Benjamin Percy: The Dead Lands

Ella is frequently frustrated by Lewis’s imperious attitude toward her, yet she’s loyal and devoted throughout the book. Why do you think she continues to follow his orders?

In what ways does the futuristic wasteland of THE DEAD LANDS draw from contemporary fears and current events? Do you think our planet is in danger of experiencing environmental devastation at this extreme level? What places have experienced environmental disaster on a smaller scale?

Why do you think Cyrus, who is the very picture of virility and strength at the beginning of the book, is so undone by the journey west? How does the journey change the other characters?

Is Clark a good sister to York? Is Lewis a good caretaker for Ella? What does it mean to you to feel responsible for someone?

In chapter 43, Ella says “Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die.” Do you agree?

Even though the United States, as we know it, has been fractured past recognition for most of their lives, the characters in THE DEAD LANDS maintain a strong sense of American nationalism. Why do you think that is? Do you believe the people of any country would rally around a national identity in a post-disaster world, or is there something distinctly American about this response?

How would you categorize THE DEAD LANDS — is it a horror novel? A Western? Literary fiction? If you believe, like Clark does, that “the world has not destroyed itself. The world has always been destroying itself, a perpetual apocalypse,” then what kind of story is THE DEAD LANDS?

Characters throughout THE DEAD LANDS read books, and the novel itself opens with a reminder that “stories are in conversation with other stories.” What stories is THE DEAD LANDS talking to? Why might the author have chosen to open the book with that particular quote?

You’ve spoken before about the cultural influences on your writing. What books inspired THE DEAD LANDS? Did any movies or non-written stories guide your writing?

The list is long. For starters, I’ve always been interested in fishbowl scenarios. Stephen King plays with them often — in Under the Dome, The Mist, The Langoliers, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile . An invisible dome appears over a town, a mist full of monsters oozes across the world, a caged door rattles shut and a key turns. The characters are trapped, the pressure is on, and certain traits end up magnified by the stress of the situation. Lust, love, courage, murderous rage, loyalty, religious fanaticism — they all heighten and come crashing together in one wild social experiment.

This is how I was thinking of the Sanctuary. As a prison like Shawshank. One the characters are born into and must escape if they’re ever really going to transcend the limitations of their existence, to grow up as individuals and as a country.

I also love quest stories. The Road, The Hobbit, Heart of Darkness, True Grit . But they’re also extremely difficult to write well. Because the straight-line — get the character from here to there, with various obstacles to overcome — often results in an episodic quality that feels redundant and doesn’t contribute to momentum.

So I was trying to compound two narrative designs I admire, to create something complicated and hopefully new. Some of my characters are on a quest, moving from point A to point B. But by flashing back and forth between the Sanctuary and the journey west, I’m able to enhance suspense (by leaving the reader hanging) and to contrast the terrors and hopes of two very different worlds. And the more time we spend in the Sanctuary, the more we understand why the perilous escape from it is so necessary.

The characters who leave the Sanctuary travel a route forged by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, accompanied by Sacagawea, in the early 1800s. How closely have you replicated the historical Lewis and Clark journey? Why did you choose the Corps of Discovery route as the setting for this story?

I grew up in Oregon, in the shadow of Lewis and Clark. Shelves of my mother’s library are devoted to literature about the expedition. She gave me their journals as a gift for my twelfth birthday inscribed with the commandment: seek adventure. Almost every vacation we took as a family included a tour of some Lewis and Clark (or Oregon Trail, her other obsession) destination. I visited Fort Clatsop with the same frequency some go to concerts or baseball games.

I love the journals — I love Undaunted Courage —I love I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company . I wanted to contribute to the conversation, but take it in a new direction. My initial thought was nonfiction: recreating the passage, with different people from my life accompanying me on different legs, all the while recalling my wild upbringing and challenging the safety-padded sense of contemporary adventure. But once my wife and I sat down and figured out how long the trip would take, the idea got nixed. It would be irresponsible for me to leave my family (I have two young kids) for that length of time.

So I began to sketch out different possibilities for a Lewis and Clark novel. When I came up with this angle, I knew instantly it was right — a story that would tip its hat to history, but journey into the future, reimagining the characters in a postapocalyptic scenario, reuniting the states. There are many parallels, of course, but I also didn’t want to chain myself to the journals. Besides, I think it would be pretty silly for anyone to come to a postapocalyptic novel looking for a history lesson.

Do you have a favorite character in THE DEAD LANDS? Or is there one you particularly identify with?

I’m equally fond of (and irritated by) Lewis and Clark. They have the same dynamic as Spock and Kirk in Star Trek . Or Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey in the excellent Patrick O’Brian seafaring novels. An odd couple. Lewis is maddening as a sickly, prickly scholar — and Clark is maddening as an id-driven rogue. But they both do a lot of growing up, their inner journeys as wild as the gauntlet they travel.

What inspired you to write about mass-scale disaster and survivalism? Is there any part of you that believes you’ll see an epic disaster like this in your lifetime?

My parents, for a time, were back-to-the-landers. My father hunted elk, deer, bear — we raised chickens — we grew our own vegetables and fruit. I attended survival camps as a kid. Almost every vacation was in a tent. Maybe because of this, falling off the grid has always seemed like a possibility, has always been an active part of my fantasy life.

And though apocalyptic and postapocalyptic stories have always been with us, there’s been a tide of them lately, and I think this has everything to do with our post-9/11 anxieties and these environmentally challenged, politically divisive times. Destroying the world has never been more popular because destroying the world has never seemed more possible. I wanted to tap into these fears.