Carrie: [00:00:04] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month, we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green, and I'm here with one of my co-hosts, Michael Cunningham. Michael: Hello. Carrie: So today we are discussing Hope House by Joe Bond, and Jacqueline's taking a little break from us this month. Michael: Yep. Not a teen book. Carrie: Not a teen book, but it is one about teens, so I don't know. She might've liked this book. Michael: I think she would've liked it. Carrie: So anyway, it is one of the options on the fall Books and Bites bingo card. You could read either this novel or a book about teens, which Jacqueline's gonna have lots of options for you on that one. Michael: Oh, yeah. [Laughter] Carrie: And we'll also be discussing the book in person on November 16th at 6:30 PM. So Joe Bond joined me for the [00:01:04] Prompt to Page writing podcast last month, and so when I interviewed him for Prompt to Page, I asked him some questions about his book Hope House. So we're gonna go ahead and play that recording first of me talking to Joe about the novel, and then Michael and I will discuss the book, offer some more recommendations, and talk about our pairings. So stay tuned. Our guest today is Joe Bond. Joe's novel, "Hope House," was recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. He began working on it after his story, "Damico," won the Masters Review Short Story Award. His writing has been published by The Paris Review, People, [00:02:04] Lit Hub, New South, the New Ohio Review, and ESPN. He grew up around group homes in Eastern Kentucky and lives now in New Orleans. Welcome, Joe, and thanks so much for joining us. Joe: Thank you so much for having me. Carrie: So as your bio mentions, you grew up around group homes. Can you talk some about that experience and why you wanted to write about it? Joe: Sure. From my earliest memory, I was around the homes because my dad was a counselor, and later he ran different homes and stuff. He worked all the time, and he would take me to work with him. And I just remember always being around the boys, being on the van when they went to play basketball somewhere or went to the movies, the things they did, and they would tell their stories, what they called their past histories. They would talk about where they were from and if they had family and [00:03:04] if they had a mom or a dad, and the different mistakes they'd made in their life. And so I grew up listening to their stories. And I think it helped that I was very young, and they probably didn't think I was listening or paying any attention, so they could go into detail. From a very young age, it really expanded my view of the world. 'Cause they were kids, teenagers from all over Kentucky, and they had been through a lot of different things, and they'd lived a lot more life than a lot of the people around me. So I heard those stories when I was very young and didn't really think to write about them for a long time. But when I finally did, that world came back to me really quickly. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like from other things you've said and written that it just kind of came flooding back to you. Joe: It did. The biggest thing was that I had a child, I had a son, and I started thinking about fatherhood. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: All the boys that I'd been around that didn't have a father. And I worked in the homes when I got older, and in college, I would go back in the summers and work with the kids. Joe: And I worked Sundays during visitation, and I would take them on home visits when they had been through the program for a while. And I was telling someone the other day, I never met a kid's father. Never. Carrie: Wow. Joe: I met some moms, and I met a lot of grandmothers when I would take these boys home. But I never met a kid's dad. And when I became a dad, I started thinking about some of those things, and then I wrote a poem that became a story. And once I started doing that, I started imagining the other boys and remembering some of the kids I'd known, and it came flooding back. Carrie: Yeah, and I had read, I guess, an interview or something where you talked about writing the poems. And so I'm curious, as a poet myself, how did you sort of [00:05:04] develop that into these longer pieces? I know you published a short story, and that led you to writing the novel. Joe: Right. Carrie: Did that just happen? I don't know. Tell us about that process. Joe: Sure. Well, I'm not really a poet is the problem with my poems. They weren't quite good enough. But they were really good places to start for me, 'cause I could start from an image or a line. And with one, I knew I had two kids who had had some kind of embrace in a home, which is not something I really saw. The boys did not... It was not their culture. These were pretty tough kids who'd been through a lot. They weren't just gonna hug each other. That didn't happen. But I knew in my mind it happened somehow. And so I would write a poem trying to get to that point, trying to figure out how they got to that point. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: And it became the first one called [00:06:04] Damico about a kid named Damico Sears. It became a story because I needed more context. I needed that background. And you can't really understand kids like this who've done some really difficult things, who've made some big mistakes in their lives if you don't understand where they came from and what set them up for that. Now, they've made some bad decisions, but they were in situations where there weren't a lot of good decisions to be made. Carrie: Right. Joe: And so that's how a poem kind of expanded into a short story, which kind of expanded further into a novel. It was me trying to provide more context, trying to weave all these different kids' lives together. So I had moments like that where I knew two kids had embraced for some reason, and I had another moment where I knew a kid ate a light bulb, and I didn't know why he ate the light bulb. Why did he do this? And so I wrote... That became the chapter in "Hope House" called "Stay Gold" where I was trying to remember why this kid ate a light bulb, which is something [00:07:04] that had happened in real life. We had a kid. He'd done it for whatever reason, but I couldn't remember why, and it was good that I couldn't remember why, 'cause then I had to discover the kid's humanity to get there. Carrie: Did you ever ask your father if he remembered why the kid... I'm just curious how they matched up. Joe: Sure. Yeah, no, he absolutely... He was great to chat with about the book. I would send him chapters and stuff. But we did not always remember things the same way. Because that character in the book is his name is Tony Malapeli. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: And loosely based on some stuff that had happened. We did have a kid that ate a light bulb. And the way I remembered it was my dad had got him out of the psych ward because we had a basketball tournament, and this kid was tall and we wanted to win. And that wasn't the way Dad remembered it. I think he remembered it that he got him out of the psych ward because [00:08:04] he was a kid in there with adults, and he wanted to get him out. Carrie: Yeah. Joe: You know? Carrie: Well, that's definitely a better reason. Joe: That's a more valid reason. Carrie: Yeah. [Laughter] Joe: But I think he kind of acknowledged that, yeah, he could get a lot of rebounds, too. [Laughter] Carrie: Yeah. Joe: You know? Carrie: That helped. Joe: Yeah. Carrie: That's funny. And you also, I've just started the book, so I haven't gotten very far, but I think one thing that you can tell about it is also something that you've spoken about, is trying to portray the boys not just as delinquents, but as people who care and are capable of caring about other people, which, in your poem, trying to capture an embrace. That's something that's obviously important to you. Are there other examples of the boys showing that care that you experienced in your childhood? Joe: Yeah. There were so many. I'll tell you, to tie it [00:09:04] back to that, the two kids, in the book there is a kid named Damico Sears, and he has a child at home. He's like 16 years old and he has a son that he's never seen. And so he was kind of the kid that developed out of the moment I knew about two of the boys would try to take care of each other. And I never, like I said, that wasn't something I'd seen in real life, and my dad, I'd never... I thought that just was a moment I imagined. And my dad told me a while back, he reminded me when he was in his 20s and he was running this group home, my sister and I would do everything. We were always around these boys. And one set of, after a softball practice, there was an accident, and I've mentioned this in interviews once or twice. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: We were waiting across the street. My sister ran across the street. It was just the boys and my dad and me, and she got hit by a truck and, well, she went flying. I think I was like, I don't know, five, six years old. I don't remember. And so she went flying and everyone thought she's dead. And my dad went running, and a kid who was a higher phase. The boys were totally on their own at that point. They could have run off. There was no supervision. And this kid picked me up and just turned me away from it and walked me back into the park and just held me and told me, "It's gonna be all right," you know? Carrie: Yeah. Joe: And I don't think he knew it was gonna be all right. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: But years later after I wrote this story about Damico, and I couldn't remember two kids ever embracing, my dad said, "That was probably the moment then. It was that kid and you." Carrie: Yeah. Wow. Joe: You know, and I thought maybe it was. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Joe: So there were moments like that where you had these [00:11:04] kids who had beat people up, and they had stolen cars, and they had done serious stuff, but they were still kids. They were on the cusp of not being there anymore, but they were teenagers, and there was still humanity there, and I tried to get that down. Carrie: Yeah. And then one of the things that I think is really striking about the book is how there is a first-person narrator, but he mostly speaks using we. Can you tell us about why you made that decision? Joe: Yeah. That came from, again, just the homes I grew up around. The good ones, when you walked in the door, you could feel like a good group had its own identity. I mean, the group was a thing. They would talk. They would use the pronoun we. They would refer to themselves that way. These are kids who a lot of them never had anybody. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: And of all the places to find somebody, it had [00:12:04] happened in a group home, and they had found each other. Carrie: Yeah. Joe: And these were kids from wildly different backgrounds, from Cincinnati and Louisville and Lexington, and kids from nowhere in Western Kentucky, in the mountains in Eastern Kentucky. But they'd get in counseling, and they'd find out, "Your dad's in this prison. Well, my dad's in this one." Or, "Your mom did that," and they would find a way to connect, and there became this sense of we, and you could hear it when you walked in the building, when it was running right. And at the same time, I had a narrator. AWOL's the narrator of my book, and he's trying to find his way of telling his story throughout the novel. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: And he's very much found himself in this place, and so there's the tension between we and I, 'cause ultimately all of these kids are gonna have to go back out in the world. All of these boys are. So that's kind of a central tension of the book [00:13:04] is, how do you go from this home to reintegrating into society? Carrie: Right. Yeah. And just something you said at the beginning I'm curious about. You said that... Well, you were talking about how the boys, when you were a child, they talked around you because they didn't— Joe: Right. Carrie: —think you were paying attention or whatever. I'm just curious if that relationship changed when you were older and were working with them, or did they still kind of see you as one of them? Joe: Yeah, no, that's a great question. It changed. When I was really little, five, six, seven, I'm sure they didn't think that I understood anything they were saying. And then by the time I was like 12, I was on the basketball team with them. I mean, we were in all... We'd play these big youth camps, and I'd go into these facilities with them. And I was not one of them. I got to go home [00:14:04] at the end of the day, and I had a much better life. But I spent a lot of time with them. And then when I was a teenager, I would go and work night shifts on the weekends. And by then, I think they... I was definitely, when I was working at the home, I was definitely staff. The dynamic was different. I was good with the boys as a childcare worker, but I was different. I was very quiet, so they did not really... I don't think they knew what to think of me. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: Because my dad was different than me. He was very charismatic, and he could be loud, and he could look like, as a basketball coach, he was the kind of coach who could flip out on the referees and throw a chair into the bleachers. And then I was the kind of person who would try to calm him down. And I was very quiet and very calm. And so I don't think they really totally knew what to make of me. Other than the kids that, [00:15:04] I coached the softball team one summer when I was in college, and those were my guys. And they were some of the most delinquent kids in the home. But I'd played a lot of baseball and stuff, so I could teach 'em things they'd never seen or done. And then you go home, you take 'em on home visits, and you meet their grandmothers and stuff. And that's really, at the end of the day, there's people who are super skilled working with these kids, and there's people who are super incompetent and should never do it. And I was really kind of in the middle, where I was smart. I was not incompetent. I was smart 'cause I grew up around it. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: But I didn't really have the charisma of a great counselor. I would come to work every day, though, and I would spend time with the kids. And so I think that kind of had the street cred from doing that. But I was not a natural leader. Carrie: Yeah. I'm sure that that must take a really special person to be that. Joe: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you who's best at it [00:16:04] are the adults who were something like the kids when they were young. My dad never had a dad and had a pretty tough childhood, and so he had this wound that he worked from and this passion for it, and I didn't have that. My dad was a pretty good dad, and I saw things differently. I cared about the boys, but the ones I knew who were the best at it had been more like the kids. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and actually that, you mentioning that reminds me of another question I had, and you've kind of touched on this in our conversation, but you've said that you think of this as a father-son story. Is there anything you wanna add to that? Joe: Yeah. I think in a lot of ways it is. I've said if you can have a father-son story without any fathers, biological fathers in it, you know? Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: I think part of it was trying to figure out who my narrator really was. That was one of the things through revision and [00:17:04] editing that got more push and got more pressure, was to try to tell more of AWOL, the narrator's story. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Joe: And I think one of the reasons I had trouble with that through so many drafts was he had kind of become a version of me. That was kind of my voice. This narrator who's always there, this kid who's always there, and that was, I mean, that's kind of how I'd grown up. I don't think that Mr. Watts is his dad in the book, but I think there is this dynamic with the boys and Mr. Watts where, one of the characters, Peanut, this young, goofy kid, the boys are always up at night, right, when they're not supposed to be, and they're always talking. That's when they can really have these conversations outside of staff. Of course, Mr. Watts is a step ahead of them and often listens to them. But Peanut wonders, "Does Mr. Watts have kids?" And Mr. Watts being their counselor, and the other boys say, "I don't know. I don't think so." And Peanut says, "Maybe we're his kids." Carrie: [00:18:04] Mm-hmm. Joe: Some of the boys in the home have that father-son dynamic, and of course there's others like Karvel, who's every bit as smart as Mr. Watts, and he sees through that, and he doesn't see it that way. But for me writing the book, if there is a father-son story in it, it would be between AWOL and Mr. Watts. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Joe, for joining us. We really appreciate it. Joe: Thank you so much for having me. Michael: So yeah, one of the things that struck me, with the conversation with Joe was a lot of the first-hand knowledge that he incorporated into his novel because when I read it, I was like, this is definitely someone who has experiences and has [00:19:04] been through it. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: 'Cause he, yeah, just the way he was able to tell these stories— Carrie: Yeah. I mean, it just, the details— Michael: Yes. Carrie: —were so specific, and they felt like real people even though I think they weren't real people, but many of the experiences— Michael: Yeah— Carrie: —were based on things that he had seen. Michael: There's a basketball game. Carrie: Yeah, that was a good story. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: The kid who ate a light bulb. Michael: Oh yeah, I was like, "Wow." Carrie: Yeah, 'cause when you read that in the book, it's almost one of those details that in real life that if you read that in fiction, you don't believe it— Michael: Yeah— Carrie: —because how could that actually have happened? But apparently it did. Michael: Yeah. That's so off the wall. Where do you come up with that? But truth is stranger than fiction. Carrie: Yeah. And it was interesting too how because he was so young when he was a child at the time that a lot of these experiences happened, that it was very much filtered through his memory. And he didn't always remember. One of the ones that really struck me was that he had this strong image of two of the boys embracing, and then in the interview he realized that it wasn't the boys. Well, his father realized that, "No, I think you're remembering one of them embracing you," because what he was talking about with his sister, when his sister got into that car accident, well, was hit— by a car, not, she wasn't in a car. [00:21:04] And one of the boys picked him up and took care of him while his father went to see about his sister. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: That was the thing that really struck me about the novel was, I was a little bit hesitant about reading it just because I thought it was going to be really hard to get through just because of these rough experiences that these kids had, but there were so many moments where the boys showed each other and the staff what they called care and concern. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: And staff doing the same to the boys, especially, like, Mr. Watts and Ms. Matewan. Were there moments that kind of stuck out to you, like a favorite moment where they showed each other care and concern? Michael: [00:22:04] When Ms. Matewan and AWOL started bonding with each other at night. And they couldn't sleep, but yet, and how, I guess they were kind of struck by, 'cause was it Chollie sent him out there to be like, "You need to go run." Carrie: Mm-hmm, yes. [Laughter] Michael: You need to get rid of her. And then he went out there to do it 'cause he goes, well, he was done running. But Ms. Mae, he started, they started talking, and he kind of started feeling some concern for her and her situation 'cause then she started showing up early and washed their uniforms. Went to their ball games on her days off. So that showed that these boys had someone caring about them. And so they kind of reciprocated that. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And was it Smoov? Was he... Yes, because he kind of identified with her because of their [00:23:04] disabilities. Michael: Yes. The shoes, trying to, "You gotta pick that leg up so it won't squeak." [Laughter] Carrie: Yes. Yeah, so they were giving her tips for how... 'Cause they wanted her to stay. That was a really interesting moment in the book I thought too. And there were others like Damico, I think he was the one with the child back at home, and the boys getting together and buying him baby clothes. Like pooling what little money they had. And that was something, I don't know that he talked about it in the interview, but I listened to some other interviews with him and he said that was another thing that really happened. It wasn't baby clothes, but it was diapers— Michael: Oh, wow. Carrie: —that the peers got together and pooled their money to buy one [00:24:04] of the boy's children diapers. Michael: And that what struck me about this book was, kind of before I went into it, was like, you know, this could be really dark and just like there's no hope. Or whereas after you start reading it, you see that these boys really do care and kind of lean on each other and they want to do better and wanna make amends, they just don't know how. From everything, their family situation, they were just kind of victims of circumstance, a lot of them too. And one other thing that really got me, when I read a book or something, things kind of stick out from other books or other movies and the kind of vibes or familiar things that stick out, and I was like, "Oh, this is kind of like that." And when I was reading it, it kind of had the Shawshank Redemption vibes. Carrie: Yeah. Michael: For teens almost. 'Cause you got these two marginalized communities, one's a prison, if you ever read Stephen King's short story, watched the movie. In Shawshank Redemption, you got a character, Red, who's kind of telling Andy Dufresne's story, plus all these other characters throughout who come in and then kind of leave the prison, and there's that same kind of hope you get a little bit in this book. It's not one of his horror stories per se. And then you kind of get that in The Hope House too. You got AWOL, who's narrating this story and telling these, what he remembers, and they got this same kind of flow, this kind of narrative flow the way they tell these stories. Mm. He's a real storyteller. 'Cause I could totally see Morgan Freeman just narrating this. And then as I got further into it, I also, towards the second half of the book, I got Dead Poets Society vibes. Carrie: Okay. Yeah. I can see that. Why? Michael: I [00:26:04] don't wanna spoil anything, but a big thing kind of happened that changed everything into that second half of the book. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: And that's when I was picking up on those, 'cause you got Mr. Watts, who's kind of trying to do his best he can with these boys, and that kind of reminded me of the Robin Williams character from that movie. He's trying to make a real change in these boys' lives. Carrie: Yeah. Well, Mr. Watts is charismatic, I think, and he is someone, I think that culture of them trying to make amends and show care for each other, I think that came from him and his example that he set. So yeah, I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen that movie, but certainly that figure is a kind of a charismatic leader. Michael: Yes. Yeah. That's what I was picking up on. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's interesting, and I've never read the Stephen King short story. I did see the movie many years ago, so that is a little fuzzier for me. But yeah, that's interesting that you think there are similarities in the narrators. Michael: Yeah. And like, in the story there's some nonlinear stuff that happens, the way he tells the story, and it kind of happens in Shawshank. More so I'm going off the movie more than the novella. Okay. And in the novella and the movie they both primarily focus on Andy Dufresne, and then there's all the side characters, like the librarian with his pet crow. But where this is just, there's not one boy they focus on. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: He kind of tells them all. But there's some, yeah. I'd be interested to hear if anybody else picks up on that. Carrie: Yeah. I mean, one of the, I think, really interesting choices that he makes is, especially at the beginning of the novel, using that we. That second person, or first person plural. Even though there's, you know, we sort of realize as it goes on that this is AWOL speaking, but you don't see a whole lot of books that are narrated that way. Michael: Mm-mm. Carrie: What did you think about that effect of having it narrated through the we, at least initially? Michael: I thought it was interesting. It kind of showed that they're like this one group, one entity. It's all of us doing it all the time, and they're always together, and they keep each other accountable. So very much like a team or, yeah, like it's all of us together in this situation. Carrie: Yeah, and it really showed the power of, well, they get into this group home. They're isolated from where they came from, from family, if they had family, and friends or associates or whatever back home. But they find this community there at home. I also thought it really showed the power of language to shape their identities and how they saw the world. You could really see that at work in how Mr. Watts was... You know, how they kind of policed each other. And they called each other peers instead of other words that they maybe could have used. Michael: It's very much like a boot camp, the way, almost like a, especially when they go back to when they use we. And now as they're coming in, and they shave their heads, and they immediately get a shower and get on this new uniform. It's very basic training, military-esque in some of the stuff they do. And we find out later that it used to be run by a former colonel or someone in the Army. But yeah, I think maybe some of that comes out of there 'cause they're always on top of them when they come in. Peer, you know. What is that there? The standards that they use, and how do they do it when they keep each other accountable when they break one of them? Carrie: Yeah. Michael: That's a— Carrie: What was— Michael: Inconsiderate of self peer. [Laughter] Carrie: Yes. Yeah, inconsiderate of self, inconsiderate of others. Michael: Yes. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, they had that sort of lingo from their handbook or whatever. I thought AWOL as a narrator, I thought he was a really interesting choice. He is the one, he gets his name because he keeps running away. And then you sort of realize that he's running because he doesn't want to leave. Michael: Yes. [00:31:04] Yeah. He's scared, and he doesn't have nowhere else to go. This is his family, and he doesn't really wanna leave it. So he's been there the longest, it sounds like. So he knows everything. He's seen it, seen all of it. Kind of like Red from The Shawshank Redemption. Carrie: Oh, yeah? [Laughter] Michael: He keeps getting denied parole, and he's been there forever. I should write a paper on that. Carrie: Yeah Michael: Just kidding. [Laughter] Carrie: Deliver it at a conference. [Laughter] Michael: Yeah. Carrie: Well, gosh, I think we could talk a lot longer about this, but maybe we should leave it there and talk about some books and pairings to go with it. When I talked to Joe, two books, well, a book came up, and I think he talked about these in the Prompt to Page interview. So, if you [00:32:04] haven't listened to Prompt to Page, the interviews are not the same, so there is other stuff that we talked about in that interview, and you can listen to that wherever you listen to Books and Bites, including on the website. But one of those books that he mentioned was The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Have you ever read that, Michael? Michael: I have not. That's one I've always missed, but I definitely get it. Military book. It's Vietnam, I wanna say. Carrie: Yeah, this is a book that I used to assign in my introductory college English classes, and it was the book that everyone liked. And it is about a platoon of Vietnam soldiers. And it is also a hybrid work, so it feels similar in structure. It kind of feels like a hybrid of linked stories. And he was talking about it as a book that he turned to a lot as he was writing this novel, as a kind of model. And I think that a lot of the young men who served in Vietnam were teenagers. They were not adults. Maybe adults because they were 18. But legally adults, but not— Michael: Yeah, fresh out of high school. Carrie: Yes. So, and it's also a book about stories and how they help us survive, which I think that was something that— Michael: Yeah. Carrie: —you could see in this book— Michael: Oh, yeah. Carrie: —as well. The boys, they really liked it when they thought AWOL was writing about them. Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Carrie: Which it turns out he wasn't. But yeah. So if you've never read that book, I would highly recommend that one. And then he also mentioned Kent Haruf. He didn't [00:34:04] mention a specific book by him, but when he said that he was a fan of Kent Haruf, I could immediately see the similarities in Hope House and the book that I have read, which is Our Souls at Night, because both writers are very spare and lyrical, and they focus on this tenderness in everyday interactions. So the subject matter of Our Souls at Night is nothing like Hope House. It's about a 70-year-old widow who asks her neighbor, who is a widower, to spend nights sleeping with her, so that they'll have company. So it's not for sex, it's just for companionship. I talked about it on Books and Bites a long time ago. I think it was when Melissa was the co-host. So it just has that similar kind of tender but bittersweet tone to it. Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carrie: What about you? Do you have some books that you would, other than— Michael: The Shawshank Redemption? Carrie: The Shawshank Redemption, yeah. Michael: Yeah. I think it's in Different Seasons, by Stephen King. It's a collection of his novellas, and I think that one is called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, so it's— But I have two others. One that they kind of allude to in the book is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Michael: Jon Alan and Tony Malopelli, that friendship right there. Oh, man. That one kind of got me there when they took— Oh, man. And then, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I read that one, Books and Bites episode probably a couple years ago, about an all-boys school based on the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. And that one was very heartbreaking. And you got these boys in this [00:36:04] school that is super abusive and actually just killing them, and this is a real-life, really heavy subject. And then there's also another one, The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, which is also a horror book. It's a big horror book. But it's based on the Dozier City School situation as well. About these boys, and they're just trying to survive it and lean on each other and do what they can. They just wanna make it out. That was definitely heavier than this, and they got Mr. Watts, who's able to and wants them to do well and be able to get out. Carrie: Right. Michael: And yeah. Carrie: Yeah. I didn't read Nickel Boys, in part because I just didn't think I could handle it. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: And yeah. And this was not that. Michael: No. Yeah, there's more hope. It's more heartfelt, and there is some of that definitely in [00:37:04] Nickel Boys, but it can be kind of bleak. Carrie: Yeah. And we didn't really talk too much about it, but I think there's also a lot of humor in Hope House. Michael: Yes. I was gonna... I had the tennis ball scene at Christmas. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. [Laughter] Michael: And Tony at night when he's just passing gas. Carrie: Yes. Michael: Inconsiderate of others! [Laughter] Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, that was funny. And Peanut, for some reason, he was often kind of comic. Michael: Yes. Carrie: Kind of clueless, but yeah. I think that was another thing that kept it from being overwhelming. Michael: Yes. Yeah, that kind of... Yes. Carrie: So what about the pairings? Michael: So my pairing is straight from the book. Twinkies and Dr. Pepper. [Laughter] There's a scene where they're at night and, well, they, I think they did it quite often, but where they raid Mr. Watts' stash, and I'm thinking that he did it on purpose. He [00:38:04] knew what he was doing. And so they would steal these Little Debbie snack cakes, and one night it's Twinkies, and they're throwing Dr. Pepper. And then was it Peanut gets more than his share. [Laughter] Carrie: Oh, yes. Yeah. [Laughter] Michael: Oh, we got one over Mr. Watts. But it was really nice 'cause they're sitting in there, they're eating these Twinkies and having, and bonding with each other. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, and the food for a while was not, sounded pretty awful. Michael: Oh yeah, burnt biscuits and hot dogs. Carrie: Beanie weenies. Michael: Yeah, beanie weenies. Carrie: Yes, like twice a week, I think. Yeah, but then, let's see, who was it? Jaquan came, and he was from northern Kentucky, like Cincinnati area, right? Michael: I think so, yeah. Carrie: And Mr. Watts takes him camping, and Jaquan's like, "Well, if I had some lemon and some of this, I could grill [00:39:04] that catfish." Michael: Yeah. Carrie: And then everybody's like— Michael: What? [Laughter] Carrie: "Wait, how did this kid from the inner city learn how to do that?" And he ends up being this amazing cook and starts helping out in the cafeteria a little bit. So my pairing was biscuits and gravy. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: After Jaquan, not... What was the name of the cooks, the cafeteria lady? Michael: Oh, was it Miss L-S-L-L, man. Carrie: Oh, I can't remember. Michael: I know that it starts with an E. Carrie: Yes, I think you're right. Well, anyway. So I did find, we have a cookbook called The Modern Mountain Cookbook: A Plant-Based Celebration of Appalachia. And so if you're looking for, 'cause I don't eat too much sausage gravy anymore, but that has a recipe for gravy. She calls it sawmill gravy, using vegan sausage. [00:40:04] And her biscuit recipe was interesting. The way I've talked about biscuits on Books and Bites before, I make them, instead of with buttermilk, with vegan yogurt, which still gives it that tang. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: Unsweetened vegan yogurt. But she uses vegan sour cream and half and half in place of buttermilk. So I feel like that might give it a similar tangy taste, the sour cream instead of buttermilk. So anyway, if you're looking for some dairy-free options, dairy and meat-free options. Probably not something that they ate, but something approximating what they ate. [Laughter] So anyway, do you have any final thoughts? Michael: I think that's all. Carrie: Okay. Well, thanks for listening to this special edition of the Books and Bites podcast. Our theme music is The [00:41:04] Breakers from the album In Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music on his website, adoorforadesk.com.