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Originally published on David's Website, now included in the trade paperback edition of the novel
Writers are mostly a nostalgic lot. We pine for the past and seem to
remember everything we've ever seen, heard, loved, hated or suffered
through.  We
drink up history, both official and those juicer pieces represented by
rumor and innuendo and even bald lies. And then we knead, polish,
embellish and cajole these observations, musings and hyperbole into
readable prose that others are willing to plunk down cash to
experience. Writers also tend to be an emotional group. We grow teary
or unduly cheerful especially over events from times past as these
memories take on heightened, perhaps some would say exaggerated
significance, as seen through the storyteller's skewed prism. I must
confess I have these "afflictions" in severe abundance. I treasure
memories, both real and imagined, from my youth. I have always been
fascinated by the tortured, often schizophrenic history of my native
Virginia and the south in general. I spend much time exploring the
lives of my parent's families. A lost uncle here, a wandering
great-grandfather there, a funny story of the paternal family from the
old country, a poignant tale of my maternal family's struggles in the
mountains; I get the trembles each time I unearth such priceless
nuggets.
Indeed, the older I become and the
more stories I write, these feelings appear to be gaining strength. It
may be chiefly a function of my role as a father (now in its seventh
year), and my ever-growing sense of my own mortality.  I
want my children to know where they came from, what their ancestors
were like, how they struggled, persevered, the mistakes they made, the
failures they suffered, the triumphs they achieved. Isn't that in part
how the vaunted twin pillars of values and character are built?
Whatever the reason or reasons, I have been looking more and more to
the past in an attempt to understand what is so confusing and
troublesome about current life.
We
are now in a time of changes so dramatic that it rivals or surpasses
perhaps anything that has come before. It is indeed different this
time. We are in one of the greatest economic booms ever with
unemployment at historic lows, consumer confidence at historic highs,
and welfare rolls, rightly or not, being pared down with blazing speed
all across the country. We are the only remaining superpower with only
the occasional rogue nation, and pesky terrorists, both foreign and
home-grown, to worry about from time to time.  Serious
crime is down across the board. The Internet has brought us closer to
being a global community than people thought possible a mere five years
ago. We have more sheer information available to us than ever before at
speeds faster than ever before. The world is arguably freer than its
ever been. Technology continues to make our lives more comfortable,
more productive. We are living longer and with better health. All in
all, it is a very rosy picture.
So
why are we so miserable? New horrors inflicted by humans upon humans
have become a daily occurrence, and we seem to grow less shocked at
each new one. When acts of depravity are committed these days, their
details are disseminated with lightning speed, and are often followed
by acts of even greater atrocity before the ink has dried on reports of
the original event. Business rocks at the speed of the Web with
machines of all kinds going twenty-four hours a day, the information
flow never stops, and, apparently employers expect their employees to
do the same thing: never stop working. At least that's how I interpret
the weary and tense countenances I see everywhere. 
We are surrounded by homes with absent parents and children left to
grow up without the benefit of mature hands guiding them. The failure
of companies, ideas, fortunes and lives occur today at astonishing
speed. There is no margin of error, there is no room to be merely
capable and willing. Either you are the best or you are not. Either you
win or else you lose. Business leaders boast that American companies
have never been leaner, meaner, stronger. And yet the clear result of
all this is that there are angry, frustrated, vastly disenchanted
people tramping through life at all levels. Civility is gone proclaims
major newspapers across the land. Folks are often taken aback when
someone is polite. Are we really that far from the following headline:
TWO HUMANS ACTUALLY SEEN SMILING AT EACH OTHER ON STREET TODAY? At
certain levels we have all grown immune to this behavior if only
because we feel powerless to do otherwise. Americans today are
disinclined to give reprimands or pass judgment on others committing
even the most boorish behavior lest they are physically attacked or,
perhaps worse, sued and put at risk of losing everything in courts of
justice that more and more have become courts of frivolity, conveyors
of lottery-style wealth to the winner.
In
case I'm not being entirely clear, I fear that we are coming apart at
the seams. No doubt many will argue that American society is routinely
in jeopardy of doing just that, only to be followed by a swing of the
pendulum benignly the other way. We do seem to be a country of
unsettling extremes. However, to me, the rending of social fabric seems
more pronounced this time around. Perhaps this is because I have two
small children who at some point I will be leaving behind to deal with
this mess. 
And as a parent I find myself ill-equipped to advise them on how to do
so because I really don't have a clue how to deal with it myself. But
we do seem to be caring less and less about each other. Perhaps it is
partly the bunker mentality in response to a world if not gone
completely mad, at least one that is markedly less familiar than any in
recent memory. In essence, having given up trying to understand how
children can gun down children, how normal citizens can become
homicidal in rush hour traffic, how babies can be left in trash cans by
honor students, how we can commit acts of ingenious depravity against
one another and then write songs, books and produce movies about them,
how the resentment and sheer hatred among the have-nots, the have
something's, and the people who have too much are building to explosive
levels, we pull the wagons in a tight circle and dare anyone to come
hurt us and our very select clan of loved ones. That reaction may be
understandable, yet it leaves little opportunity to reach out to others.
So,
in response to what I have observed over the last few years of dizzying
social and economic change, I fell back on really the only thing I am
half-way proficient at: I wrote a story. 
It was not just any story, but a story about the past, 1940 to be
precise, and set in a place my family and I know very well: the
mountains of southwest Virginia. Wish You Well is a tale of
tragedy, hope, survival, failure, prejudice, hatred, justice, and
injustice, faith, love, and the tender art of living, spread among
generations of family. That, of course, means it is about life, in all
its swell of good and endearing moments, and in all its challenging
sadness, in all its mean-spirited ways. I have no delusions that this
book will, in any way, affect the problems I have discussed above.
Unfortunately, not that many people read books any more. A lousy movie
will capture far more eyes than the greatest novel ever written. In
fact, a story in a prominent East Coast newspaper even suggested that
with the new technologies available, we might not even need authors
anymore. We can have books with sound and video clips, and the reader
can rewrite a canned work any way he wants, or create it himself,
however unskilled his hand may be at crafting tales. Thus, the novel,
as we know it, will go the way of the horse and buggy, to be replaced
with something snazzier, with more bells and whistles, if not more
heart or substance. Yet the power of the book can never be
underestimated, and the strength and resiliency of any writing comes
from the themes dealt with in the pages and the fire sparked by its
characters.
Wish You Well
is by far the most personal story I've ever written and at the heart of
it lies a connection between generations that represents a pipeline of
information, knowledge and experience that I feel dwarfs anything
delivered via high-speed modem or Cicso router. An important part of
what makes us human, I believe, is a sense, both large and small, of
where we have come from, and that means acquiring an intimacy with the
past lives of others. This bond used to be established in many ways,
some as simple as a grandfather's tales on the front porch after Sunday
dinner. 
Or the discovery of that box in the attic filled with treasures of
lives lived long ago, lives that have a direct and lasting kinship to
the finder.
While writing Wish You Well,
I surrounded myself with photographs of my ancestors yellowed and
curled with age. I would work from the outside in when drawing upon
these pictures for inspiration. I would start with the surroundings,
tree-covered Appalachian rock, the farm buildings, the animals, and
then I would finally arrive at the people, my people, and my eyes would wander over their 
shoes and their worn clothing and their sensible hats. And then I would
trace their curled and leathered hands, their lean but mountain-strong
torsos and then finally reach their faces. I would spend much time
there, searching each feature, and then finally I would come to rest on
their eyes. I would stare at them, and they would seem to stare back,
over the span of a hundred years or so, and I would wonder if they ever
could imagine me as I am today, see me as sharply defined before them,
as I am observing them now. Some lived long enough for me to actually
know them. Many did not. Thus, I am left with stories handed down,
recollections of aged relatives, family Bibles filled with loopy
old-style cursive writing documenting births, marriages and deaths, old
letters and personal possessions that have survived much to reach my
hands, in order to fill in the gaps that mortality inflicts. 
To keep this chain of lives going is a responsibility that I find
daunting yet also critical to what we refer to as our humanity.
Understanding how others suffered helps us deal with our own suffering.
The fact that it's our flesh and blood should make the lesson even more
forceful. The same is true for happier times. When we learn of
compassionate acts rendered long ago it helps us understand why we seek
to help others and thus makes us more apt to do the same. When we
understand that a mother or great-grandfather overcame hurdles that may
dwarf the problems confronting folks today, it helps us get by. It is
all there, it has all been done before. Pain and suffering, happiness
and wonder, dreams realized through hard work, passionate outcries
against injustice, one person reaching out to take and hold and comfort
another; these acts and desires have all been around since the first
humans took their first breaths. Understanding this means that even in
the worst of possible times we are alone together.  We have the strong backs of family behind us.
Wish You Well
is a novel that I look forward to reading to my children when they are
older. It will tell them of how members of their family were born, grew
up, worked, loved, cried, suffered, persevered and then passed on.  I
will show them old photographs of family members their age, long dead
now, and let them wonder about their lives, their dreams, their fears,
to help them understand that these images are of their people.
But that is only a start. The most it can do is wet their appetites for
more knowledge of them and theirs. Yet there is no guarantee that they
will be inspired by a single book or old photographs. That is too easy
an answer, and easy solutions rarely solve complex problems. One can
only gently but consistently point them in that direction and
then let them cast their own decisions. It is a work-in-progress that
really never ends. In the generations to come, the events of today will
become the history of tomorrow.  The
passing down of memories and experiences, of cherished links to the
past are innately human endeavors. When we do it, we often do it well.
The problem is we are doing it less often. And once the chain is truly
broken repair may be impossible.
Thus
it is really up to each of us to take our own journey to yesterday to
make sense of today. I refuse to believe that our future is so
different that the past no longer has value as a guidepost, as a
touchstone. In fact, we may need the lessons and strength garnered from
the past more today then ever before.  A
fast computer connection never made anyone more human, more socially
responsible. A tech-laden stock portfolio never alone made someone nice
to be around. The next deal, the next combination of powerhouse
companies, the next technological breakthrough that may well have us
vacationing on Mars will never make us more decent, more caring, more
compassionate. There are undoubtedly numerous treasures lying ahead of
us. Yet I would hope that would never persuade us that the path behind
is not strewn with perhaps a deeper, more lasting wealth.
© 2000 by David Baldacci
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