This is the Reason For Time Podcast: Recent Episodes
Burns & Dixson
A podcast about memory, truth, invention and how they came together in a novel, The Reason for Time.
Author Mary Burns describes how she created the voice of the main character, Maeve Curragh. Actress Ethel Whitty reads the scene where Maeve meets Desmond.
Author talks about conditions for working girls in 1919, Ethel Whitty reads the scene wherein Maeve meets a pair of socially conscious women who want to help her.
Author talks about literary influences, including John Dos Passos, and editorial changes. What's in a name? Ethel Whitty reads scenes with her office mates, and reveals how Maeve was able to buy a bathing suit for her date with Desmond.
Characterization details, from visits to Ennis, County Clare and Theodore Dreiser. Ethel Whitty reads the scene wherein, after "magically" obtaining a bathing costume, she stops in a church and remembers her parents.
Author discovers she wasn't the only writer working on a book about Chicago in 1919, and the entire city is galvanized by the headlines concerning an abducted child.
Ethel reads the love scene at the lake. Author Mary Burns talks about character plausibility and the relativity of truth.
Maeve got caught up in the deadly race riot in Chicago in 1919. Author describes the challenges of presenting the black point of view. Some offensive language from the fictional Studs Lonigan, which captures the hatred young men felt for the many African Americans who migrated to Chicago during the Great Migration. Ethel Whitty reads scenes in which Maeve is asked to take sides.
Some reasons for time, and for the title. The truth of it all? Ethel reads the scene in which Maeve makes her way through Chicago's south side, during the race riot, to find out what happened to Desmond.