Billy Coffey’s “When Mockingbirds Sing”

Billy Coffey is a storyteller, one of the best writing today. Even more, he’s a natural storyteller, the words seemingly rolling right on to the page. To read a story by Coffey is to sit in a diner, preferably somewhere in South, and listen while waitresses refill coffee cups and slide a bit of lemon meringue pie across the table in your direction. And the stories do come.

Coffey’s first novel, Snow Day, told the story of a man facing the loss of his job when it snows, giving jobs and loss of jobs a brief respite. It’s a day when he will learn what’s truly important, simply by considering the stories of the people he runs into.

His second novel, Paper Angels, involves a man recovering from an injury in a hospital, and a visitor arrives to help him sort through a box of what looks like utterly worthless things. But each thing has a story, and the man watches his own story unfold as the box is sorted.

And now there’s When Mockingbirds Sing. It’s ambitious. It goes beyond, well beyond, the weaving of interrelated stories of his first two books, to become a unified story, a large story with a large theme. Through the characters in the town of Mattingly, Coffey lays open the questions of what is faith, what is doubt, what is prophecy, and what happens when they collide in the lives or people.

Tom and Ellen Norcross and their daughter Leah have moved to Mattingly, both to seek reduced pressures from Tom’s counseling workload and to repair a marriage that is not doing well. Their daughter Leah is a quiet child with a stutter, and with something else – an imaginary friend she calls the Rainbow Man, who inspires here to paint extraordinary pictures.

Leah says the Rainbow Man has told her to give the first picture to Barney Moore, who cares for his stroke-paralyzed wife Mabel. Barney sees numbers painted on the picture, bets the numbers in the lottery and comes up a winner with $250 million. When he announces what happens at church, life in Mattingly begins to blow apart, and Leah finds herself both sought after and reviled. Her one friend, Allie Granderson, sticks by her, however (and the character of Allie is drawn so well that she threatens to steal the story at times).

Then Leah paints another picture, one no one can figure out. But it is a sign of something that’s coming, something bad, and everyone’s lives will be changed because of it.

While Leah (and Allie) sit at the center of the story, Coffey has drawn a fine supporting cast – the legalistic deacon, the pastor impressed with his own success, a father who rejects faith because of the damage he believes it’s caused in the lives of the people he counsels, a mother who in her loneliness is turning to alcohol, the small-town sheriff. Together they move toward what the Rainbow Man has told Leah will come.

It’s an ambitious novel, and it works, and works well. Coffey has aimed at large themes, and hit them with a practiced eye. These are bedrock themes, especially for people of faith, and Coffey doesn’t duck the hard questions. He’s written When Mockingbirds Sing strong and true, and we tackle the hard questions with him.

Photograph: Northern Mockingbird, courtesy Birder’s Lounge.

Billy Coffey's "Paper Angels"

Billy Coffey tells stories. He’s a master at telling stories. To understand why is to understand Coffey’s second novel, Paper Angels.

It’s not that Coffey was born to tell stories. That’s important, but it’s not really what matters.

What matters are the stories themselves.

Andy Sommerville is in the hospital, recovering from some kind of attack that involved Andy being burned. A counselor named Elizabeth is sent to help him sort through what’s happened and what he needs to do.

Together, Andy and Elizabeth sort through a box containing 12 items, most of which look worthless. A cap. Some napkins from Dairy Queen. Part of a fingernail painted red. A wad of chewed gum. A slingshot. A key chain. A few other things.

Monetarily worthless. Yet these are the things that Elizabeth and Andy will use to make sense of Andy’s life, and where he goes next. As worthless as they might seem, they represent what matters in Andy’s life. And they are important.

Coffey uses the stories to construct a larger story, the story of Andy Sommerville but also the story of each of us. We all have those major events we think of as the important milestones of our lives – marriage, graduations, births, deaths, recognitions, honors. In between the milestones are a lot of living and a lot of life – and that’s where we find the stories.

It’s in those stories we discover what really matters about our lives and ourselves, because the stories of our lives are what we are meant to be. And this is Coffey territory. This is the landscape he draws and paints, a landscape composed of both place and people.

This is the landscape Andy Sommerville travels. Those souvenirs in the box are more than artifacts and reminders. They are the DNA of a life.

No one describes that DNA better than Billy Coffey. No one.

Related:

My review of Billy Coffey’s first novel, Snow Day.

Bill Coffey blogs at What I Learned Today.

Winners for “Snow Day” Giveaway

Last week, I announced a giveaway – actually, two giveaways – of the novel Snow Day by Billy Coffey. The deadline was last night at 11:59 p.m. The clock ticked down to the deadline (does a clock tick down or up?). And then it was time.

I did the random selection the scientifically random way to do it. I number the comments, wrote numbers of slips of paper, put the slips in a hat, and without looking, drew one. The winner of the random drawing turned out to be Barbara Brinkman, who has now been sent an email with the news.

The selection for the second giveaway was totally subjective. I asked who would you give this book to (if not yourself), and there were great responses. The one I decided upon was Sean’s, who wrote this:

“Honestly, I would read the book myself and give it to my mother and step-father to read for Christmas. I think it could help them open up and talk about the rough times they've had over the past decade (ok, that's short...but i can't be short :-) if you want, read on to see why I would use the book in this way).

“I grew up in a small factory town in Indiana, and over the past 10 years I've watched >90% of the factory jobs disappear. In the lead-up to the death of the factory part of the town, I heard (I am ~800 miles away in college) several stories of people racking up debt in anticipation for bankruptcy, taking extended unpaid vacations, and yes, even wishing for snow days - all in an attempt to, in my opinion, fill the existing cracks of brokenness in an hopes of propping themselves up for the heavy events to come. Even though nearly everyone in my family was personally affected by the loss of a factory job and I heard and saw the devastation myself, I would love to read Snow Day, as it seems like it would give me a new, fresh insight into the events that took place in my small Indiana town, and maybe even give me new ways to help my family open up about their brokenness.”

Sean, if you will send me your contact information, I will get a copy of Snow Day on its way to you.

Thanks to all who participated.

A "Snow Day" Giveaway, or Two

Did I happen to mention that I like Billy Coffey’s novel Snow Day?

Yes, I reviewed it here (and on Amazon). I even wrote about the “stickiness” of Billy’s stories for a post about another book. And a couple of people have figured out that I liked Snow Day enough to add the badge for the book on the right side of the blog here, and no one asked me to do that.

More people should read this book. It’s fine and it’s true and it tells the stories of people in a small town in Virginia at the same time it’s telling all of our stories.

I like this book so much I’m giving away two copies.

To be eligible for a random drawing for one copy, simply leave a comment here (and, I hope, a way to contact you) or on my Facebook page post on the giveaway. I will pull a name out of a hat and send the winner a copy. That’s it. The comment can be as simple as “Hi" and a way to contact you.

To be eligible for both the random drawing and a drawing based upon a totally subjective judgment by me, add a short (one or two sentences) statement about whom you would like to give a copy of Snow Day to for Christmas. You don’t actually have to give that person a copy, but just briefly explain why you would. Example: “I’d like to give a copy of Snow Day to my dad because he grew up in a small town just like the one in the book.” I’ll pick a winner and send the copy.

All comments due by 11:59 p.m. central time, Tuesday, Nov. 23. I’ll post the winners' names on Wednesday the 24th.

And even if your name isn’t selected at random or chosen for the second copy, you should still read this book.

Billy Coffey's "Snow Day"

Peter Boyd wakes up and sees a heavy snow falling outside. He decides to call in to the factory with a snow day, and he looks forward to not thinking about impending layoffs. His wife Abby sends him out into the snow to the store for bread and milk. And Peter walks right into life.

Author Billy Coffey has a singular ability to tell a story “true,” and in Snow Day, his first novel, he not only tells his story true, he tells stories within the story just as true. And he tells them well: how scars and a limp can be beautiful; how winning a lottery ticket can be both tragic and redemptive; why one can lose his faith in the face of overwhelming human devastation; and what one can learn from one’s children.

Those are only a few of the stories he tells as the drama of Peter’s impending layoff unfolds. These are stories about brokenness. Not brokenness made whole, but brokenness made livable and breathable, brokenness found in life.

If you read Coffey’s blog, you will know more about Snow Day than you realize. Yes, this is a novel, but it is also Billy Coffey’s life, and it is that life he tells so well from that small town in the mountains in Virginia. He draws the universal from the particular, often in a surprising, unexpected way. And we know these characters in the novel because we know people just like them, and because we are people just like them. He creates them all with fine detail, so that we can hear the elderly man calling for help in the big box “Super Mart” and see the disbelief followed by joy on the face of a six-year-old who finds the best Christmas present ever.

Coffey writes with a vulnerability and openness that’s humbling both to himself and the reader. There’s a sweet tenderness about his characters – even the unlovable ones – and his story.

Snow Day is a quiet story, a humbling story, a story about people we know and ultimately a story about ourselves.

The Sticky Stories of Billy Coffey

I wrote speeches for corporate executives for a long time, and now, more often than not, I’m writing speeches for myself. And while substance is absolutely critical, I learned long ago that you can write the most brilliant speeches with the most brilliant thoughts imaginable – but if you want people to remember them, you need to have stories.

And not just any kind of kinds, but personal ones, stories that surprise and entertain and help make the point of what the speaker was talking about. Many speakers often asked for “a good joke” but they were usually the people who hadn’t heard any good ones themselves and would tell jokes poorly, or at least not well. Humor is always a dangerous thing in a speech; the safest humor is always self-deprecating, allowing listeners to laugh with you and at you. Not many executives are comfortable with that, however.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath talk about the three kinds of stories that help ideas stick: challenge plot stories, where a formidable challenge has to be overcome (they give the example of David and Goliath); connection plot stories, in which people develop a relationship that bridges a gap (consider Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan); and creativity plot stories, in which someone makes a mental breakthrough, solves a problem or does something really innovative (the story of the apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head, for example).

For stickiness, those three types cover the waterfront. I speak from personal (and unexpected) experience. I gave a talk in June at a conference of university public relations people, and the person who introduced me had done their homework. I was speaking on corporate use of social media, but the introducer included one thing about me – that I edited an online poetry journal called TweetSpeak Poetry. Guess what all the questions were about at the end?

If you need to see examples of sticky stories – where you can find all three kinds the Heath brothers talk about in one place, you need to look at the blog site of Billy Coffey.

You want to find stories that include a challenge? They’re there. Or stories that make connections? Look no further. Or stories where people do unexpected and creative things? You’ve got them with this blog.

Billy Coffey, a writer in Virginia, tells what I call true stories. He watches and listens, and he carries a notebook around to record notes. He overhears conversations; he remembers stories from high school. He recalls people when he first knew them and what they became, and how they handled success and defeat and victory and tragedy.

Some of the stories he tells include all three types of stickiness. There about challenges, connections and creativity. Not once have I known a story of his to disappoint or fall flat.

Tomorrow is the official publication date of his first novel, Snow Day. There’s a Facebook party scheduled; see his blog for details. I will be posting my review of the novel tomorrow as well. (Earlier today, Jennifer Dukes-Lee interviewed Billy Coffey about the novel.)

But you can be assured of this: Snow Day is sticky, exactly the kind of sticky described in Made to Stick.

Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Made To Stick over at The High Calling. Last week's discussion can be found here.


Previous blog posts in this series:

On Simple: The One Time Something I Did Went Viral

On Unexpected: Singing Opera in Journalism Class

On Credible: As Concrete – as Air

On Concrete: It Was All in the Numbers

On Emotional: An Engineer Got Emotional