Parisian Phoenix Publishing

By E.H. Jacobs

I imagine that I’m like many writers and many daydreamers — always thinking, “what if?”

When Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, and when subsequent similar tragedies occurred throughout the country, I experienced myself and much of the nation reacting with horror and sorrow. I also witnessed how these events were responded to by people in power, for both good and ill, and how much of that response, whether well-intentioned or not, was in the service of manipulating public perception, opinion and policy.

So, the “what if’s” started in my brain. What if all of these people in the public arena used the media to advance their own agendas, what if some of these people tried to manipulate public reaction to these events for their own aims (selfish or laudatory), and what if these small, individual actions had an unforeseen, cumulative effect that ran out of control?

At the time, I was reading works on chaos theory, a complicated set of ideas that includes the notion that complex systems, like our society, maintain a state of homeostasis (more of less keeping the status quo) by adapting to those changes in ways that helps that system (society) maintain equilibrium — until (and here’s the rub) those changes inject too much energy into the system, and the only way the system can adapt and survive is to radically change its structure.

Systems are complex, and even small actions can have wide-ranging effects. That’s where the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings in one place can affect the weather pattern at some remote location comes in; every action has an effect, and enough actions can have a cumulative effect to upset the whole apple cart, so to speak.

So, I thought, what if such an event in a small town somewhere (and I chose Louisiana because I have spent some time there and am fascinated by the culture, history, cuisine and music) gets manipulated by politicians and public figures on a local and national level to cumulatively shift the entire society and result in the second American secessionist movement.

The story evolved from just a political drama to a personal kind of love story between two minor but important characters in the book: Bertha, the mother of the slain teenager, and Doree, the institutionalized wife of the vice president of the United States, for whom Bertha cares at a nursing facility. These two women grow in importance during the course of the book.

When I started thinking about this book, I started collecting all the newspaper and magazine clippings I could find on the Michael Brown killing and its aftermath. These helped me develop the skeleton of the novel, but I knew that media reports tend to simplify things into black and white terms, and I had to make my characters, at least most of them, full, human and vulnerable rather than stereotypes because they, too, were caught up in events larger than themselves with which they were trying to cope with limitations imposed by circumstance and by their human frailties. 

Another influence was a powerful piece of art that I saw on a visit to the Broad Foundation Los Angeles: a large black and white drawing by Robert Longo of police in Ferguson, Mo., trying to maintain the peace. The artwork is imposing, with the police silhouetted against a white background, the figures merged together and blurred with what might be smoke and fog. It is an unforgettable, viscerally moving piece. That piece of art became the inspiration of the riot scene when the National Guard lands in Splintered River.

Take all of this and place it on top of my fascination with political thrillers in my youth, and you get the cocktail that, somehow, shaken up, helped produce Splintered River.

This novel, then, arose out of national headlines, unsettling trends in society, my own musings and daydreams, my mind’s associations to ideas, artwork, and youthful fascination and, of course, my own unconscious forces that I may not be aware of. I hope it created a “rich roux,” to quote the first chapter in the book, that is an engaging, thought-provoking and enjoyable read for everyone.