Bridge to a Distant Star - Carolyn Williford [134]
For example, when I first finished writing the prologue I had no idea who would survive the tragedy—and who would not. I felt a sense of intense anticipation, actually, as I watched the story take on a life of its own, eventually informing me who the survivors were.
Later my wonderful editor would have a say in that too. Ah, the jolt back to real life!
Source for themes
My themes for writing fiction and nonfiction generally come from my personal devotions. When I was studying the verse in Matthew 16:24—“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,’”—I recall thinking that there were those with such poor self-esteem that they hadn’t ever had a real “self” to deny and offer sacrificially to God. And then I thought of my own struggles—the times I’ve been so ill that I literally couldn’t do anything to serve him, and how unworthy I felt as a result. Could I view myself as acceptable when all I could offer my God was a weak woman, in pain, lying on the couch? Clearly my own issues of being versus doing fueled my desire to explore those themes more in depth through the power of story. The parallel structure of the verse itself led me to think about a novel with three distinct yet intertwining stories.
The classic novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder provided the pattern for a plot line, a guide for a modern-day tragedy. Though not often read in classrooms today (Wilder’s better known for the inspiring Our Town), this engaging story of a bridge’s collapse in Peru, the people who perished there, and the parallels in their pasts made a strong impact on me as a teen. If you haven’t read it, you may want to do so to make your own comparisons with Bridge to a Distant Star.
The true story behind Bridge to a Distant Star
The last piece of the puzzle—what modern-day tragedy to use?—was quickly put into place with my fairly vivid memories of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and the disaster of 1980. My parents lived in St. Petersburg for a number of years, and before they moved from Ohio, we vacationed on Treasure Island, which is just across the bay from St. Pete. So I had visited the area and traveled across the beautiful Skyway on numerous occasions, and when you’ve actually been to a place that later witnesses some sort of horrific tragedy, it’s suddenly more personal, isn’t it? Add to that the artistic shape of the Skyway itself; its inherent personality and style make it the perfect setting for a dramatic story.
If you Google Tampa Bay Skyway Bridge, you’ll find articles on the day the bridge fell, including fascinating personal eyewitness accounts and pictures. In the real life disaster, sadly, there was only one survivor, and that was because his vehicle fell onto the freighter’s bow before rolling into the water. (In The Bridge of San Luis Rey, no one survives the bridge’s collapse. So though you may judge me harshly for having so many characters die, my story does allow for the greatest number of survivors!) Since my characters’ vehicles fall directly into the water below, clearly no natural means would explain how Fran, Michal, and Aubrey survived. Thus my miraculous explanation: Aubrey’s insistence on an angel. Literary license is a wonderful invention!
I also Googled, researched, and studied the physical form of the bridge itself (as a memory refresher, I located pictures of a drive onto and across the bridge), freighters and shipmates’ vocabularies, and