By: Ellie Simmers- Assistant News Editor
“Let me tell you, she will draw blood,” Dr. Kelly Ann Jacobson said, highlighting the tenacity and power in Melissa Scholes-Young’s writing. Featured as part of the fall semester’s Thornton Readings, sponsored by The Thornton Endowment, Scholes-Young is the author of two acclaimed novels, The Flood and The Hive.
Young described her latest novel, “The Hive” as, “A story of class in America and the fates of four sisters and their family business and a politically divided midwestern town, and after the patriarch’s death, the sisters have to soar in secession while they face financial debt and medical bankruptcy during the recession.”
Taking place during the housing crisis of 2008 and the presidential election, Young’s novel touches on topics ranging from the way the Great Recession led to former president and current President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral win in 2016 to ‘doomsday’ prepping, what it means to be a first-generation college student, and how individuals deal with grief.
“I didn’t realize when I wrote it was going to become so timely again and again and again,” said Young, explaining how her editor was hesitant about the relatability of a character who is a ‘prepper’ until the Covid-19 pandemic when prepping became mainstream.
Melissa Scholes-Young during her Thornton Reading
Photo credit: Kelly Jacobson
Immersing herself in a “prepper camp,” Young’s understanding of what preppers were like was completely thrown out the window, as she learned about composting and solar energy, rather than hoarding resources. This experience in seeing what actual prepping culture is like helped Young write Grace, the family’s matriarch, as someone who isn’t so different from everyone else.
“When we dismiss a character like Grace, I think that we’re also dismissing that part of ourselves that has to pay attention to the way that fear permeates so much of what we do,” explained Young, going on to examine the way Grace’s prepping is a way for her to hold onto the world she used to know.
“I knew that if I wanted to understand what was happening in the contemporary world, I had to go backwards and try to figure out what people were feeling, where that resentment came from, when the fear started building, right, and how that affected a family like mine,” explained Young, referencing the divisiveness of politics in recent years.
Raised in rural Missouri, the world and people Young writes about are familiar to her, as she details the crops and animals on her childhood property.
Having been immersed in this world for some of her most formative years, Young explained what inspired her to explore these topics, “I wrote about prepping and survivalism because it allowed me to interrogate questions of power, identity, political structures, polarized communities, class, and bonds within family businesses.”
Reading from various passages in her novel, the crowd remained engaged, as Young showcased the different points of view she wrote into the book and how each character sounds different.
“The Hive” and the poster from Melissa Scholes-Young’s reading
Photo credits: Melissa Scholes-Young
“I really liked the way that she described the characters in different ways. How it’s so different between Grace and Jules. It’s vastly different. You can hear their voices in the way she wrote,” said Ericka Overstreet, a senior English major.
Emma Myers, a senior English major, echoed Overstreet’s sentiment, adding, “I really liked the way that she characterized everybody to mirror our current political climate.”
As she ended her reading, Young explained that she hoped her book could spark conversations between families about power, corruption, grief, and class. “Those are difficult conversations to have, I get that. And sometimes I think that’s why we have to make art about it.”
To learn more about Melissa Scholes-Young, go to her website: https://melissascholesyoung.com/
To learn more about the Thornton Endowment and the next Thornton Reading, go to: https://www.lynchburg.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/english/thornton/