All We Have To Believe In received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Jeffrey J. Lousteau.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
All We Have To Believe In was first published in 2020 by The Conrad Press, an independent publisher in the UK. It was available in print and eBook format via Foyles, Waterstones booksellers in the UK, and via Amazon in both the UK and US.
All We Have To Believe In was published in 2022 by Hybrid Global Publishing, a New York-based publisher, making the book available for order by independent booksellers in the United States via Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bowker, Cengage, etc.
What’s the book’s first line?
“He would remember it as a night gone terribly wrong – suspended in disbelief, then reaching for her sprawled unconscious at his feet, another casualty, one more innocent unprepared for the truth.”
What’s the book about? Give us the ‘pitch’.
ALL WE HAVE TO BELIEVE IN is a captivating story of love and loss, of betrayal and redemption, set against the backdrop of a turbulent America in the 1920s. Edward Dooley is a disillusioned veteran of the Great War who comes home to San Francisco, and while struggling to fit into a fast-changing society, he defies his family by marrying the daughter of immigrants who is as headstrong as he is idealistic. Beneath all the glamour of the Roaring 20’s, racial prejudice is on the rise, prosperity is undone by greed, and Prohibition proves morally bankrupt. Told with compassion and rich in historical detail, the themes of this story continue to resonate today.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
This novel originated from a desire to better understand the life and times of my maternal grandfather. I was five years old when he died, part of the late Baby Boomer generation that just missed the Vietnam war – America’s last draft.
Contemporaries of mine from the British Commonwealth have similarly been drawn to this defining experience of their grandfather’s, for example: Writer Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” Trilogy; Filmmaker Peter Jackson’s 2018 documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old’; Director Sam Mendes’s 2019 best-picture Oscar nominee “1917”. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no American author has focused a novel on the fate of returning ‘Doughboys’.
This is likely because America’s involvement was limited to the last six months of the conflict and followed by a dazzling decade of 1920s – full of great promise and prosperity for the isolationist majority of white Americans. In truth, that’s only half the story of America in the 1920s. While this is a work of fiction, my goal has been to shed some light on enduring truths about human nature and the American experience.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
The key to engaging historical fiction is how a reader’s immersion in the life and times of other people can transcend a particular period and offer fundamental insights into human nature. To better understand and appreciate life we do well to empathize with the challenges and choices confronted by those who have come before us.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? What real or fictional would you say the character reminds you of?
Edward Dooley is a representative ‘every man,’ a young American just getting started in life when he finds himself tossed into a cauldron of conflict half a world away – ostensibly a fight for democratic freedoms belied by darker, more cynical forces which haunt him when he comes home. It’s been a recurring drama for many young Americans over the past century that is all too easily ignored by those of us safely isolated on the home front.
In the sense that this character must face life’s challenges in the American context, I’d say he shares an affinity with Saul Bellow’s protagonist in “The Adventures of Auggie March.”
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
There is a wide-eyed tragic idealism in British actor George MacKay’s performance as Lance Corporal William in Sam Mendes’s 2019 film “1917” that embodies what I imagine to be Edward Dooley’s experience in the trenches of the so-called Great War.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I’ve kept a journal all my life, was for years a devoted fan of non-fiction history until in immersing myself in the reading of fiction I began to perceive the potential for illuminating truth more intimately in that genre.
Despite writing several short stories and having none accepted for publication, I poured myself into the project of this novel as a personal journey of discovery. Ultimately, I suppose it’s the sort of novel I would most enjoy reading.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
Yes.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I am an architect. It’s no coincidence that historical allusions to architecture in the novel tend to be manifestations of human idealism – from the Parthenon and the McKim Mead and White grand confections featured in The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco to the churches and war monuments Edward encounters in the course of the story, architecture can be an enduring symbol or ephemeral chicken-wire-and-plaster bombast.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
The writing and publication of this novel took the better part of a decade. During that time, in addition to my ‘day jobs’, I serve as an Associate Editor for the online literary journal www.NarrativeMagazine.com based in San Francisco.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is freedom and flexibility of writing from one’s heart and experience, not tailoring one’s work to the commercial demands of a certain genre and publisher.
The hardest part is being found/read/heard at a time when so much is being published and the intellectually curious public is bombarded with so much media that making time for serious reading is increasingly difficult.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
Read a lot, write from your heart, put in the time to produce something of lasting value.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
I might be interested if the publisher could demonstrate that they weren’t only interested in the bottom line, casting around for bestsellers and cookie-cutter genre work. The promise of increase exposure to the reading public is appealing, but I found no agents and publishers eager to engage debut novelist of historical fiction.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? Fortune?)
I have no illusions of fame and fortune through my writing. Imagining someone I will never meet being moved by something I’ve written appeals to me; human contact is essential nourishment, but it can’t always be in the flesh. Writing is a form of artistic creativity that when done well can take on a life of its own.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
One of the things that drew my attention to the rich and nuanced history of America in the 1920s was reading Sinclair Lewis. Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith impressed me with their breadth and insight – diagnosing the good, the bad, the preposterous, the tragic about the American experience in real time.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
I wouldn’t presume to have written the novel, but I will always stand in awe of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden as such an ambitious, beautifully drawn and richly characterized morality tale.