Charmaine Wilkerson, the bestselling author of Black Cake, returns with Good Dirt, a novel that weaves together family history, personal identity, and the enduring impact of the past. The story follows Ebby Freeman, whose childhood is upended when she witnesses a tragic event that leaves more questions than answers. Growing up as part of one of the only Black families in an affluent New England community, she and her family have spent years avoiding public scrutiny. But when her high-profile relationship collapses and makes headlines, she finds herself at the center of unwanted attention once again. Seeking distance, she moves to France, only to realize that no matter how far she goes, her past still lingers.
As Ebby pieces together long-buried family truths, she becomes fixated on an heirloom lost the same day as the tragedy—a centuries-old stoneware jar that once belonged to an enslaved ancestor. What first seems like a sentimental artifact soon reveals itself to be something more, leading her to uncover stories and connections that reshape her understanding of her family and herself.
Wilkerson recently spoke to Blavity about the historical inspiration behind Good Dirt, the process of crafting a multigenerational narrative, and the ways in which history, memory, and personal discovery intersect in her latest novel.
What inspired you to write Good Dirt, and how did the story first come to you?
The main character, Ebby Freeman, simply materialized on the page as I was thinking about what it would take for a person to move forward in life after unspeakable loss, especially when their personal pain had become public knowledge through media coverage. This question was inspired by my professional past. I used to work in television news and often found myself walking into someone’s home at the worst time in their life. I would go away wondering what it would take for them to find a way to move forward with the grief or anger or confusion that they might be carrying, especially when their very personal pain had been subjected to the public gaze. Following Ebby was a way for me to explore the fact that so many people do manage to carry their pain in a way that allows them to love and laugh, and take care of their families and communities, and do useful work, despite all.
The novel explores themes of family, history, and legacy. Why was it important for you to weave these elements into Ebby’s journey?
I am fascinated by the power that stories have to shape our ideas of self, family and history. Ebby is struggling with the desire to forget painful memories from her past, but she risks losing the connection with all that she is as a young, Black woman from New England. She is the survivor of a childhood tragedy that led to the death of her big brother and the loss of a beloved family heirloom. She also has experienced a recent, very public and humiliating, romantic breakup. She feels that her identity has been dominated by these stories, so she runs off to a quiet town in France to escape everyone and everything she knows, and to open her heart to new possibilities. But her past catches up with her in France. As the novel moves forward, she will be compelled to look back at the dramatic story of that family heirloom, a stoneware jar crafted by an enslaved man, and make a connection between the past and her present.
Good Dirt is described as a multi-generational epic. How do you approach writing across different time periods and perspectives while maintaining a cohesive story?
I tend to see various elements of a story in my head at the same time, just as any one of us may be simultaneously aware of various people’s stories, or various facts in our own lives. As a writer, I tend to compartmentalize stories or scenarios with the help of my laptop. I type or write by hand in short bursts and create digital files to distinguish various scenes from one another. This can be useful as I go back and forth between the past and the present, and between one character and another. Technology is very helpful to me, but another writer might do the same thing by hand, by keeping separate notebooks, or by using sheets of paper or adhesive notepad to move scenes or ideas around in a spatial manner. I use the same approach to categorize research that I have conducted. I may go back to those files from time to time, picking and choosing elements to add to beef up a particular scene in whatever I’m writing. For example, for Good Dirt, I amassed files of research that would help me to build a variety of scenarios: The story of where the jar was made and how it ended up in New England. The places where ancestors in danger found refuge. The first woman physician in the family. The story of how Ebby’s mother was given her unusual name. And, of course, the love stories from the past. But I did not conduct research in a specific order to match the chronology of the story I was building. I would research a theme or time period or person that interested me as a question came up. It all became background knowledge that fed into my imagination.
The Freeman family’s tragedy takes place in a wealthy New England community where they are one of the few Black families. How does the setting impact the themes of race, privilege, and identity in the novel?
The Freemans are privileged in a number of ways, and their lives reflect some of the real-life, multifaceted experiences of Black families in America. They come from a long line of landowning, well-off, and professionally secure African Americans in New England, primarily Massachusetts. They experience their identity on various, sometimes conflicting levels. Ebby Freeman’s parents have the income and professional connections which make it possible for them to live in an exclusive enclave on the Connecticut coast, making them the only Black family in their neighborhood.
Ed Freeman, Ebby’s father, has chosen to raise his young family on the coast, despite having come from the interior of Massachusetts, because he has always wanted to live by the water. He is convinced the sea is in his DNA because some of his ancestors were sailors. The historical reference to Black men who crewed sailing ships and worked as whalers, even as most African or “country born” Black men were enslaved, is one of the elements that demonstrate that the Freemans’ past cannot be separated from the present. It also is one of the dimensions of the Black experience in North America that we do not see often, if ever, in fiction.
As we see from this connection, the Freemans do not see themselves as separate from their history. They are proud of their heritage, from adversity to prosperity, as evidenced in a beloved family heirloom that was crafted by an enslaved man and carried north from the American South by an ancestor. This, too, is an aspect of African American history that we typically do not find in fiction. Despite their material and social advantages, they see the old stoneware jar as the most valuable thing they own, and their economic advantage as something that can be used to help other African Americans who continue to experience the negative effects of the lack of compensation or enslavement of their ancestors. They continue to see evidence of the advantages of the generational wealth which unpaid or low-paid African Americans provided to other people whose ancestors were enslavers, while being unable to reap the same economic or social advantages themselves. Again, they are aware of the connection between past and present and how class and race can enter into these dimensions. At the same time, they believe that as modern-day Americans with a long history in this nation, they should be able to live as comfortably as anyone, in the place they call home.
Black Cake was a huge success and even adapted into a Hulu series. How has that experience influenced your approach to writing and storytelling for Good Dirt or future projects?
I was pleased to see how an entire team of other artists used their creative and technical skills to adapt the story in Black Cake for the screen. I remain open to seeing my stories interpreted and extended for film or the small screen, or even the stage, as has been done with so many of the novels I have loved to read. I wouldn’t mind doing so myself, someday. But so far, I have sat down to write specifically for the printed page. I wrote Good Dirt with a novel in mind, first. I’m also working on something new for the printed page. I love the idea of being in conversation with readers who open a book.
