Cindy Pens Her First Novel, And She Was

Tale from the edge
Cindy Dyson draws from Dutch Harbor days for her first novel
By AMANDA COYNE
Anchorage Daily News correspondent
Published: February 26, 2006
Last Modified: February 26, 2006 at 05:00 AM

Cindy Dyson's protagonist in her debut novel, "And She Was," is Brandy, a lost woman in Dutch Harbor on the brink of self-discovery. Interwoven through Brandy's story is the story of three generations of Aleutian women and a secret they carry.

Dyson, who was born in California but moved to Alaska at age 3, says she drew on some of her own experiences to create Brandy. However, although blond like her character, Dyson warns readers that Brandy's "nothing like me."

Dyson, 38, lives in Whitefish, Mont., with her son and husband. Her family still lives in Alaska, her parents in Eagle River. Her father, Fred Dyson, is a Republican state senator.

Dyson is a former newspaper reporter and has written eight books of nonfiction. Her articles have also been widely published. She financed her college education by working as a cocktail waitress, including a stint at the infamous Elbow Room in Dutch Harbor.

By phone from Montana, Dyson spoke with me about her life. I steered the conversation away from the book because, I told her, I was also reviewing it and I didn't want her answers to influence the review.

Her reply: "Uh-oh."

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Do you miss Alaska, and do have any plans to move back here?
A. Yes. I'm the only wife hoping her husband will get laid off so we can move back to Alaska. But he's got such an awesome job. He builds robots for a living. He probably can't do that in Alaska.

Q. What about Alaska do you miss?
A. My family. And the people. Montana is beautiful. But I think Alaskans are the oddest people, and I like that. There's a greater feeling of freedom in Alaska. A certain kind of person moves there, and that creates a whole culture. I've lived in four or five states, and I appreciate that culture and I carry some of that freedom. Everywhere else, people look at me funny.

Q. Talk about your upbringing.
A. We moved from Anchorage to Eagle River when I was in sixth grade, where my folks still live. I spent my early years hauling wood and pulling nails and backpacking with my parents. My dad began to commercially fish later, and he would take us out for a couple weeks each summer. It was really a typical Alaska upbringing. Nothing like Brandy's.

Q. But I get the sense that you share something with her.
A. I used some my own experiences, like riding a motorcycle. And I bartended at the Elbow Room for a few months. But she is really so unlike me. She's stuck in that wayward kind of lifestyle and had a bad childhood. I had a few wayward years, but the core of her I didn't experience at all. Partly, I learned about her through a couple of my friends who had screwed-up childhoods. I'd take them out drinking and drudge their memories. ... But I've seen those women, who Brandy is -- the woman who gets stuck in that lifestyle past their 20s. And I've always wondered why they're like they are. They act so desperate.

Q. It's strange that we don't question men like that. There are plenty of men well into their 40s who hang out in bars, trying to look sexy. Why are we so hard on the women?
A. Maybe we assume that it's more indicative of their characters. Maybe we think that the man who is like that is just desperate for sex. We think that for a woman to act like that, her whole life is desperate. What I was really interested in is what it takes to set someone like that free.

Q. Why did you choose Dutch Harbor as a place to set her free?
A. At the time I was there it felt like such a frontier. A frontier has so much potential for character. There's real danger, edge and chance for redemption. Really, I could have put this story anywhere with a history. Putting it in the Aleutian Islands, where hardly anybody has been, upped the ante. And the history captivated me.

Q. Did your novel surprise you?
A. It startled me. I never wrote fiction. I used to make fun of friends who wrote fiction. But when my son was born, I was overwhelmed with the concept of "vicious motherhood," those protective instincts ... that I needed to protect everything good in the world. So I was reading Aleutian history. I was reading those stories about the Russian conquest as a mother. I would read about a village where mothers threw themselves into oceans, babies being bashed against rocks and women being forced to be sexual companions. ... And as a mother, I felt more connected to mothers everywhere and at every time in history. ... (Brandy) needed to grow up and to be able to join that, to understand that you can't keep being amoral and not paying attention.

Q. Speaking of morality, etc., how did your father, a conservative politician, take the sex-and-drug stuff?
A. He was surprised at first. I don't even swear. But he's a voracious reader. Anyone who reads that widely is used to subcultures. Plus he's a fisherman. It's hard to be shocked by a few lines of coke and bad words if you're a fisherman in Alaska.

Q. And others in your family?
A. A couple of friends of my mom's couldn't read it. My aunt couldn't read it. It's too trashy and raunchy for her. ... It's certainly not for the prudish, but there are only three sex scenes, and those are very short. My mom at first kept confusing me with Brandy. But by the second read she realized it wasn't about me. Another aunt, a lifelong missionary in India, had no problem with it. But I heard that first aunt is going to try again.

Q. Are you looking forward to coming back home.
A. So much. I so miss Alaska.

CINDY DYSON has built her own Web site, which features book excerpts, reviews, interviews and more. Under "the bookclub," you'll find the top 10 (funny) reasons for joining a book club. View footage of the Aleutians. Find a bibliography on Aleut history and culture. She has also launched a Story Scholarship program through the University of Alaska Foundation to encourage Aleut students to obtain degrees in writing and archaeology.
www.cindydyson.com

CINDY DYSON will read from and sign copies of "And She Was" at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Title Wave Books, 1360 W. Northern Lights Blvd.