Morris makes a return trip to Idaho with ‘Travelers Rest’
South Carolina writer Keith Lee Morris was raised in the Idaho Panhandle – Kellogg and Sandpoint – and frequently revisits the Gem State in his work. His third novel, “Travelers Rest” (Little, Brown, $27), is set in Good Night, Idaho, a place that is loosely – very loosely, the author insists – set in Wallace.
The story centers on the Addison family. Father Tonio, a college professor, his wife, Julia, their 10-year-old son Dewey, and Tonio’s younger brother, Robbie. Tonio and his family are driving Robbie, fresh out of rehab, across the country to their South Carolina home as part of his treatment plan. A snowstorm forces them off the interstate and into the old mining town of Good Night, where they check into the Travelers Rest, a once glorious hotel now gloriously falling apart. Once they check in, it doesn’t take long for the four members of the Addison family to find themselves lost – lost in place, lost in time, within the labyrinthine Travelers Rest.
The 1981 Sandpoint High School graduate will return to the Inland Northwest this week for a series of events in Wallace, Moscow, Sandpoint and Spokane. In this Five Questions With interview, Morris, who teaches creative writing at Clemson University, talks about comparisons to one of Stephen King’s most famous works, finding inspiration in the Panhandle and writing from dreams.
Q. It seems when you set a novel in a spooky old hotel in the mountains during a snowstorm, you’re inviting comparisons to that other really famous book about a spooky old hotel in the mountains during a snowstorm. How do you feel about that?
A. What book are you referring to? Oh, right, THAT one. It’s true – I knew there were going to be comparisons, but I didn’t realize how many. I don’t think the books are much alike beyond a superficial similarity, but I think at this point more people have seen the cover and the blurbs and the marketing than have actually read the book. I think once people have read the book it will start to feel that it exists in its own separate space away from … well, that other book.
Q. What was the inspiration behind “Travelers Rest”? From what I understand, it’s very different in tone from your earlier work.
A. It’s different from my other novels, which were much more in a straight realist vein, usually featuring down-on-their-luck small-town protagonists. Only one of the main characters in this book, Robbie, would have fit pretty comfortably in the pages of my other two novels. But I’ve been writing short stories based on dreams – actual dreams I’ve had that I turn into fiction – for over 20 years, and to me, “Travelers Rest” is really just a longer version of that type of story. So it didn’t feel like a completely new approach to me, though it probably would to anyone who had never read my short stories. The actual inspiration for this book came during a visit to Wallace when we got a bunch of my old high school friends together and took an impromptu trip through an abandoned hotel, which ended with one of my friends accidentally locking himself in a room. The novel started taking shape in my mind from there.
Q. I’m a few chapters in and already hooked. Our cast of characters is already separated and clearly dealing with some weird things in the Travelers Rest. Is there a particular challenge in writing a novel in which the tension rises early? Was it a struggle to keep that tightrope taut?
A. That’s a good question. I wish my fiction students asked that kind of question more often. There’ve been a lot of quite successful novels over the past 10 years or so featuring a very loose or episodic structure – the popularity of “novels in stories,” for example, or novels that shift to entirely different narratives partway through (Roberto Bolano’s “2666,” David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas,” and Tea Obrecht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” come to mind). “Travelers Rest” isn’t one of those. It’s more the kind of novel in which the author tosses a certain number of balls in the air and then continues to add to them and perform more tricks until he/she a) manages to catch most of them successfully, or b) drops them all over the place and makes a mess of things. That kind of novel is tighter and more focused while the other typically has more breadth, I think. Your tightrope metaphor is probably better – you set readers up on that rope and you have to keep them moving, and if the line goes slack, it’s all over. It IS a challenge, but a fun one.
Q. You’ve revisited your North Idaho roots in some of your previous works, including the novel “The Dart League King” and “The Best Seats in the House.” What is it about this place that keeps pulling you back from 3,000 miles away?
A. Seriously, I wish I knew. I wish it were as easy for me to write about some other place as it is for me to write about North Idaho. That would make my life a lot simpler, considering I’m only in the area for a few days each summer, usually. It makes it hard to feel that you’re keeping up on things adequately, changes that are taking place. But when I imagine the plot of a novel or story, Idaho just seems to be the default setting – it’s the place I think about more than any other. I guess that’s because I’ve always loved it best out of the places I’ve lived, and most of my best friends are still here.
Q. What’s next for you?
A. Ha! Trying not to even think about that right now. I’m not a compulsive writer – I’m perfectly happy taking a long time between projects. Right now I’m looking forward to my trip to the Northwest, especially the book launch party we’re throwing at my friend Chase Sanborn’s microbrewery (the Wallace Brewing Company) in Wallace, where the novel is set (well, it’s a fictionalized version of Wallace that’s a good bit more eerie). We’re hoping to get a lot of people there, and we’re renting out two old hotels in town (one of which used to be a bordello) for guests to stay overnight. Should be fun. So I’m just trying to relax and enjoy things for a while – the chance to spend time with new readers and old friends is the payoff for all the work that goes into writing a novel and trying to get it out there in the world.