It’s impossible to pick my favorite books of all time. I am far too eclectic of a reader (and writer) and hesitant to call any one book my FAVORITE OF ALL TIME™. Instead, I’ve cobbled together a more cohesive list—books that impacted the writing of my contemporary YA debut, Strong Like You.
Strong Like You follows 15-year-old linebacker Walker Lauderdale on a desperate search across the Ozarks for his missing father. Along the way, Walker has to unlearn lessons he’s learned about bein’ tough from a man with mixed-up ideas about strength. It’s a take down of toxic masculinity draped over a crime story, draped over a football story. It is, I think, an important lesson for young men. Vulnerability is strength.
WINTER’S BONE, by DANIEL WOODRELL
Woodrell is a master of the southern voice. Winter’s Bone’s DNA is all through Strong Like You. Truth be told, I saw the movie before I read the book. And even in its film form, I thought it was one of the most accurate depictions of the Ozarks I’d ever seen put to film. It wasn’t until much later I listened to the audiobook and was blown away by Woodrell’s prose. I went on to read Woe to Live On, which also floored me. Both those books shaped not only the narrative of Strong Like You, but also Walker’s voice.
THE ROAD, by CORMAC McCARTHY
I don’t think The Road is Cormac McCarthy’s best novel, although it is very good. It is, however, the first Cormac McCarthy book I encountered. I was working night shift security at a pet food processing plant at the time. There wasn’t a lot to do, so I picked up The Road, since I’d just seen it’d won a Pulitzer Prize.
I read the thing cover to cover in eight hours.
Cormac’s prose in The Road is more lyrical than Strong Like You, and I’d never be so bold as to compare the two on literary merit (McCarthy is a genius, and I am very stupid), but I do believe there is a through line in my subconscious from The Road, Blood Meridian, Child of God and No Country For Old Men. Walker’s voice is one I have heard spoken in Arkansas all my life, but writing it and hearing it are two different things. McCarthy’s work helped teach me to capture that voice in ink.
THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME, by DONALD RAY POLLOCK
Once again, I watched the movie before I saw the book. And I watched it blind, going in mainly because a friend from high school had a small role in the film. I read the book much, much later and was struck by how beautiful and horrible it was at the same time. Poetic, masterful prose to describe borderline horror.
The Devil All the Time does not pull back from many of the worst problems festering in Appalachia (which is not too unlike the Ozarks, and maybe all of America) — misogyny, homophobia, religious extremism and racism.
The juxtaposition in the prose and in the characters is always something I try to emulate.
In its most basic version, it’s the hero with a heart of gold trope—finding the unexpected in the unexpected. But it can be and is bigger than that. The best characters are the opposite of what they believe they are, the opposite of what everyone tells them they should be, the opposite of what the reader expects them to be.
In Walker, I tried to capture this idea of juxtaposition. He is a sensitive kid trapped in a tough kid’s world.
And once again, as a sucker for voice, The Devil All the Time has it in spades.
BRAVE LIKE THAT by LINDSEY STODDARD
Brave Like That is a middle-grade novel about a boy with a football star for a father, a father who embodies traditional ideas about being brave. Throughout the story, the book’s protagonist, Cyrus Olson, learns there are all kinds of different ways to be brave—and for him, that means being true to himself, quitting the football team, working at an animal shelter and marching in the band.
We talk a lot about how important representation is in novels, and it most certainly is important. But representation is a lot more than race, gender or sexual orientation. Representation can also be as simple as reading about someone who thinks the same way you do, who struggles the same way you do, who lets you know that you are not the only person who has felt this way.
Brave Like That represented the sensitive boy and said to him, yes, you are valid exactly as you are.
JURASSIC PARK, by MICHAEL CRICHTON
One of these things is not like the others.
And it’s this one.
Thematically, narratively—Jurassic Park has nothing to do with Strong Like You. But I would be remiss not to mention this novel, which is the first adult fiction book I ever read, way back in the fifth-grade (right after the movie came out). I’d read countless Goosebumps, Calvin & Hobbes and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but Jurassic Park was the first book that made me think, “I want to write a book like this.”
And so I spent the rest of fifth grade writing my own versions of the novel, which led to me taking creative writing classes, which led to me becoming a journalist. Behind all that, I never stopped writing stories. I wouldn’t be writing this today without Jurassic Park. Maybe someday I will go back to my roots and write a techno-thriller.
T. L. Simpson is an award-winning journalist and editor of the Courier, a newspaper in his hometown of Russellville, Arkansas. Simpson spent nearly ten years covering high school and collegiate sports before taking over as editor. During that time, he was also the paper’s primary crime reporter. In a lot of ways, Strong Like You is the result of his experiences with covering both.
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