Happy publication day to Eric D. Goodman.

Eric D. Goodman is the author of four books, including Tracks: A Novel in Stories, which I reviewed back in 2012. His new novel, Setting the Family Free, is about a preserve of exotic animals being released into an Ohio community.

Today we talk with Eric about his new book and his writing.

Setting the Family Free sounds like an unusual and interesting premise. What inspired you to write this novel?

Setting the Family Free was inspired by a real event, although the characters and actions in my book are entirely fictional and the locations have been changed to similar but different places.

There are many times when I read or see or hear an extended news story, especially the ones that unfold over a period of time, and think that it would be a great idea for a novel. Usually I write a few pages of notes and file it away for the future. In this instance, I was inspired to jump on the topic right away.

I spent a good amount of my time in Ohio during early adulthood, so I knew the places well. I’d always wanted to write an “Ohio book” and an “animal book,” and this was an opportunity to do both. I visited the places where the real events happened, and the places where I set my scenes, and I made a point to drop in on a number of zoos and animal reserves during the writing of the book.

Another unique thing about this novel is the way you tell it. Some sections are traditional narrative from main characters, but others sections are news transcripts, newspaper article excerpts, and sound bites from people involved with the events or who knew the people involved. Tell me about that choice.

My main inspiration was to explore the story of why a person would release his dangerous animals into the community and what would happen when he did. But I also found myself interested in how a real news story unfolds and how different people and groups view what transpired differently.

The entire issue of exotic animal ownership was one that conjured many different viewpoints, but adding the personal perspectives of people involved seemed like a great opportunity to experiment not only with multiple perceptions of individuals, but different ways to tell a story.

As happens in real life, I wanted to “break” the story with the sensational headlines and reports, and show how the news was reported differently by different sources with various agendas. In an almost mockumentary way, I wanted to paint a picture of the situation and the main characters involved with sound bites and news clips, and then to delve deeper through the perspectives of the characters involved. Not only the owner of the animals, but his estranged wife, workers, those attacked by the animals, the hunting party with their own varying views—from veterans to veterinarians—and even the animals themselves.

It’s interesting how often we see a news headline or catch a few minutes of a news broadcast and think we already know the story. I wanted to dig deeper and get the story as it existed to those intimately involved.

Did the novel or series, Zoo by James Patterson, influence Setting the Family Free?

It’s funny you should bring that up. To be honest, I have not read the book or watched the movie. I wouldn’t allow myself to, because I didn’t want it to influence my rewrites in any way. I wrote the first draft of Setting the Family Free before I knew Zoo existed.

I wrote the first draft of the book while I was the Fall 2012 writer-in-residence at the Ox-Bow Artist Colony, part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s School of Art. I finished the first draft and felt really good about having an original story unlike anything else. On the way home, I stopped in at an airport book store and what do I see? James Patterson’s Zoo.

I’m sure a lot of writers can relate to this, but it’s not the first time this serendipity has happened to me. I wrote my first draft of Womb: a novel in utero ten years before it was published in 2017. Within the same year, Ian McEwan published a novel in utero, Nutshell.

But more important than the similarities in these novels are the differences that make each story unique. Although I haven’t read or watched Zoo yet, I believe it’s about the animals in zoos across the world changing genetically and attacking people. I think it has a supernatural or science fiction or aspect to it in that way. My book is closer to literary fiction than it is to science fiction; it’s about absolutely normal animals being put in a bad situation—and the people of nearby communities being put in equally bad situations as a result.

Now that Setting the Family Free is out, I’ll look forward to reading Zoo, just as I waited until Womb was published before reading Nutshell.

So, Zoo did not inspire Setting the Family Free. Did you find inspiration from any other books?

Certainly. I found inspiration in the Tim O’Brien novel, In the Lake of the Woods. I really admire O’Brien’s work, and was blown away years ago by the way he told that story with “evidence” chapters and “what if” chapters. In an earlier draft of Setting the Family Free, I actually had some “what if” sections that contemplated different outcomes and motivations, but decided it didn’t work in this book. But the alternate formats and perspectives, I think, made for an interesting way to explore this story.

Also, John Steinbeck would sometimes weave very short and seemingly unrelated chapters between the ongoing story chapters—like a turtle crossing the road—and that inspired some of the animal-POV chapters.

You’ve been writing for a long time. When did you first discover you were a writer?

Sea turtles instinctively know to head for the water after they hatch on the beach. Writing, for me, is like an instinct, or drive, that I’ve had for as long as I can remember. I vividly recall an early elementary school assignment that solidified that storytelling instinct. I was in the third grade when our teacher instructed us to write a short story. Most kids came in with two or three pages of scribbling. I came in with an epic romp about a boy creating a good monster to fight off the evil beasts of an apocalyptic world. From that point, I realized that writing was not just something I liked to do—it was something I instinctively needed to do.

What is it about writing that drove you to pursue it as a career?

Although I didn’t understand it at the time, back during that elementary school writing assignment, I believe the desire to bring people together and to promote understanding through common storytelling was what sparked my interest and kept me writing. Even before I realized it, many of the stories I told had common themes at their heart: bringing unlike people together, getting opposites to understand one another, and trying
to see things from multiple perspectives. I remember writing a story that was essentially a retelling of Star Wars from the point of view of a Stormtrooper wising the terrorists (rebels) would stop undermining the laws of the government.

Much of my writing is centered on just trying to tell a good story. But beneath that surface, I do want to create work that people from different walks of life can relate to, and to perhaps help people meet in the middle to look at things in a new way.

How does Setting the Family Free compare to your past books?

Setting the Family Free is similar to my other books because of my empathetic writing style and my effort to look at each individual as a flawed but decent person—not good or bad, but human. It’s similar to Tracks: A Novel in Stories due to my use of multiple perspectives, although Tracks told different stories that intertwined while Setting the Family Free is essentially telling one story from multiple perspectives. Like my previous books, this one character-focused. That is, the characters tend to be more important that the plot.

But Setting the Family Free is very different from anything I’ve written before. Although characters matter most, this book is far more action-driven. The characters grew out of the “what” of the story rather than the other way around. And my storytelling method is something new to me: moving the story forward with the use of broadcasts and quotes from those involved and article excerpts and political tape transcripts—even blending in real quotes with the fictional ones.

The effect, I hope, is a story about the event, but one enriched with multiple perspectives and multiple storytelling methods. And one that will keep readers turning the page.

Is there a connection between the title of the book and the plot?

Setting the Family Free is what Sammy, the owner of the exotic pets, believes he is doing when he releases them into the community. He considers his animals his family. But it also refers to other families in the book: the traditional families that react to the animals, the self-made families or fraternities of people who join together for a common interest or cause, or the family of community, like the sheriff’s team. I try to examine the family unit, which isn’t always as cut and dry as the traditional definition.

Setting the Family Free has earned endorsements from authors like Jacquelyn Mitchard, Juno Diaz, Lucrecia Guerrero, and Rafael Alvarez. If you could get this book into anyone’s hands, who’s would it be?

Besides Oprah and Spielberg? I’d love for Tom O’Brien to read it; I sent a copy to him. But I’m really thankful for the blurbs and reviews I’ve received and feel like the validation from other authors and journals is worth its weight in book sales. Every review and rating on GoodReads or Amazon or anywhere helps, especially for small-press authors.

I think it would be great for the people involved with the real incident or similar incidents to read it. I think and hope they would see that I didn’t demonize or glorify anyone, but instead tried to show everyone involved from different perspectives as well rounded—just as real people tend to be.

Thanks, Eric, for stopping by today to share with us your new book. Please do check out his book launch in Baltimore, Md., if you’re in the area or pick up a copy of the book from your local bookstore or on Amazon.

Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press releases Setting the Family Free by Eric D. Goodman as a hardcover, trade paperback, and e-book on October 1, 2019. The Ivy Bookshop (6080 Falls Road, Baltimore) is hosting the official book launch on Sunday, October 6 at 5 p.m., and animal-themed wine and snacks will be served, along with a reading from the novel.