This week I’m hosting Kathi Macias with Last Chance for Justice and Maureen Lang with All in Good Time. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (May 5th) evening.
Interview with the hero from All in Good Time by Maureen Lang:
1. Henry Hawkins, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I have a secret. I’m not proud of it, and have in fact built a wall around my entire life, shutting everyone out because I know I could bring ruin to myself and anyone I care about. I’ll tell you my secret, and let you be the judge of whether or not I’ve been right to isolate my personal life, and let only my professional self be known to others. Before I went off to college to study banking, I was rash, stupid and impatient enough to spend a great deal of time devising a plan to rob from the deep pockets of Wells & Fargo. To my astonishment, my very first attempt at robbing their stage coach was far easier than I expected. So I did it again—in fact, two more times, until I had more than enough treasure stashed away to open my own bank once I returned from the university. At the time I was proud of myself but I’ve since grown wise enough to recall those acts for what they were: foolish.
2. What do you do for fun?
I’m a banker. I do not have fun. Ever.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Telling my secret to anyone.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Someone learning my secret.
5. What do you want out of life?
I used to think I wanted money—not necessarily for what it could buy but what it could bring: respect and a certain stature in the community. Influence. I’ve certainly known all of that since I robbed those coaches a dozen years ago, but at the same time I lost everything personal to me. What kind of influence does a person have without a single person close enough to care?
6. What is the most important thing to you?
I’d like to think people are more important than money, but I know if I let anyone into my life I may only be laying a foundation for disappointment—this whole life I’ve set up for myself could come crashing down if anyone knew my bank was built on stolen money. Banks are built on confidence and trust. Who would trust me if they knew I was once a thief?
7. Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?
As a matter of fact, I just picked up a new book titled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but had to stop reading it early on because of the observance someone in the story made about Mr. Hyde. Something is . . . wrong . . . about Mr. Hyde. A deformity without being able to say exactly what that deformity is. It’s something I wonder if others see in me, and I couldn’t bear to read any further.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would change my past. I would have trusted myself to build a bank the honest way, but I was too impatient. It’s particularly painful lately, ever since Dessa Caldwell came to my bank for a loan—to set up a shelter for fallen women, of all things. That’s a foolish reason to borrow money, certainly a bad investment. But I was fairly forced into loaning her the money, and although part of me wants to just forget it, call the money lost, I sense in this woman the same defect I had all those years ago. Impatience. I should feel sorry for her, of course, but instead I feel drawn to her. Yet I know I can no more let her into my life than anyone else. If my secret were ever found out, she would be the first to turn from me. She has a great sense of faith that wouldn’t allow anything less than honesty.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Why would I have a pet when I’m rarely at home to enjoy one? I’m at the bank every day, and often well into the evening. And banks are for business; I do not even allow my employees to keep photographs of their own loved ones, or anything personal about them. It would be too stark a contrast to my own empty life.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Without a doubt, I would go back to my 18th birthday, to that fateful day I began planning those outrageous robberies. I would listen to my mother’s advice and live an honest and upright life, because no matter how much I’ve tried to make up for my mistakes these past dozen years, I know deep down it hasn’t been enough.
Thanks very much for allowing my dear Henry to visit your site, Margaret! I’m happy to say this interview was conducted near the very outset of Henry’s story. I hope readers will want to see him transformed into a forgiven—and therefore forgiving—man. Because my heroine, Dessa, needs some forgiving of her own . . .
