It’s said young Ernest Hemingway lost an early, vital cache of manuscripts, left (maybe stolen) on a French train. Fortunately, Hemingway forged ahead anyway. A similar railway mishap did not deter Washington state–based Deborah Nedelman from presenting her first novel, What We Take For Truth. It simply delayed her…four decades perhaps. Published by Adelaide Books, What We Take For Truth was cited by Kirkus Reviews as one of 2019’s finest books.

Set in 1991, it depicts the ironically named Prosperity, a depressed lumber town. Heroine Grace loves nature but wants to flee the struggling community whose existence hinges on its failing timber mill. When she unexpectedly inherits a cabin, Grace delays her departure and reconsiders the meaning of one’s roots while local laborers fight for their livelihoods in the face of environmental protests and regulations striving to protect old-growth trees.

Kirkus hails the book as “a late coming-of-age tale about Grace, a wonderfully drawn character, a young woman who doesn’t want to take sides.”

One might assume that Nedelman matured among pine and cedar forests, in lumberjack boots. “Actually I grew up in Los Angeles—Beverly Hills, to be precise—definitely not a logging town in the Pacific Northwest!” she says. “I moved to Washington state when I started psychology grad school in 1969. I drove up I-5 from LA to Seattle, and when I crossed the Washington state line, I found myself in a kind of green I’d never experienced.”

“That drive is still vivid in my memory. I can clearly remember driving behind a logging truck that was carrying a single log…taller than a house.” That first encounter was a scene she incorporated into the book:

When she was a kid, her daddy had hoisted her onto his shoulders to give her an idea of how big the trees were that he cut—a single giant lying on its side filled the extended bed of a logging truck and towered over the cab. Grace had reached out instinctively to touch it, feeling a mixture of awe and terror as she inhaled its scent. The perfume of red cedar still sent shivers through her.

Writing has always captivated Nedelman. “In high school I worked on the literary magazine and wrote tons of horrible poetry and more stories. By the time I left LA to go back east to college, I had a ‘body of work,’ you could say. Those were the days when you traveled with a big suitcase and shipped your trunk ahead to your destination. My writings didn’t fit in the trunk, so after I’d arrived at Bryn Mawr and settled into the dorm, I asked my mother to send the box to me….A few weeks later I came back to my dorm room and found a box full of wet ashes sitting in front of my door. I learned later that the box had traveled across the country on a train that caught fire somewhere in the Midwest. Firefighters extinguished the blaze with lots of water, of course.”

Thus she concluded, “Perhaps I wasn’t destined to make writing my life’s work and decided to major in psychology instead of English. It took almost 40 years for me to return to fiction writing—but I learned a few things in the meantime.”

Many concerned the region she’d moved to. “The logging industry built the city of Everett, Washington, where my psychology practice was located, and the changes that came about as a result of the environmental regulations of the ’80s and ’90s were felt keenly there. It was during that time period that men whose livelihoods were being destroyed by these changes started showing up in my therapy office.

“I have always seen myself as a staunch environmentalist and tended to see this issue from that perspective only. But as I listened to these men, I heard a side of the issue that most people haven’t.

“These were not typical ‘talk therapy’ clients, but they were desperate, and their stories really touched my heart. I heard how they had always believed that the hard, dangerous, physical work they did as loggers was necessary and wholesome. Many of them had fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers who were all loggers. Suddenly they were being reviled; some had kids who were challenging the idea of cutting down the forest.”

Nedelman’s heroine, Grace, can also relate to the struggles of the townsfolk, even as she desires escape. She’s been nicknamed “Parrot” for her affinity for birds while lumbermen curse spotted owls and the activists halting their chainsaws. Deep family secrets further confound her loyalties. 

“Through fiction I hoped to convey the complexity of the conflict and how it impacted individual lives. It’s a common story in fishing and mining as well as logging communities,” Nedelman says.

1But What We Take For Truth does not read like a political tract. Rather, it inhabits the minds of working people forced into painful compromises and choices. Nedelman cites Richard Powers’ Overstory, David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, Molly Gloss’ Wild Life, and Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country as forerunners. “Kent Haruf and Wally Lamb showed me a lot about how to build a small town.”

Despite the hiatus from creative fiction, Nedelman emerged from health care no stranger to publishing, having authored the nonfiction Still Sexy After All These Years. “A totally different kind of book from this one, but it was the process of writing that I loved.” 

Emboldened, she retired her practice and joined a local MFA program maintained by working writers. “When I enrolled at 63, I thought I’d focus on writing short stories as I always had and gain some craft skills that might get me a few publications. But the faculty and my peers were so encouraging and supportive I realized that if I were ever going to tackle a novel, this was the time and place to do it. So I took a short story I’d begun, about a log-truck driver with OCD, and let it breathe, as they say.” 

Completing What We Take for Truth took 10 years while she began her own fiction/nonfiction instruction and manuscript-coaching workshop, Soundview. “This felt like a perfect segue from therapy to writing instruction,” she says. “I love leading these groups because the method provides a safe, supportive, and generative environment for everyone.

“People who have never believed they could write produce amazing pieces. I feel like my role is to give permission to their inner genius to come out and play on the page. It’s really fun.”

Charles Cassady Jr. lives and writes in the Midwest, despite the trains.