Interview With Nancy McCabe, Author of Fires Burning Underground

Welcome to Smack Dab, Nancy. Please tell us a bit more about Fires Burning Underground.

It’ s Anny’ s first day of middle school and, after years of being homeschooled, her first day of public school ever. In art, Larissa asks what kind of ESP is her favorite: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or telekinesis? Tracy asks how she identifies: gay, straight, bi, ace, pan, trans, or confused? And thus kicks off a school year for Anny in which she’ ll navigate a path between childhood and adolescence, imagination and identity. In a year of turmoil and transition, with a new awareness of loss after the death of a friend, Anny struggles to find meaning in tragedy, to come to terms with her questions about her sexuality, and to figure out how to negotiate her own ever-shifting new friendships. And when her oldest friend’ s life is in danger, she must summon up her wits, imagination, and the ghosts that haunt her to save them both. 

The title’s a powerful one, as the metaphor of fires burning runs throughout the novel. Could you please talk about this imagery a bit and how it relates to Anny’s journey?

Two literal fires bookend the story—the fire that kills Anny’s Sunday School classmate at the beginning, and the fire at the end that forces Anny to think quickly and take action. In addition, images of fire are always burning in Anny’s subconscious as she tries to make sense of her friend’s death and the fears that result. But there are so many things smoldering below the surface for Anny—her passions for art and for friendship that don’t always have an outlet, her definition of who she is in relation to the religious environment in which she was raised and as she stands on the brink of adolescence, torn between the task of understanding herself and finding some way to name who she is that the rest of the world will understand.

I was fascinated by the intersection of faith and identity–could you talk a bit about what made you want to weave these threads together, as Anny questions both her own sexuality and her religious upbringing?

Faith and identity were quite honestly the sources of huge questions for me at Anny’s age. The religious faith of my parents and church often seemed to be actively working to alter if not cancel my identity and shape me into a different kind of person. There wasn’t a lot of room for a quiet girl who had a strong sense of self and an innate inability to be dishonest about who she was. I struggled to reconcile my own questions about faith and identity, and wanted to examine those things through Anny. She uses more contemporary language and ideas to express herself, but she shares my pre-adolescent combination of confidence and self-doubt.

Similar issues are so ubiquitous for the college students I teach. They write about their conflicted ideas about religious upbringings. They often feel out of place because of a variety of factors: creative spirits, choices about sexual identity, mental health challenges. Religion and identity questions are often closely intertwined.

As an offshoot to that, I was also intrigued by your representation of supernatural elements, such as the Ouija board. What made you include the supernatural alongside spiritual explorations?

When I was young, I was terrified of being haunted. At eight, after my maternal grandpa died, I slept with my hand under my pillow to block out the sound of his voice if his ghost tried to speak to me, and, like Anny, I had a superstition about eating using his silverware. Much of Fires is based on a year-long period when I was young, also bracketed by two fires, and an intense friendship that, looking back, was really the last one completely dominated by childhood concerns, imagination and creativity and games and dreams. We did play with the Ouija Board and were completely sucked in by our belief in the supernatural—another source of nightmares for me when I feared that the boy who’d died might speak to me. I changed much of what really happened with my own Ouija board experience to serve the story better, but as for me it becomes a symbol for the subtle beginnings of Anny’s rebellions against her parents’ beliefs, her questions about them, and her process of finding her own power.

I’m a sucker for voice, and was impressed by the way you managed to deal with such really adult topics (death, sexuality, family issues) while maintaining a true-to-life MG voice. How did you strike the balance?

I had always written for adults when I started this book, so this was a new challenge for me. An editor I worked with at a conference impressed on me the importance of finding Anny’s voice. I read and reread a lot of middle grade fiction, listened to the way my daughter talked at that age, and went back to my sparse childhood diaries. I took many passes through the manuscript, looking at each sentence, trying to tune into Anny: how would she say this? It was important to back off and let Anny’s voice take over.

The character of Robert dies early in the story but continues to maintain significance throughout. Was that difficult keeping someone in the text who isn’t present to interact with the characters?

Since the story is more about Anny’s reaction to her first encounter with a peer’s death than about Robert himself, who she acknowledges she didn’t know very well, I’m not sure we ever find out much about Robert himself. I deliberately left some questions open-ended, like is she really interacting with him? How much of this is a function of her imagination? Is there something supernatural going on? Just as young people have to make their own decisions about questions of faith since there are no definitive answers, I wanted young readers to be able to ponder the ambiguities of the supernatural experiences and decide for themselves.

I was intrigued by the presentation of art and music. What made you want to include creativity as a powerful force in the story?

Creativity and imagination, art and books are central to Anny just as they have always been central to me. Like Anny, I cared way more about those things than I did about gossip and crushes (and even when my hormones kicked in rather powerfully, I still felt most alive when reading a good book or creating something of my own.) Like Anny, I had many artistic impulses and lacked the skill to execute most of them. I thought you had to be good at things to do them—like Anny, I made rugs and skirts and pillows, played the piano, got stuck in honors art where I felt totally out of my element, wrote stories and poems. But Anny doesn’t necessarily have to be good at these things to find power and refuge in them. I think that her ability to do that and connect to others through art and writing are always going to be more important to her than the labels she accepts for herself.  

The novel explores different types of friendships. What do Anny’s relationships with Larissa and Ella reveal about her journey?

Ella represents home and safety; Ella has also been homeschooled and is Anny’s oldest friend. Anny at once values the friendship and finds it unsatisfying. But Ella isn’t staid or conventional any more than Anny is. Ella is curious, she’s the catalyst for pushing them both out into the world when she announces she’s going to public school, and she’s also sure of who she is. She’s always been a stabilizing force for Anny. But for Anny, Larissa represents the attractions and dangers of the outside world, someone who is like Anny in some vital ways but also wants to try on different identities and dreams and lacks Anny’s fears. Anny comes to understand that she needs what both of her friends represent.   

This is a scary time for so many sectors of society, especially LGBTQ+ youth. What might you say to them? What did you want to impart with Anny's relatively optimistic ending?

Anny’s mother makes it clear that she will grudgingly accept her daughter no matter what choices she makes, but it’s in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of way. Her interpretation of religious faith may continue to create obstacles for Anny. But what I wanted to emphasize is Anny’s strong, creative spirit that is going to plow forward no matter what, because she really doesn’t have any choice but to be who she is.

This is indeed an alarming time. When some sectors seek to limit LGBTQ+ youth, I believe we need to produce and embrace a broad range of affirming art and literature. I fully believe that books can change our lives. I hope that young people will seek out allies and stories and role models that encourage them to explore and express their identities and understand that no one has the right to try to change them.

What’s next?

I’m in the process of shifting from teaching to writing full-time. I’d like to do another middle grade novel from Larissa’s point of view. I’d like to explore what happens to Anny as well. I’ve been also working on a sequel to my young adult time travel novel Vaulting through Time. I’m almost done with a collection of essays about a mysterious illness my daughter experienced as a teenager. I’m like Anny—I have a zillion projects I want to work on and I’m excited about all of them.

Where can we find you? 

My website is at https://www.nancymccabe.net.

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