One recent day a bus rumbled into Concord, N.H., and let Chicago-born novelist Susan Power and her mother off near the state capitol. Power is the author of a highly acclaimed first novel that debuts this month, but she is a daughter first and a writer second.
Susan’s mother had come to talk to the governor of New Hampshire, and anyone who knows Mrs. Power knows she generally gets her way. So they climbed the steps of the old capitol building and advanced down its echoing halls until at last Mrs. Power stood face to face with the governor.
In her melodic voice, she began speaking to him, and the whole time she talked, the governor never blinked, never moved, never said word one. Just stayed there and took it all in.
Mrs. Power’s wide, handsome face shone with a satisfied smile. “It’s your turn, now,” she urged Susan. “You talk to him.”
“Are you kidding?” Susan replied. “I told you, Mom, I’m not going to do this.”
If the affront bothered the governor, he gave no sign. Instead, he gazed out from his wooden frame as he has for generations. It has been 125 years since Susan’s great-great-grandfather governed this state, and his portrait has hung in these halls for much of that time.
Guilt works best in time-released form. A few hours later, when Susan’s mother had become occupied elsewhere in town, Susan snuck back to the portrait. Fighting down what she calls the “teenage rebel” inside her, she began speaking to her distinguished forebear.
“I did it out of respect for my mother,” Susan explains, “but also because there might be something to her idea that you can talk to your ancestors.”
And although the governor was equally stingy with his words this time, the parley seemed to do wonders for his mood. “Mom and I both agreed that after I went back, he looked happier and less dour,” Susan says.
It is an article of faith among the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, of which Susan and her mother are both members, that the spirits of one’s ancestors remain actively involved in one’s life. Never far away, these spirits often nudge events along when necessary and are available for consultation almost anytime.
It was one of these spirits, in fact, that Mrs. Power believes responsible for Susan’s writing the novel that many in the literary business believe is destined to make her a front-line American writer. The novel, “The Grass Dancer,” hit the bookstores this month, and Susan is already being hailed as “a major talent” by Publishers Weekly, the bible of the book trade.
In a mini-review, U. S. News & World Report crooned, “Susan Power doesn’t have a wall full of awards, but give her time.” Kirkus Reviews, meanwhile, called the book a “potent debut.” Both the Book of the Month Club and the Quality Paperback Club have jumped onto the bandwagon, as have publishers in nine foreign countries. And G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Power’s American publisher, is footing the bill for an almost-unheard-of 22-city book tour to promote sales.
So rare is it for a first novel to earn such honors and extravagant praise, even before it hits the retail shelves, that one could be pardoned for concluding that Power’s ancestors really did put their ectoplasmic muscle behind the book. But whether or not spirits had anything to do with the plaudits, they certainly are integral to “The Grass Dancer.”
Ancestors permeate the fabric of the book like the repeating design on a roll of wallpaper. “The Grass Dancer” skips back and forth in time, examining the interconnections between the generations of a North Dakota Sioux community. The result is a ghostly work heavy on mysticism that still manages to be funny and satirical, even as it evokes universal themes transcending ethnic bounds.
Quite a feat of literary craft to be brought off by a young woman of 32, a Harvard Law School graduate who seven years ago turned her back on a potentially million-dollar law career in favor of a stab at the notoriously unprofitable world of fiction; who cut her writing teeth while supporting herself by editing technical newsletters for a group of astronomers; and who graduated only two years ago from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City.
“So much of this is luck and timing,” Power says, “and my mother really does believe that my ancestors are helping me. I don’t have faith in that, but I don’t reject the idea either. I’ve got an open mind about it. I hope it’s true. It would be very lovely.”
It doesn’t hurt, however, to also have help from some heavyweights in the literary industry. Power was spotted early on as an emerging talent by several key mentors, among them Lois Rosenthal, editor of venerable Story Magazine.
Rosenthal speaks each year at the Writers’ Workshop and while there in 1992, she was told by everyone about a young writer from Chicago whose work she simply MUST see. “I think Susan attended the talk I gave,” Rosenthal says, “but she was too modest to come up afterward, whereas many other students did come up and hand me manuscripts to read. On the strength of what people told me, I later contacted HER and told her I wanted very much to see her stories.”
Power sent Rosenthal “Red Moccasins,” a chapter from the work-in-progress that was to become “The Grass Dancer.” Rosenthal flipped. “I phoned Susan immediately and took it for publication. Later, I took another story of hers too.
“I’m always looking for new voices and people who can take me to new worlds,” Rosenthal says, “and there’s no one I had found who could write like Susan about Native Americans. Her work was powerful, strong and sentimental without being too sentimental.”
That fall, Rosenthal was in New York schmoozing with book people when she got together with literary agent Henry Dunow, who frequently handles Writers’ Workshop authors. “I said, `Henry, there’s a new writer at Iowa who’s done some wonderful work,’ and when he contacted her and read it, he was blown away by it too.”
Recalls Dunow, “I was enthralled when I set eyes on it.” He calls Power “a very serious writer whose work opens up in a magical way for people. She’s got something truly unique and fresh.”
Power didn’t think she was ready for an agent, even though Rosenthal and the director of the Writers’ Workshop, author Frank Conroy, kept telling her she was. “My main focus at Iowa was to learn and get better,” Power says. “I was going to wait another year before trying to sell the book. I felt I had to finish it first, but things happened faster than I anticipated.”
Dunow instantly impressed her as an agent who didn’t fit her preconceptions. “He didn’t talk money or sales potential. He talked about writing. And that’s what I love. I’m not doing this for the money. It’s for the writing.”
Dunow sold “The Grass Dancer” to the first publisher he tried, Putnam, on the strength of just four chapters, sending them to Faith Sale, whom he calls “a terrific literary editor. I thought it would be a wonderful match.” Apparently, it was. Putnam accepted the novel on Halloween of 1992.
Power now had her foot in the door, but her work had just begun. Sale, whose authors include prominent novelists Alice Hoffman and Amy Tan, commanded Power to finish the book within a year. “I pulled I don’t know how many all-nighters to get it done,” Power says. “I thought I was back in college.”
As she emerges into the light of stardom, Power has found herself in a position that many would find intimidating. She has entered the rarefied atmosphere of high New York publishing society, becoming acquainted with such prominent figures from the literary world as Toni Morrison, John Irving, Tobias Wolff, Alice Hoffman and her longtime idol, Louise Erdrich.
“You hear about the jealousy of writers, but they’ve all helped me so much. Imagine having people like that tell you your work really means something. I had worshipped Louise from afar for many years. I’m a huge fan. But when she edited the 1993 Best American Short Stories, she selected my story. Later, there was a promotional event in New York where she singled me out among new writers as a real comer.”
Still, sudden fame has caused its share of tragedies among too many writers, who seem to burn out with the same intensity that they catch fire.
“The acclaim is totally unexpected,” Power says with the almost painful sincerity that she wears around her like a shawl. “It’s what you hope for as a writer but it’s also very frightening. It’s especially so when you are perceived as a minority writer. You have to be so careful what you say so that you don’t feed stereotypes. But I’m so grateful for all the help I’ve had.”
Susan Power was born in 1961 on Columbus Day-“What a day for an Indian to be born!” she says. Her mother, also named Susan, is a singular person, a Dakota Sioux woman who was sent from the reservation in North Dakota to Chicago at age 16 to help a family friend through an illness and never went back. Instead, she entered the publishing business, joining a large book distributor based in Chicago at a time when neither women nor American Indians were terribly welcome in executive suites. Mrs. Power also went on to become a Native American activist, helping found the American Indian Center on Wilson Avenue, and taking a major leadership role in the Indian protests that erupted at Belmont Harbor in the early 1970s.
A tall, striking woman who tends to speak her mind, then turns around and worries about how her words affected others, Mrs. Power is a lifelong nonconformist who married a New England WASP and proceeded to captivate his Yankee family. Her husband, a sales representative for the publishing house of Farrar Straus Giroux, died in 1973.
