Author Profile: Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy thought he might follow in the footsteps of Lewis & Clark. His wife talked some sense into him, so he incorporated the explorers into 'The Dead Lands,” his third novel.

'I grew up in Oregon, in the shadow of Lewis and Clark,” Percy wrote responding to questions via email. 'I don't think it's an exaggeration to say my mother is obsessed with the expedition. We visited Fort Clatsop so often I could have worked as a historical re-enactor. She gifted me with their journals, took me to stops along the trail, lectured me regularly on how theirs is the greatest adventure story in American history. I've always wanted to write about them. Initially I thought I would take on a non-fiction project and recreate their passage, pedaling, canoeing, hiking, but my wife caught wind of this and very reasonably asked, ‘How long is that going to take?' So I made some stuff up instead. Call it Lewis and Clark 2.0.”

Why 2.0? Because 'The Dead Lands” is set in a post-apocalyptic future rather than in the past. In the novel, Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark, with the aid of a mysterious woman named Gawea, lead an expedition from the walled city of St. Louis - renamed the Sanctuary - in the hope of finding other survivors of a devastating super-flu and nuclear war. (See related review.)

Like his excellent previous novels, 'The Wilding” and 'Red Moon” - the former a family drama involving a harrowing camping trip and the latter a literary thriller featuring werewolves - 'The Dead Lands” features characters grappling with the natural world (or an unnaturally altered version of it). Percy's interest in the relationship between humans and wild natural world stems from his childhood.

'My parents were back-to-the-landers for a time,” he wrote, 'so we lived on a big spread of land and grew most of our vegetables and fruit, and all of our meat came from our chicken coop or the elk, venison, and even bear my father harvested. Seems like every weekend, we were heading off to fish, hunt, hike, camp or rockhound. Because of this, I'm maybe more in tune with the natural world than most. We've become a nation of indoorsmen. So the way we shape the world and the way the world shapes us very organically works its way into my writing.”

Percy, who has taught creative writing at both the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Iowa State University, is undoubtedly a literary writer, but his last two novels - as well as his current involvement with both TV and comics - suggest that he doesn't fit neatly into any given category.

'Everybody fusses over labels,” he writes. 'Call me whatever you want. I grew up on genre. Western, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, spy, thriller, mystery - whatever - I read it with pleasure, wanting to know what happened next. Then I stepped into my first writing workshop in college and was told this kind of writing was forbidden. I fell in love with literary writers like Sherman Alexie, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, but I never fell out of love with genre. And I guess my writing is a sort of hybridized beast. I will describe - with pretty sentences - helicopters exploding. I hope for artfulness, but I also hope to bring a propulsive energy to the page. These days I'm most interested in those writers who defy categorization: Margaret Atwood, Kate Atkinson, Larry McMurtry, Kelly Link, Cormac McCarthy.”