M.H. Herlong
M.H. Herlong grew up in a small town in South Carolina where she once had a dog and never went sailing but did read about a million books. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that she writes all the time and that her first published novel was about sailing and her second, about a dog.
She went to The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she majored in English and studied fiction writing under Stephen Marlowe. On the first day of the two-semester class, the students received the single assignment for the entire year—write a novel—which they all did. After college, Herlong taught high school English for a year then moved to Florida with her new husband where they served as captain and crew of the Sonshine and lived aboard Arawak, the sailboat which became the basis for Chrysalis, the boat in The Great Wide Sea. Together they have sailed at sea in Florida, the Bahamas, and the Virgin Islands but lately most of their sailing has been off the beach in Alabama.
After two sunny years in Florida, they moved back to Virginia, first to work on Capitol Hill and then to attend the University of Virginia where Herlong earned her Masters Degree in English and then her law degree. After law school, she and her husband moved to New Orleans where they both practiced law. Soon their first son was born and then the second. Herlong retired from the practice of law and a one-year stint as a law professor. Before long, sons number three and four arrived.
Sometime in the midst of the bottles, oatmeal, and soccer games, Herlong took up writing again. Her goal with The Great Wide Sea was to write a book her sons would want to read. Three of her sons read it immediately and liked it. Then The Great Wide Sea was named one of YALSA’s 2010 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults and included on numerous state reading lists, including the Texas Lone Star Reading List and the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers List. But it wasn’t until three years after the book’s publication that the hold-out son finally read it. At last, she had succeeded. He liked it, too.
Herlong’s second published novel, Buddy, grows out of her experience as a New Orleanian when levee breaks in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina caused massive flooding and destroyed much of the city. Her own evacuation, return, and rebuilding story are quite different from the one of Li’l T and his family. But all New Orleanians, no matter what happened to them or where they are today, share the essential experience that firmly divided time for every one of them into life pre-Katrina and life after.
“Sometimes when you read a book or watch a TV show, you see the people and you think, Don’t do that. Don’t open that door. Don’t answer that phone. You know everything is about to change. “Stop!” you want to say. “Rewrite the story. Rewind the tape. Don’t let it happen that way.” But you can’t. The people always open the door or answer the phone. The bad thing always happens, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“(After Gerry fell overboard and they set sail)“Dad.” I held my teeth tight. “I guess you forgot. Planning this whole trip, I would have thought you’d remember, but I guess you didn’t.” I looked at Dad again. He was watching the sail. “Dad,” I said, “Gerry can’t swim. Remember?”
“Ben,” Dad snarled. He was tired. “Life jacket and safety harness. Always. When you’re alone on deck at night, we’d never know if you fell off. You’d be left behind. We’d never find you.”“Doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.”
“When you’ve been on a boat for a while, its sounds gets to be like the sound of your own heartbeat. It’s always there, constant, steady, until after a while you don’t hear it anymore. Then something changes. The speed, or the rhythm, or the tune. Suddenly the sound rings in your ears.”
“Usually when you’re steering a boat, it’s like steering a car – you aim yourself in the right direction and move the tiller a little this way or that way on keep on course. Occasionally a stronger puff of wind or a sudden wave pushes you off – like a bump in the road or a car that swings too far into your lane. But you correct. You get back on course. And you start again with the little movements. It’s easy. Anyone can do it.”
“He was an eleven year old man.-(inside joke)”
“I was letting myself come back to life and it wasn’t good.”
“I thought that it was possible at a time like that to cry. There was a switch inside somewhere, and a person could just decide to flip it and start crying. Maybe it looked and felt like the toggle switch on the engine. Silver and smooth. One direction was on; the other direction was off. Easy to flip. You do it without looking. Up -- you’re happy and strong. Down – you’re crying and weak.”
“So we cooked the flounder and ate every single bite. It was huge, and we were stuffed. It was worse than Thanksgiving. I mean it was better.”
“Gerry breathed loudly and slowly. “Dylan,” he said accusingly, “that was a sad story.”“Not it’s not. It’s a happy story. It’s about a mom who loved her baby very much.”“But she’s gone,” Gerry said in a very little voice.“That doesn’t mean she loves you any less,” Dylan said.”
“The present doesn’t change the past. Is the fact that the past happened enough to make the present good? Is the past real? Was it real anymore?”
“I wished we had milk – milk for strong bones. Dylan said he would eat the fish bones if I would quit talking about milk.”
“What’s up?” I said.“Nothing.”“I mean what’s wrong?”“My leg is broken.”“Yeah, I noticed.”