Is life a broken promise? A rusty chain? What about a bubble of fear inflated by an innocent kid who grew up to remember it was always there, all around? More questions make their way into debutant author Annie Harmon's first work of fiction 'For Sarah' (Publish America, Baltimore, 2005).

'For Sarah' laces several first-person stories of Lee sisters (Angela, Samantha, Rachel, Amber, Jessica, Ash, and Tia) who fight the way of their life out of the horrors of an abusive stepfather. It was a pleasure to talk to Annie about her wonderful book.

Ernest: Annie, the first question that comes to mind about For Sarah is whether to read it as a series of stories or a novel?

Annie: In the effort to keep within each character’s head, the book was written as a series of short stories, each driven by the thoughts and the actions of the character writing it. And yet, each account on its own is such a small fragment of the whole that to accept it as such would only distort the view of that character and the situation in all. It would be like a counselor hearing your mate’s side of an argument and not yours as well. The understanding would be incomplete, and likely, moderately incorrect. Therefore, although For Sarah is a series of short stories, I would highly recommend it to be read as a novel, as a whole.

Ernest: How did you conceive the idea of writing about girls suffering in family?

Annie: How could I not? That is the real question. I was a girl suffering in a strange family affair; almost all of my friends were girls suffering with secrets of family abuse. How could my first novel be about anything else when this is the one subject that I know fluently?
Without endless hours of research, I knew these characters from birth to death; I knew their every move—what was realistic within their thought process and why they would reach the conclusions they reached for. This story was deeply rooted in my heart. If not for publication, if not to share with the world the struggles our women are facing when left in these dangerous situations, if only for my own personal relief—it still had to be written. It just had to.

Ernest: Is the idea of girls running away from home to escape abuse rooted in real life observations?

Annie: Yes. And not just in their childhood, but running away as adults. The running, once started, is very hard to stop. It’s like a stampede. And, after the initial threat has passed, and the running has slowed, it only takes a simple trigger: a smell, or a sound, or a photograph, to bring the threat back to life and to live it out all over again. It is also very painful to watch because lives will be trampled on every time the running (whether internally or externally) starts back up.
Ernest: For Sarah reads as an emotionally charged book. How much did it matter to you being a woman and writing down the emotions of women?

Annie: I would like to say that only a woman could have written this book, but having heard men and women alike comment that they know these characters—not because they are well-written (although I should hope that is also the case!), but because the characters could have been their mother, or their sister, their ex-wife. Readers recognize these women from the start. Our pain, and our behaviors reflecting our pain, is not the secret that we think it is. And if others, men and women alike, can see it, they can also write it. It’s simply a matter of possessing empathy. And finding a thesaurus so you can find multiple ways of saying “memory”.

Ernest: Your narrative hooks the reader from the first page and one is curious to know how you managed to keep it up to the very last sentence.

Annie: I think the primary reason for this success is the fact that the stories were written as a secession of short stories. This made it easy and fun to repeatedly set the character up in the middle of the moment and leave them hanging on while I walked the reader out of that door and into the next character’s moment.

Ernest: Ashlee is the primary narrator of the stories. Do you find yourself on common grounds with her in some qualities?

Annie: Very much so. I have more kids than she does, and I do remember last week…sort of. But I think all writers have a main character that they can relate to, one that was pieced from them. Ashlee is my Adam, she was built in my image and if she must ever share a rib with Eve, I am sure I will find one of my own missing even as I write about it. That’s how close we are to being one and the same.

Ernest: Can we read For Sarah as lessons in understanding strengths and weaknesses of girls suffering an abusive family?

Annie: As an outsider—an observer—you could use For Sarah to understand the basic workings of an abusive family. But as a victim, or an attempting healer of a survivor of such, I am sure more reading of more material than just my novel would be necessary. The affects of abuse are far more complex than what I could ever sum up in seven characters. Although each of these characters are easily recognized by readers, there is still so much more to the affects of abuse and how they carry within us. And, understand, every situation dealt with by each very different human being could create any number of possible reactions.
Was that a little too serious of an answer? I take this matter to heart with me each day and night. If I could hug each and every survivor, I would. I feel for them and their daily struggles and even having experienced my own traumas, I would never want to assume that I knew exactly what they are feeling or how they ought to react.

Ernest: What is the root strength of the Welsh sisters?

Annie: Each other, of course! In keeping with real life, our greatest weakness, and our greatest strengths are, and always will be, each other. The Welsh sisters find their power in numbers, and as it often happens, they find that they can be strong for the ones they love far better than they can for themselves.

Ernest: You show woman in various roles-mother, daughter, sister, friend- in your book. How is the position of women in one role affected by another?

If I understand your question correctly, it’s not just the women who are affected by each other. They say if you smile, it will travel all the way around the world. It’s the same with anger. Remember the example Amber give to Nicole? She says, ““It’s like this: Imagine a chain that had corrosion—I’m sorry, rust—growing on it. If the chains are all linked together, then the other chains are going to get rusty too, right?”

Ernest: Do you think that boys are likely to suffer the same intensity of horrors as the Welsh sisters did?

Annie: Both sexes have been the target of sexual physical, and more often, emotional abuse. To say the trauma of one sex might be proven as more horrific than that of the other would be difficult for me. Many years ago I had a male friend mention his difficult past. Listening to him, I could still hear the pain it caused him. I think overall, both sexes have had their lives permanently altered due to the damage of an abusive adult. The major difference in the destruction of our children is in the numbers. For females it is at the very least, one out of four.

Ernest: You allow all of the Welsh sisters to tell their stories, except Tia. Any reason, why?

Annie: I wondered this myself. It wasn’t purposeful. I wrote, or rather, I let the characters write themselves as they were. When setting out to write this story, I initially thought each of the sisters would talk to the reader, and I had no intention of allowing the mother to speak at all. But somewhere down the line I discovered Tia did not want to address her problems, she only wanted to help her sisters. The mother, on the other hand, did not want to remain quiet. Her reasoning, or her excuses kept pounding my brain like surf against rocks. “I was there for them, I loved them, I supported them!” she would cry out. And every time I asked her how she could love them and allow the damage to continue, she responded with a different answer, always with avoidance, and yet calming me with her absolute assurance. I felt I would let her tell the reader why in her own words. I think she did a pretty good job of it.
Now, to finish answering your question, I think it was a matter of the characters determining who said what, and Tia is the one who has never come to terms with the situation. Because Tia has never dealt with it, she seemed to have very little to say about her feelings. I got the impression that she does not fully acknowledge she has any feelings whatsoever. We talked about the strength these girls had, and I said they were strong for each other; Tia is that—and only that. If she didn’t have sisters to be strong for, her strength would have withered up and blown away. You notice Tia gives and gives—to everyone, but herself. So, in the end, I suppose Tia could not give herself a story. She could only give of herself in the other’s stories.

Ernest: Finally, comes the most important question that will ever haunt the reader of your book: who is Sarah?

Annie: That’s almost like asking the publisher of the Bible, “Where is God?” Some things just aren’t meant to be answered, not only for the sake of the mystery, but because there is no straight answer, no single positive truth. God is where you need him to be, and Sarah—admittedly, not half the woman that God is—is whoever you need her to be.