SILOAM SPRINGS -- A professor at John Brown University released of her first novel on Monday.
"White River Red" by Becky Marietta, is historical fiction set during prohibition about real-life Arkansan, Forrestina Bradley Campbell, known by the same name. The novel is told through the eyes of Betty McLaughlin, a fictional young reporter, desperate to break into the boys' club of journalism in 1972, at the equally fictional "Springdale Times."
McLaughlin discovers that Campbell was young woman who ran away from home when she was 15 years old to join the circus, where she worked as one of the side acts and then on the high wire until she suffered a tragedy and left the circus. Campbell eventually ran a carnival game involving rats and later owned a bar on the White River.
Marietta has had a love of stories all of her life. Growing up in Kenya, Marietta spent most of her childhood making up stories in her head.
"My parents were missionaries," Marietta said. "So I read a lot of stories and imagined a lot of stories, so that I've always told stories."
Marietta's grandparents lived in Prairie Grove and Springdale and would often take her to the library to check out books when she visited them in Arkansas, she said. Since she spent most of her childhood in Africa, she was surprised at the fact that she could get a lot of books at the library for free, Marietta said.
As she grew up, she went to college at JBU in the late 1980s, where she met her husband, Casey Marietta. They settled in Watts, Okla., 28 years ago, where she began writing short stories and essays, as well as teaching English at JBU.
"My first creative nonfiction piece was about running on a treadmill here at JBU and then dreaming about what it would be like to run that same road in Kenya," Marietta said.
Marietta, said she had the chance to run that road in Kenya for real when she went home to visit.
Marietta began researching "White River Red" in 2016 and writing the book in 2017, she said. The final draft was ready in 2019 and Marietta was offered a contract in 2020.
She found her inspiration from tales about Campbell her grandfathers would tell. When Marietta began researching Campbell, she found very little information on her subject.
Apart from a seven-page novel by Phillip Steele, a historical writer, and a talk at the Shiloh Museum, where she was the youngest person in the room, there was little available on Campbell herself.
"I was just fascinated by their stories and I thought isn't it sad when these people die, this amazing, fascinating woman just sort of disappears from everything," Marietta said.
Marietta thought about the best way she could reach people about Campbell and realized the best way was to write the story as historical fiction.
She took the details she learned from her grandparents and the novel by Steele, then filled in the blanks. She hopes more people will be interested in Campbell's story, Marietta said.
Along with research on Campbell, Marietta said she also researched the American circus at the time.
When asked if Marietta saw herself as Campbell, Marietta said she saw more of herself in the fictional reporter McLaughlin.
"I think (McLaughlin) really represents me more because I became enamoured with the story of Forrestina talking to my grandparents and listening to some elderly people talk at the Shiloh Museum and so for me it just became this investigative interest," Marietta said.
For her next book, Marietta plans to update the classic Greek play "Medea," she said. The play centers around Medea, a woman who married Jason of the Argonauts and left her entire life behind, Marietta said. As the couple gets older, Jason leaves her for a younger woman and Medea takes her revenge by killing their two sons, she said.
Marietta said she is not sure if she will incorporate the killing of the couple's children into the novel but said she plans to tell the tale of a young gypsy girl from Arkansas who marries a man from up north and he whisks her away from everything she had ever known.
She got the idea of incorporating gypsies from stories she heard growing up about a gypsy camp around Fort Smith in the 1980s, Marietta said.
Right now, Marietta is hoping people will show an interest in "White River Red" and that there are lessons that can be taken from this story.
"I think it's a story of hope," Marietta said. "You know she went through a lot and she just kept on going, especially in this day and age where there is so much getting us down I hope the will be the kind of book, even if it's not you know sunshine and lollipops the whole time there's always hope."
JBU is hosting a reading of "White River Red" at 7 p.m., April 29 at Simmons Great Hall Room C. Marietta plans to also have some books for sale that night.
There are also plans to have books signings at the Barnes & Noble locations in Fayetteville and Rogers, Marietta said.