READER'S ROCK LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE VOL 2 ISSUE 4 NOVEMBER 2014 Vol. 1 Issue 7 January 2014 | Page 45

Interview with
Ronald Lee
Geigle, author
of The Woods:
"Is that
Hemingway? I
don't know."
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31, 2013
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -Ronald Lee Geigle's new novel,
The Woods, offers readers a taste of
the lives and dreams of those who
struggled with the devastation of
the Great Depression in the Pacific
Northwest during the late 1930s.
The book was recently published
in association with WordVirgin, an
indie publishing platform based in
Washington, DC, Seattle, and
Edinburgh. The following is a
WordVirgin interview with Geigle.
WV: The Woods takes place
during a very rich period in
American history. Why do you
find this era fascinating?
RG: The Great Depression burned
an indelible mark into this
country's psyche. It gave us Social
Security, bank regulation, the
WPA. It made government
dominant over the
economy—something we are still
arguing about as we try to fix
today's economic troubles. It also
shook the confidence of the nation
and people—families, workers,
everyday people. The foundation
was broken. I find it fascinating
how people fight back after
something so devastating. The
Woods is about those people and
their struggles—and echoes the
same struggles people are going
through today.
WV: Although your novel takes
place in the Cascade Mountains
of Washington State, there are a
lot of parallels with the intrigue
that goes on in Washington, DC.

What's the connection?
RG: I grew up in the Pacific
Northwest. But I've spent the past
38 years in the world of public
relations and politics in
Washington, DC. So it was only
natural, I think, that a story
involving one of the biggest
political and economic disasters in
the US—the Great
Depression—brings out the
political gamesmanship and power
political maneuvers that I've often
witnessed in the nation's capital.
WV: Albert Weissler, the novel's
18-year-old main character,
really becomes a man in this
book. Tell us a little about the
hero's journey. What forces is he
confronting?
RG: Albert is starting his journey
in life. Pulling away from his
mother; seeking to become his own
man. That's about as traditional as
journeys get, in life as well as
literature. But he is also trying to
"find" his father who was killed in
the woods only a few years before.
And he is trying to sort through
where he fits amid rabble-rousing
hotheads and barrel-chested
loggers. Add to this his growing
understanding, and confusion,
about his own feelings—toward
girls, toward politics, toward his
own family—and the reader gets
an up-close picture of Albert's
struggle in becoming his own man.
WV: One of the main characters
is Bud Cole, the owner of
Skybillings Logging Company.
He refuses to be beaten down by
World War I or the Great
Depression. Do you see him as
kind of the archetypal
Hemingway hero?
RG: Failure and frustration are
friends of Bud Cole. But somehow,
he fights back—and it's no easy
task, as the book shows. But as he
does so, it hits him that he is
making some big trade-offs. When
he fights, when he takes chances, it
affects others—sometimes in
dreadful ways. Is that Hemingway?
I don't know.

WV: You write about nature and
the natural elements in The
Woods. Would you say that the
Three Sisters Mountains almost
become characters?
RG: Three Sisters was the name
my family used to describe three
peaks, all close together, that we
could see from our house when I
was growing up. I guess they were
in the vicinity of Stevens Pass in
the Cascades. And yes, I do think
these granite
monoliths—unmoving, ice-capped,
powerful—become symbolic of the
role that the natural world and the
unfettered, god-like power of the
natural environment play. This is a
book about religion, to some
extent. Three Sisters are some of
the texts from that natural bible.
WV: You're self-publishing The
Woods. How are you finding the
experience?
RG: Challenging, difficult,
entertaining. Do you know how
hard it is to proofread a book that
runs 170,000 words? We probably
proofed it a dozen times, and I
suspect there is still a typo or two
in there. Beyond that, though, there
is such a suspicion of selfpublishing in established literary
circles. They view self-published
fiction as failed fiction—because it
is not being published by an
established house. My view is that
self-publishing is the future. It is
allowing thousands of new voices
to be heard. WordVirgin is a
perfect example of a company that
is helping make this possible. And
I think The Woods is proof that
self-published fiction can also be
serious, thought-provoking fiction.
I am con ٥