Feeling a Powerful Compulsion to Write
by Fritz Lanham
 Elizabeth Crook proves the theory that what sets writers apart from the
rest of us is the compulsion to write. Not just the desire or the
talent. The compulsion.
She started her first novel, The
Raven's Bride, in 1983. Eight years and eight or nine
drafts later, it finally saw print. She began research for her
just-released historical novel Promised
Lands in 1986.
"I went through a lot of rejections," Crook says. "By the time Douibleday accepted The Raven's Bride,
it had already been to Doubleday three times under three different
titles from two different agents, and by the time it was finally
published, my name had changed because I was divorced. I'm sure
(the manuscript) had begun to look familiar to them," she says,
laughing, "but fortunately they have enough editors there that you can
just try another one."
Crook's keep-plugging-away attitude has paid off. The Raven's Bride, a fictionalized life of Eliza Allen, Sam Houston's first wife, went through four
printings in hardcover and was a national best seller. Her new
book, Promised Lands, a
sprawling epic of the Texas Revolution, has been winning favorable
reviews and is already showing up on regional best-seller lists.
The 34-year-old Austin-based novelist, who was in Houston recently
promoting Promised Lands, is serious but unpretentious about her work.
Born in Hermann Hospital, she grew up mainly in San Marcos, where her
dad was president of a Baptist academy and once ran unsuccessfully for
Congress. The family also lived in Washington D.C., where Crook's
father was head of the VISTA program under President Lyndon Johnson,
and in Australia, where was was LBJ's ambassador.
After graduating from high school in San Marcos, Crook attended Baylor
University for two years before transferring to Rice, where she studied
creative writing under Max Apple and took a degree in English. With diploma in hand, she decided to write a novel. For a
subject, she chose the enigmatic Eliza Allen, who 11 weeks after
marrying Sam Houston left him under never-explained circumstances.
"I wanted to write about a woman who had been overlooked by historians
or had been misrepresented," Crook said. "Most of the people who
were writing about Sam Houston were men who were trying to justify Sam Houston and his role in the marriage. I
didn't think the subject had been handled with any real sensitivity or
with an open mind. I wasn't writing to try to place blame.
I just wanted to tell a story and tell it how it might have happened."
Writing The Raven's Bride was
decidedly a learn-as-you-go experience. "I didn't know how to
write, when I first started, as far as developing characters," Crook
admits. After the book came out, a reviewer praised her complex
handling of point of view; she didn't know what the term meant.
Working on The Raven's Bride,
she sometimes grew discouraged but never came close to quitting, she
said. She had enough people -- writers and editors, not just
family members -- telling her it was good. She knew the book had
problems, she believed they could be fixed.
She also had the good fortune to be able to write full time. A
family inheritance provided her enough money to live on. "I think
I work extra hard because I feel such an obligation," she said, "If
you're given that privilege, you have to use it well."
Even before The Raven's Bride
was published she had started the research on Promised Lands. The latter
follows two families -- one Anglo and one Hispanic -- through the
course of the Texas Revolution. The book is hard-hitting,
unsentimental and even-handed, treating all parties to the conflict
with sympathy.
"I wanted to write a big, old-fashioned epic with love and war and
a sense of humor," Crook said.
"This was just such fertile ground because you had all these different
races and religions, and everybody wanted the land and everybody wanted
it on their terms. It's a great adventure story. The book is not
really about the war so much as about these individuals whose lives are
drastically changed by the war."
As she got into the story, the Hispanic Texans -- who didn't want to
sever the connection with Mexico -- came to play a larger role. "The more I researched, the more I came to know these people and admire
their convictions," Crook said. She thinks her most compelling
character is Adelaido Pacheco, a dashing gun runner and tobacco
smuggler who ends up losing his country.
At the center of the book is the battle of Goliad and its aftermath,
when some 400 captured Texans, including their commander, Col. James
Fannin, were marched out into fields near Goliad and, on orders from
Santa Anna, shot.
Nobody has wanted to dwell much on Goliad. "It was nothing that
anyone was proud of on either side," Crook said.
But for a novelist, it's full of dramatic possibilities: Outnumbered, surrounded, without water, Fannin's men must decide
whether to attempt a breakout. But that would mean abandoning
their wounded, so they all surrender instead. Many of the Mexican
soldiers ordered to carry out the execution are Mayan Indians, some as
young as 12, who speak no Spanish.
Then there is the moral drama swirling around Col. Jose Nicolas de la
Portilla. He is the 27-year-old Mexican army commander in charge
of the prisoners at Goliad. He has to decide whether to obey
Santa Anna's infamous order.
"He must have been in an excruciating spot," Crook said. "He
wrote in his journal about how he spent the night in agony trying to make
this decision."
"To me this is the untold story of the revolution. We've heard of
San Jacinto and we've heard about the Alamo, but Goliad has been shied
away from by both sides because it's just human and tragic and there
seems nothing uplifting there."
Crook doesn't seem intent on whittling larger-than-life Texas heroes
down to size. But she is emphatic that historical figures
should be portrayed warts and all.
"I understand the concept of needing heroes -- I vaguely understand," she
said. "But needing to believe they're perfect is something very
different, and to me it's an illusion. I think the truth is
better than a lie. It's richer, and there's more to learn from
it."
The new novel is better written than her first, she said. She
knows her tendency to overwrite, and "when I get in those modes, I just
put the computer in delete."
Promised Lands also benefited
from the attentions of Doubleday editor Jacqueline Onassis. Crook
described the former first lady as meticulous and friendly, skilled at
carving up a manuscript without hitting authorial nerves.
"I would come away from a session on the phone with her, where she'd
told me that a third of the book had to go, and I'd just feel great,"
Crook said, laughing. "I'd think about it and wonder, why do I
feel great -- a third of my book is bad and has to be cut. But
she's been so affirming and so specific that you feel you're in good
hands and that the book is getting the scrutiny it deserves."
Crook plans to set her next novel in the present. She's tired of
the research, the hundreds of note cards, of having a head "cluttered
constantly with the details of living in the wrong era."
Before she can get to that, she must hit Texas cities to promote
Promised Lands, a novel that will almost certainly have most of its
readership in the state. The "dog and pony show on the road"
isn't her favorite part of the novelist's trade, but she's
philosophical about it.
"I can't figure this business out," she admits. "I have no idea
whether this book will find its audience or its audience will find this
book. It seems to be so whimsical which books do well in the
marketplace. It doesn't seem to have all that much to do
with the book itself.
"I think it's what the cover looks like. I think it's marketing."
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