was largely positive, and the novel received the Willie Morris Award for Southern fiction. Several reviewers praised the story’s combination of historical fact with murder and intrigue, and a contributor to the Mary Blowers Blog announced: “Though it is historical fiction, it’s more intrigue than romance, but there is some of both. I very much enjoyed reading A Short Time to Stay Here.” Matthew Simmons, writing in the online Southern Literary Review, was also impressed, asserting: “This is a ‘page-turner,’ but simultaneously a book that asks you to slow down, to savor its unfolding.” Simmons went on to remark that A Short Time to Stay Here “is a novel warm in its generosity, characters, and nuance, spicy in its excitement and variation, and beautifully, perfectly suspended in a particular time and place that becomes so incredibly real and realized that it forces us into a reevaluation of what we thought we knew about the upland South in the 20th century. In this, Terry Roberts has created a fiction more truthful than history; and for that, we should be grateful, we should read and re-read this novel, and we should hope he writes another.” In the words of an online Historical Novel Society critic: “With history as inspiration, Roberts has written a fascinating mystery around a mostly fictional cast of characters.”
That Bright Land
Roberts’s second novel, That Bright Land, followed in 2016, and the story is set in North Carolina in 1866. The governor of the state, Zeb Vance, has a Yankee nephew who fought for the Union during the Civil War. That nephew, Jacob Ballard, has been hired to work as a detective for the War Department in Washington City. Vance contacts Ballard when he learns that a serial killer, or a gang of killers, is targeting former Union soldiers throughout North Carolina. Ballard uncovers a link between Union army veterans’ disability benefit claims and those who have been murdered, which means that the killers (or killers) also had access to military records. Vance also believes that the responsible party is acting in response, or in revenge for an 1863 Confederate massacre.
Roberts was again praised for combining “real” history with a murder mystery, and a Publishers Weekly contributor called That Bright Land, a “gripping whodunit.” The contributor additionally found that “this historical approaches the high standard of Owen Parry’s mysteries.” In the words of a Historical Novel Society Web site columnist, “That Bright Land deserves an A for the sympathetic protagonist, intelligent love story, and well-crafted plot, but Ballard’s discovery of his own roots, after years of homelessness and war, makes it an A+.” Linda C. Brinson, writing on the Go Triad Web site, offered further applause, and she explained that the historical tale draws on a fascinating and complex chapter of North Carolina history” while “the murder mystery and thriller aspect develop compellingly as the killer or killers attack again.” Furthermore, Brinson, declared: “Roberts blends all these elements into an entertaining and thought-provoking story that will keep you reading. And once you’re done, you won’t soon forget That Bright Land.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 18, 2016, review of That Bright Land, p. 98.
ONLINE
Go Triad, http://www.greensboro.com/ (March 3, 2017), Linda C. Brinson, review of That Bright Land.
Historical Novel Society, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/(March 3, 2017), reviews of A Short Time to Stay Here and That Bright Land.
Mary Blowers Blog, https://maryblowers.com/ (October 23, 2016), review of A Short Time to Stay Here.
Southern Literary Review, http://southernlitreview.com/ (November 7, 2012), Matthew Simmons, review of A Short Time to Stay Here.
Terry Roberts Home Page, https://terryrobertsauthor.com (March 3, 2017).*
About
Terry Roberts’ direct ancestors have lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina since the time of the Revolutionary War. His family farmed in the Big Pine and Anderson _MG_1450Cove sections of Madison County for generations and is also prominent in the Madison County town of Hot Springs, the setting for both A Short Time to Stay Here and That Bright Land. Born and raised near Weaverville, North Carolina, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
His debut novel, A Short Time To Stay Here, won the Willie Morris award for southern fiction.
That Bright Land
Publishers Weekly.
263.16 (Apr. 18, 2016): p98.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* That Bright Land
Terry Roberts.Turner, $17.95 trade paper (336p) ISBN 9781630269753
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Early in this gripping whodunit set in the summer of 1866 from Roberts (A Short Time to Stay Here), Zeb Vance, the
reallife governor of North Carolina, meets with his Yankee nephew, Jacob Ballard, a former Union soldier and retired
detective who now works for the War Department in Washington City. Someone is murdering North Carolinians who
fought for the North during the Civil War, and Vance wants Ballard to apprehend the killer. Ballard travels to
mountainous western North Carolina, many of whose residents were hostile to the Confederacy. There he presents
himself as a government agent checking on the legitimacy of Union army veterans' disability benefit claims. Ballard
finds some correspondence between the list of those seeking the payments and the names of the murder victimsand
support for Vance's notion that the motive for the crimes is connected with an 1863 Confederate massacre of Union
sympathizers. This historical approaches the high standard of Owen Parry's mysteries set during the same period.
Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"That Bright Land." Publishers Weekly, 18 Apr. 2016, p. 98+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450361294&it=r&asid=2c8feb27a89ad8b9ae99392046c76714.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450361294
That Bright Land
BY TERRY ROBERTS
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In the mountains and small towns of western North Carolina in 1866, returning soldiers from both sides have settled into uneasy peace—but, for some, the Civil War isn’t over. Someone is killing Union veterans. To avoid insurrection, the governor sends Jacob Ballard, 24, a former Union soldier/spy, to Warm Springs, NC, where, disguised as a federal pension examiner, he’s to stop the murders.
Born in North Carolina but raised elsewhere, Ballard has lost his Southern accent. Union veterans meet with the “federal examiner” to discuss pensions but, when they keep talking, it’s about hate, revenge, and disloyalty, which leads back to an execution of Union loyalists by Confederate soldiers—but nothing about the recent murders.
Ballard makes allies among those who recognize his decency, including a young widow and her son. Sometimes, when the couple walks the land together, the terrain looks familiar, and Jacob remembers what was good about this place. If he understood why the locals are still angry, he might understand the killer and discover his name, but Jacob has secrets too. He will have to risk everything good he’s found in the mountains of North Carolina to prevent the spread of one man’s vendetta.
The plot is original and, with minor exceptions, the characters in Roberts’ second novel (after A Short Time to Stay Here, 2015) are convincing—but the setting steals the show. Ballard’s struggle for identity parallels that of the remote, mountainous region of North Carolina, which will complicate his future. That Bright Land deserves an A for the sympathetic protagonist, intelligent love story, and well-crafted plot, but Ballard’s discovery of his own roots, after years of homelessness and war, makes it an A+. Highly recommended.
Book Review: A Short Time to Stay Here
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Recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern fiction.
A Short Time to Stay Here, by Terry Roberts
A little known part of American history is that World War I German soldiers were kept in an internment camp in North Carolina, in a converted luxury hotel. Complete with hot spring baths and contradictorily a hastily erected chain link fence, the soldiers were kept busy and allowed to build models of their German village and other projects they chose to do. While this seemed lenient to some, if they were content they might not try to escape.
The hotel manager, Steven Robbins, was given the position of supervising this camp, since he already knew the facility and grounds so well. Friction came from the town sheriff, a troublemaker if you ever saw one. Known as a hard man, a cheater, and a womanizer, Robbins stayed under the radar to avoid attracting his wrath.
In the midst of it all, a well known American photographer came to see if she could take pictures of the Germans and the internment camp. Robbins was at first reluctant to allow this potential invasion of privacy. He had too much to do what with keeping an eye on the prisoners.
Trouble ensues. I wish to avoid spoilers, so I will finish by saying this is an intimate look at a fascinating period of history. Lives are lost of some good and some bad. Anyone who likes historical fiction will enjoy this book. Though it is historical fiction, it’s more intrigue than romance, but there is some of both. I very much enjoyed reading A Short Time to Stay Here.
NOVEMBER READ OF THE MONTH: “A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE,” BY TERRY ROBERTS
NOVEMBER 7, 2012 BY MATTHEW SIMMONS 1 COMMENT
Reviewed by Matthew Simmons
It is difficult to give Terry Roberts’s debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, the full and proper treatment it deserves. This is not because it is a novel marked by “difficulty” of some experimental sense; to the contrary, it is a highly-readable, easily-digestible book. But in that statement lies the first contradiction of the novel, in that this is a “page-turner,” but simultaneously a book that asks you to slow down, to savor its unfolding, its blooming, its multiple registers. Stated differently, A Short Time to Stay Here gives you permission to tear through its pages, to read it as a thrilling suspense story—for thrilling and suspenseful it is—or a gorgeous romance. But for the careful, slow, savoring reader, it is all these things and more: a suspense, a romance, and a book that explores the South generally through the specific contexts of a particular moment, World War I in the North Carolina mountains.
Stephen Robbins was a poor boy who made right by the Horatio Alger-inflected version of America, and its possibilities, of his time. A hard worker, he left the hollow of his upbringing as a young man to work in the Mountain Park Inn, a resort for wealthy of the late Gilded Age in Hot Springs, North Carolina. Eventually, Stephen finds himself as the trusted confidante of the Inn’s proprietor, married to one of the old man’s daughters, and certain to take over one day. As our novel opens, Stephen has, indeed, taken over the Mountain Park, but has lost his wife over his love for the Inn, and lost most of his self over his love for drink. A contentious relationship with his sadistic cousin Roy, the “High Sherriff” of the county, promises to take the Mountain Park from Stephen—but then the Great War begins, and the Mountain Park Inn becomes an internment camp for a group of German merchant marines.
A Short Time to Stay Here, then, is the story of Stephen Robbins attempting to run this internment camp, to treat the men—these enemies of America—placed in his charge with respect and common human decency, while understanding the anxieties, frustrations, and anger of his neighbors, whose sons are dying at the hands of the Kaiser. And in the midst of all this comes Anna Ullman, New York socialite trying to escape the confines of her life, armed with a camera.
What results is a simple love story. And this is another contradiction of the novel. The love story of A Short Time to Stay Here is straightforward, and perhaps even predictable, in its development. But for this, there is a level of complexity to the way in which Stephen and Anna explicate one another, challenge one another, and force each other into a reconsideration of their own pasts, their own created selves. There is a “real” Stephen, a “real” Anna, and each of these has been buried; Stephen buries himself with drink and work, Anna has lost herself in her art, in her pursuit of the essence of others’ lives, made explicit in photography. And while the development of Anna and Stephen’s relationship may be predictable, the truths they learn about themselves and each other remind us of how we learned such truths in our own banal, predictable, and perfectly ecstatic romances.
As Stephen’s enemies conspire against him, he and Anna, alongside a small cast of other strong characters, try to stay one step ahead the impending cataclysm. And this is the weakest part of Roberts’s novel: the plot itself seems too contrived, its shadowy mastermind never developed, him simply a bogeyman to set things in motion. The turncoat action of one of the key German characters happens too quickly, and feels unsatisfying. But yet, in another contradiction, this plot, for all its weakness, matters little. The plot moves the book forward, yes. But its movement is ultimately of one and only one consequence: to expose us to characters like the mute, near-allegorical figure of Bird; a family of mountaineer hunters and trackers who are latter-day Spartans; a “Prince among men” as a humble, fearless, cursing-like-a-sailor black preacher; and a dog named King James, who overcomes his non-human-ness to appear as complex as the book for which he is named; and, finally, Julius Christopher, a prophet, seer, and mythological presence who hangs over the story after disappearing from it. A Short Time to Stay Here is not a novel so much as it is a character study; and in this, it excels as much as any piece of fiction I’ve read in some time.
But this is not to say that Roberts fails somehow as a novelist. He creates a full, robust world, filled with moments, scenes, and pictures of absolute wonder and beauty. The Germans build a replica of an entire city—and witnessing them doing that is nothing less than magical and is why we read novels. Anna and Stephen at one point will be surrounded by trees and the convergence of two rivers, drowning in the overwhelming sound of flowing water—and this is one of the most gorgeous moments I’ve read in contemporary fiction, somehow both perfectly chaste and overwhelmingly erotic. Thus, this is a novel of characters, and scenes, and the productive wonderfulness found in the tension between coexisting, contradictory forces. It is, then, a novel of moments.
This is perhaps best expressed by Stephen’s description of one such moment, as he and Anna, along with another character, Johnny, share a meal with Prince and his wife Dora—“the darkness added to the sense of the special moment: warm, spicy, absolutely preferred and suspended in time.” And that is the most apt description of A Short Time to Stay Here I can give; it is a novel warm in its generosity, characters, and nuance, spicy in its excitement and variation, and beautifully, perfectly suspended in a particular time and place that becomes so incredibly real and realized that it forces us into a reevaluation of what we thought we knew about the upland South in the 20th century. In this, Terry Roberts has created a fiction more truthful than history; and for that, we should be grateful, we should read and re-read this novel, and we should hope he writes another.
A Short Time to Stay Here
BY TERRY ROBERTS
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In 1918, the little town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, held the largest World War I internment camp in the United States. More than 2,000 German inmates, mostly crew members from commercial ships stranded in American ports, were housed in and around the Mountain Park Hotel. Frequent contacts between the locals and German internees led to friendships that outlasted the war.
With history as inspiration, Roberts has written a fascinating mystery around a mostly fictional cast of characters, headed by the fictional resident manager of the Mountain Park Hotel, Stephen Robbins. Robbins makes a sympathetic narrator. He is a flawed but conscientious man who treats inmates as individuals and tries to make the camp a decent place to live out the war.
Most of Robbins’s problems come from a different quarter. He has a running feud with the hotel owner’s son, having recently lost the man who was his mentor; his job is at risk. He falls for a prickly woman, a Yankee in town to make a documentary; the relationship could sour at any time. And Robbins has a history; he’s fighting a drinking problem.
When a murder takes place, the guilty party could be an inmate, an outside German agitator, or a local hillbilly — and Robbins could be the only one who wants to know the truth. When his conscience won’t let him take the easy way out, Robbins risks everything to make sure the wrong man doesn’t go to the electric chair.
A Short Time to Stay Here reminds us that some worked successfully in a multicultural environment before the term existed. And that the impact of foreigners on an insular community, even in wartime, wasn’t all bad. Highly recommended.