Novel Summary:
A baby. It’s the one thing Romie Grodin, orphaned at thirteen, wants more than anything else in the world. A real homeplace. It’s what her coal-mining husband Jasper wants—needs—to provide for his family. When the couple’s best friend—their only “family”—is hurt in a mining accident and his wife becomes addicted to drugs, Romie and Jasper must make life-altering decisions that challenge their strengths and threaten their very existence and that of the land they love.
While never losing focus on a young couple’s relationship, the story drops readers into the horrors of mountaintop removal to extract coal, the clear-cutting of forests, a chemical spill in a river, and opioid addiction. Despite all those problems, the story remains hopeful. It glows with love for Appalachia and its people. Filling the Big Empty joins Ann Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has Been and Robert Gipe’s Trampoline in revealing the damage wrought by resource extraction in mountain communities.
Interview:
DM: First, let me congratulate you on creating such nuanced characters, both male and female. You captured the ambivalence of the men toward their jobs perfectly. Could you talk a little about how you shaped Jasper and Jimbo? Have you met or interviewed people like each of them?
Rhonda Browning White
RBW: Thank you so much! Each of these characters is a compilation of people I know, people I’ve read about, and even people I’ve seen on television. I tend to pull one character trait from one person, and another trait from another person, like Dr. Frankenstein creating his monsters. I’ve known and still know coal miners and construction workers, so I gleaned from that knowledge to help me understand how these men would relate to their jobs. And I’m an avid listener (code for, I eavesdrop). I pick up on how men speak differently on a subject than women and vice versa. We use different descriptive language and sometimes code switch when discussing a topic with the same or different sex, or race, or social class. It’s intriguing to me, and I try to recreate those differences in my characters.
DM: Filling the Big Empty is the first book I’ve seen that examines the multiple forms of environmental destruction happening throughout Appalachia as Jasper moves from job to job. What spurred you to write about not just one, but many forms of destruction? Have you lived in the different settings of the novel or traveled there?
RBW: It’s unfortunate that, while environmental destruction is rampant throughout Appalachia, we aren’t the only area affected by the rapacious harvesting of our natural resources, many of which cannot be replenished.
I’ve lived in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. I’ve yet to find a state in our country that doesn’t abuse the land—and therefore every being living on that land. I hope to reflect some of this in my fiction, to impress the importance of what we’re doing to the land upon those who may not read or hear about it otherwise.
DM: Might you discuss why Romie and Missy keep secrets from their husbands? Do you think women experience shame more than men—or is it just that both sexes feel shame but over different things?
RBW: Women oftentimes accept blame for things over which they have no control, and along with that indeed comes shame. This shame is compounded when a woman suffers manipulation or abuse at the hands of a man, and it instinctively causes inherit distrust of all men when such abuse happens. Healing and forgiveness can occur, and the shame and distrust can be overcome, but it takes work. Romie and Missy are young in this story, and they have much emotional growth and work to do to tear down those walls. This is not to say that men don’t experience shame, though sometimes men react in a more physically self-protective—sometimes violent—way to express the hurt they’re feeling.
Donna Meredith
DM: I had such hopes for Jasper when he worked at the vineyard, but he ruins his opportunity there. Missy and Jimbo self-destruct too. Why do people become their own worst enemies?
RBW: I had high hopes for Jasper, too! Isn’t it funny how our characters become so real that the author is surprised—and sometimes disappointed—by their character’s actions. I believe it comes down to hope. When we’re up against terrible circumstances, or we feel cornered or taken advantage of, we sometimes misbehave or act in dreadful ways that oftentimes compound our bad situations. Each of these characters, and Romie, as well, come up against hardships and heartaches that many of us may face in our lifetimes: the loss of a parent during childhood or young adulthood, miscarriage, job challenges, addiction, or rape. My personal belief is that the only way to overcome these things is to accept the grace and forgiveness that is freely offered to us. Without it, hope is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to find in our world.
DM: Could you talk a little about the windmills on mountaintops. Do you see them as only a positive development or do you have mixed feelings?
RBW: I did a lot of research on this, and I interviewed a man who supplies the massive turbines to wind farms. Nothing we do to the land is without risk, but everything I learned leads me to believe that they’re a positive development, especially when compared to mountaintop removal mining and fracking the land. Wind is certainly renewable energy, and we don’t have to decapitate mountains or pump destructive chemicals into the earth to harness that energy. And my research showed (as Redd Truby stated in his petition to hire Jasper), that cats kill more bird each year than wind turbines, and no one is getting rid of their kitties to save the fowl of the air.
DM: Now, let’s talk about the novel’s title. What is the “Big Empty” that your characters are trying to fill? Why do some characters succeed and others fail?
RBW: I love this question! Each of the characters have their own external “big empty;” Jasper wants a permanent homeplace and to provide a good life for his family, Romie wants a baby and to replace the family she’s lost, Missy wants to be free of her addiction and to help her baby live well, Jimbo wants his family to be safe and (like Jasper) to be a good provider. But each of them also has one thing in common not only with each other, but also with us: they want to be happy and at peace. Because that happiness and peace is missing in their lives, they feel the internal “big empty.” While writing this novel, I came across this scripture, which practically rang out in my head:
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” –Romans 15:13 (KJV)
Immediately, I knew Filling the Big Empty is the perfect title for this book! My characters need to accept the grace that God freely offers to each of us, in order to “abound in hope,” so they can experience joy and peacefully live while facing the difficult circumstances in their lives. Romie and Jasper succeed because they accept that grace, and perhaps Missy did, too, in her last days, though her painful addiction still led her to an overdose. Jimbo . . . well, I have hope that he—like the rest of us—will find that grace before it’s too late.
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