Thomas Has His Horse

In a candid interview with one of her readers, fiction writer Agnes Harding Jones answers questions about her unique and riveting new novel — The Redemption of Thomas Has His Horse.

How would you classify the story of Thomas? Is it a mystery?

There are certainly elements of suspense, but I wouldn't actually call it a mystery. In fact, I find difficult to consign 'Thomas' to any fictional sub-genre without misleading potential readers. 

Is it fictional realism, then?  

Parts of it are. Maybe even too real. But interwoven with threads of fantasy and mysticism.

And themes from Native American mythology?

Isn't there a love story in it?

Actually, there are a couple of background romances, and one of them might even be described as steamy. And yet I certainly wouldn't call 'Thomas' a love story, although it is a story about love – and, of course, redemption.

So if you had to describe 'Thomas' in a nutshell, what would you say?

Well, I guess I would say it's a supernatural thriller — though I think it comes closer to the mark to borrow a phrase from C.S Lewis and call it a modern day fairy tale for adults. This is how Lewis described That Hideous Strength from his Perelandra trilogy. Like that work, 'Thomas' also deals with good versus evil, monsters masquerading as ordinary people, angels and demons — and the invisible forces responsible for upholding the balance of the universe.

Speaking of monsters, was it hard to write the abuse scenes in the book?

Exceedingly so.

When I first conceived of the premise and plotline, I naively hoped to leave all of the details of child and animal torture to the reader's imagination — and to even breeze past Thomas' own monstrous act.

But in the process of writing the story, it became abundantly clear that the climatic scenes would all fall flat if I didn't take the reader through the critical events leading up to those scenes. And before I could take any reader on that dark journey, I had to take myself into some dark and very disturbing places in my own mind.

Once I did this, however, I would go back and 'clean' the scenes of any gory details which I felt were unnecessary to the dramatic arc. My goal was to avoid including anything purely for the shock value. The degree to which I was successful can only be individually determined by each reader.

You jump around in the timeline quite a bit. Why is that?

At first, the story just unfolded in my mind that way. But I soon adopted it as a strategy, since it allowed me to pick and choose my moments of revelation. Things happen in one chapter, and the reader doesn't know why until I flash back to the cause in a later part of the book. Also, moving back and forth in time allowed me to let the reader know in advance the outcome of some of the more disturbing scenes in the book — which hopefully softens their impact.

You weren't worried that you'd lose the reader's interest in those scenes?

Like all authors, I worry about losing my reader's interest at every turn of the page. But none of my early readers reported any diminished interest because, for instance, they already knew that the child involved in the scene would ultimately be okay. Plenty of other things take place in those scenes that the reader isn't expecting — including several surprises related to the book's master storyline.

Were the more ecstatic and visionary parts of the book easier to write than the evil parts?

Oddly enough, the mystical sections were actually more challenging in their own way. I felt I was always in danger of making these important and profound passages appear — well — hokey.

I was less concerned with correctly capturing the inner dialog of, say, a sadistic sociopath. Since such a person is not a likely reader of my book anyway, the thoughts and acts of these characters just needed to be credible to the average person. However, many an average person has had a genuine spiritual experience — so I knew I was on thin ice whenever the story veered toward the mystical.

Do you think you made it across this ice?

Each reader will have to be the judge of that. From my side, I'm happier with some passages than others. But in every instance, I'm satisfied that I did the best that I could with the tool that I had at hand. And that tool was me.

Like an actor, I would visualize the characters and a scene over and over again until it felt right — or as near right as I could get it. And in so doing, I brought as much of my memory, experience, and knowledge to bear upon the exercise as possible. Then, not surprisingly, I relied on the bedrock of pure imagination to fill in the gaps. After all, 'Thomas' is a work of fiction.

You mention memory. Were any of Thomas' visions based on your own?

[Laughs] Who says I've had any visions? Anyway, the first rule of visions is like the first rule of fight club: we don't talk about visions. But I can assure you that all of the visions in the book are fictional.

Why did you decide to have Thomas pretend to be a simpleton?

I just thought it would be a great device for positioning Thomas after his calamitous departure from his home in the Badlands. He really had nowhere to go at that point — and things could have gone very badly for a lone black man in 1930's America. Especially one who was raised in the mostly non-white society of the Pine Ridge reservation, and who had always thought of himself as Indian; not African-American.

It was really quite providential that Thomas found refuge at a little country store in Texas. But given the tenor of the times — and the reason why he had to leave his home in the first place — it seemed appropriate that one of the prices he'd have to pay for his sanctuary would be to keep his head down, and to pretend to be too simple to pose a threat to the white locals. And his ability to hide behind the 'Has' persona really sets Thomas up for much of what happens later in the story. But I can't really say more about that without entering spoiler territory.

But people can read the prologue and first two chapters for free, right?

Absolutely. All they have to do is CLICK THIS LINK