Write it on an oyster, hang it on a wall

In November 2019, just a few months before the world as we knew it shut down, I went to Japan for the first time. One day we took a train out of Tokyo to visit Kamakura, a little seaside town famous for, among its many other religious sites, a giant bronze Buddha statue dating back to the 13th century. Tucked inside another Buddhist temple, Hasedera, is a Shinto shrine, Kakigara-Inari, where for a donation visitors can write their own prayer on an oyster shell (why oysters? read more here) and hang it on the wall.

When I visit cathedrals I light a candle for the dead. Here, the oyster shell is a symbol for how the sea delivered back something holy thought to be lost. I thought about what to pray for.

I had been working on my book at that point for more than a year and felt no closer to understanding what it was that I wanted to do than when I started. I had about 75 pages written and my agent at the time had basically told me, this isn’t it, kid. I scrapped it and tried again, but felt stuck. My outline attempts were vague messes. I had been told I needed more me in the book, which I didn’t disagree with, but I didn’t know exactly what shape my story needed to take to be enough to sustain a whole book.

So I asked for something that felt far out of reach, something that maybe only the spirit of the sea could deliver back to me.

It didn’t come immediately, and it didn’t arrive overnight. No epiphany washed up on my shore. Instead, I went from vacation into the holidays, then into the deep burrows of winter. And right when we thought we would emerge into spring, the pandemic sent us back underground. And I had time. A lot of uninterrupted, quiet time to think deeply about what it was that I wanted to say about my family’s story, and how it shaped me, and how it shaped my tastes in art, and how that art also shaped me, and the role that we the fans and consumers play in determining whose stories are privileged and which narratives are considered sacred. I scrapped the outline and followed a new obsession with an old missing-persons case, braiding it into my own memories and fears and research and interviews and, of course, Bruce Springsteen. I read part of that essay, “Jersey Girls,” at the Spalding MFA residency that scrambled to become an all-virtual experience in May 2020 and received some thrilling feedback from the smartest readers I know.

Little by little as I worked through the material I wanted to cover in this book, I saw how I could take the dueling stories of my mother the wild teenage runaway and my father the mysteriously romantic addict and criminal — all the interviews and research and court documents and other reporting I had done — and weave my own obsessions through them, drawing the connections between what I love and who I love, and how my understanding of both, and so my understanding of myself and the world, has changed over the last five years.

It still took me two more years to write the book. I finally finished my proposal, with help from the structure and feedback in Anne Trubek’s online course. My agent said, again, essentially, this isn’t it, kid. But I knew it was book I needed to write. So we parted ways amicably, and I got to writing. And after a while I gathered the courage to ask Anne if she had been serious when she said she’d like to see it, and I sent her what I had finished so far. And she saw the vision I had and not only supported it, she made it stronger.

Now the book is available for pre-order. It comes out in September from Belt Publishing. It’s called Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me. Here’s what the good folks in Belt publicity say about it:

In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six.

Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What’s true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are?

Whether it’s talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell—both personal and pop cultural—create us.  

Keep an eye out for more little letters featuring book news and fall events (I love university visits if you’d like to have me!), behind-the-book peeks into my record bins, snaps of family photos and other Runaway ephemera, and more updates from me. Thanks for reading this far. If you’d like to pre-order Runaway, you can do so via Belt Publishing, Carmichael’s Bookstore (they ship!), Bookshop, Amazon, or your favorite bookstore.