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About the Author of Tamara’s Child
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Tamara Ames is sixteen years old, pregnant, and on her own when she arrives in the small lumber town of Fir Valley, Oregon, determined to make a new life for herself and her child. And when she falls victim to a diabolical scheme to steal her newborn baby from her, she is not about to give up her child without a fight, even if she has to take on the wealthiest and most powerful family in the county. But is Tamara fighting against her child’s own best interests? Only she can decide. And it’s a decision that she—and her child—will have to live with for the rest of their lives.
A Mystery and a Drama with a Lot of Heart
In Tamara’s Child, a first novel by B K Mayo, the author weaves from sensuous detail a storyline as gritty and complex as life itself. Loss, treachery, greed, even murder play roles in this riveting tale. But in the end, it is the redemptive value of unconditional love that drives the pivotal action of the novel. One part suspense, one part drama, and wholly satisfying, Tamara’s Child plumbs the psyche of a dynamic cast of characters, some motivated by self-interest, some by self-sacrifice, some by self-doubt, but all clinging to the hope that they can ultimately wring from life the happiness and fulfillment that has thus far been denied them.
Tamara's Child
B K Mayo
Popular Fiction
Trade Paperback: 5.5" x 8.5"
407 Pages
Price $14.95
LCCN: 2009905452
ISBN 978-0-9815884-7-6
B K Mayo is a member of the Willamette Writers Association. His short fiction has been published in Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction and his non-fiction has appeared in The News Review of Roseburg, Oregon. While honing his skills as a writer, Mayo worked as a park caretaker, an accounting clerk, a school bus driver, a library aide, a teacher’s assistant, a special education teacher, and a high school detention room supervisor. Mayo currently lives with his wife, Karen, in an area of southwestern Oregon known as the Hundred Valleys of the Umpqua. This is his first novel.New Release From Fir Valley Press
Here is a story that will grab you by the heart and not let
you go until the very last word of the very last page.
Q. Your novel, Tamara’s Child, is essentially women’s fiction. How did you, a male, happen to write a novel for a female audience?
A. Actually, I didn’t set out to write women’s fiction. It just happened. That is, as I began writing the novel, my intention was to write an amateur sleuth mystery. The protagonist was to be a young man—a slightly older version of the character Kurt in the current novel—who finds a pregnant teenager (Tamara) hiding from someone, someone who wants her child for some evil purpose. I hadn’t figured out yet exactly who the girl was running from or what the evil purpose was. But this young man who finds the pregnant girl was going to help her, and during the course of their time together, slowly her backstory would unravel, and along the way, there would be action and danger and romance. But what happened was, when I got to the part where the girl’s backstory started to unfold, I realized that I was telling the wrong story. It was the young girl’s story—Tamara’s story—that was really the heart of the novel. That was where the passion and the emotion resided. It was Tamara’s yearning to make a new life for herself and her child, her yearning for family, for unconditional love—that was what would drive the story. And so the story had to be hers from the very beginning, and it had to be told from her point of view—at least to the extent it could be.
Q. You ended up using rotating points of view—why?
A. The story seemed to demand it. I had shifted the focus of the novel onto Tamara; it was her story. But she needed to interact with other characters who had their own theme-related stories and who, at times, needed their own point of view. So, in that sense, the book reads somewhat like a suspense novel, where the doings of a diverse cast of characters are woven into a narrative, and it is their interaction which tells the tale. And, in fact, there are elements of both mystery and suspense in the story.
Q. How, then, did you happen to tell part two of the story from a single point of view—Felicity’s? And why the switch from third person to first person in part two?
A. Two reasons. One was because of the time change. Part two picks up twenty-one years after part one. I felt that, along with the time change, a change in “voice” was called for. And then you need to keep in mind that the title of the novel is Tamara’s Child. So, part two, along with providing the resolution to Tamara’s story, addresses the issue of how Tamara’s decisions in part one impacted her child as well as herself. So I thought that that part of the story should be told from Felicity’s point of view, which seemed to work best as first person.
Q. You said that the other characters in the novel had their own “theme-related” stories. What did you mean by this? What theme are you talking about?
A. Theme, of course, means different things to different people, and readers can decide for themselves what they think the theme of the novel is. But I was speaking of theme as a unifying element of the storyline. And for me as author, the unifying element of Tamara’s Child is the universal yearning for family—that desire that we all share to be part of a loving, supportive family unit. Certainly, as I said, this is the driving force behind Tamara’s actions, and behind Felicity’s. But consider the other key characters in the novel and their motivation as well. Margaret Trouste is willing to risk her life in order to give birth to a child of her own. Her husband, Russell, is willing to risk his career and possibly going to jail to see that his wife gets her child—to, in effect, keep his family unit intact. Dr. Castle sorely misses his late wife and views Margaret as the daughter he and his wife never had—thus his motivation for wanting to help her. The young man in the novel, Kurt, is the model of what a person who lives within the framework of a loving family can be—he’s sensitive, loving, caring. Then there’s Gary, Kurt’s antithesis, who is an example of the product of a dysfunctional family. But even Gary, in his own twisted way, is responding to an unfulfilled yearning for family, a yearning that, because it has gone unmet, has made him angry and bitter and violent. So, throughout the novel, this theme of a universal yearning for family is explored from a number of different angles, but it’s always there in some form, moving the action forward.
Q. One last question. On the book cover, one reviewer is quoted as calling Tamara’s Child “a mystery and a drama with a lot of heart.” Would you care to comment on that description of the book?
A. Although Tamara’s Child is what I consider mainstream fiction (admittedly slanted toward a female audience)—the novel, as I said, does have an element of mystery/suspense to it in the way the story unfolds. And certainly, if you wanted to sub-categorize it, you could call it a “family drama.” But I think the “with a lot of heart” comment comes from the fact that the story, at its core, is an emotional journey. It’s a journey of self-discovery for Tamara and her daughter, but it’s also an emotional journey for the other key characters in the novel, all of whom struggle to fulfill their own deepest desires. And if I’ve done my job well as a writer, the book becomes an emotional journey for the reader as well.
TAMARA HELD BACK her tears as she marched away from Angela’s house. Behind her, Angela cowered on the front steps mouthing “I’m so sorry” repeatedly, while Angela’s dad bellowed from inside, “I don’t care! That girl is trash, and I won’t have her trashing our daughter's life too!”
It wasn’t until she was blocks away that Tamara broke down— slumped to the pavement behind the ARCO, shoulders shuddering, mucus streaming from her nose, her tissues buried somewhere in her backpack. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt. Now what am I supposed to do? She cradled her middle and sobbed uncontrollably.
She’d been naïve to think that the baby would change things for the better. That the baby—as she’d convinced herself after getting over the initial shock of her pregnancy—would be the bridge that reconnected the broken relationships in her life. How wrong she’d been! Had she really expected shallow waters to suddenly run deep? Withered flowers to bloom? That her messed-up life would be magically transformed into a fairy tale?
Yes, she’d set herself up for a great fall. Wishes come true only for those who have the power to make them come true. But what made it all so unbearable now was the knowledge that it was those she loved—and who were supposed to love her back—who had failed her the most. Jimmy. Her mother. Angela. No, not Angela.
The look on Jimmy’s face when she’d told him about the baby should have told her all she needed to know. It was on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. They’d gone to the Denny’s by the freeway, not to celebrate but because Jimmy was supposed to meet a guy at the Motel 6 next door, “to do some business,” he’d said. They sat in a booth with a window that looked out onto the street. While they were waiting for their food to arrive, she gave him the news, her voice quavering with each word. Jimmy jerked his head toward the window, but she could see the dark look of annoyance reflecting off the glass. “Tamara,” he said to the window—maybe he could see her reflection in the glass too—“can’t you do anything right?” He got up and strode out of the restaurant like a cowboy walking off into the sunset.
She’d put off telling her mother after that, her confidence in her mother’s reaction shaken even as her own commitment to bearing this child and giving it all the love it deserved became the guiding principle in her life. But she could only delay so long, because soon she would begin to show.
So one afternoon upon arriving home from school, Tamara blurted out the news to her mother and held her breath. Her mother was in the laundry room folding clothes from a basket and stacking them on the wobbly table next to the washing machine. “Land sakes, girl,” she said, going on with her work as if the revelation was as notable as a weather report predicting rain. “Don’t you think I know that?” She pulled a pair of jeans out of the basket and shook out the legs. “You’ll have to move out when the baby comes, of course. Having a wee one around the house wouldn’t be good for my nerves.”
Tamara had braced herself against the clothes dryer, feeling as if she’d been stabbed through the heart. Could it really be that her mother was so damaged by tragedy that she had truly lost her capacity for love?
Reeling from her mother’s rejection, Tamara hadn’t waited for the baby to come before leaving the house. Six months into her pregnancy, she moved in with her best friend, Angela Ramos, whose family lived in a rambling two-story house on West Broadway that seemed to get bigger, according to Mrs. Ramos, every time one of the kids moved out. Besides a younger brother, Angela had an older brother and an older sister, both of whom had already left home. Mr. Ramos was a long-haul trucker and was gone on a run the day Tamara came to the house with only the clothes she was wearing and a bulging backpack. “You sure Mr. Ramos won’t mind me staying here for a while?” Tamara asked Angela’s mom. Mrs. Ramos winked at her. “I’ll take care of Mr. Ramos,” she said with a suggestive dip of her shoulder.
Tamara dug through her backpack and came out with a wad of Kleenex. She blew her nose, hiccupped as she tried to stem the flow of tears.
Mr. Ramos, it turned out, was not so easily taken care of. He’d come home late the previous evening with a case of hemorrhoids and a disposition to match. When, this morning at breakfast, he’d found out that Tamara—whose belly by now had ballooned beyond concealment—was living there, he’d ordered her out of the house, banished her from the premises as rudely as if she was a dog that had peed on the carpet. Mrs. Ramos had issued cries of protest but had made no move to intervene.
Tamara sniffled, squared her shoulders. At least she hadn’t allowed Mr. Ramos the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
But now what? She hadn’t a clue as to what her next move should be.
She peered up at the heavens. Dark clouds were piling up in the sky like heaps of soiled linen. It was going to be another cool, wet spring day. On the street in front of the ARCO, cars were beginning to clog the traffic lanes. The morning commute was in full swing.
A rattling sound caught Tamara’s attention. She looked over to see a woman with a red-leather face and dirt-caked spikes of hair come around the corner of the gas station pushing a grocery cart. The cart was overflowing with junk—cans, bottles, wadded garments, a coffee pot with no lid. The woman wore several layers of smudged clothing that hung on her like rags on a stick. Tamara stiffened as the woman hobbled past, reeking of garbage and stale beer. The woman thumped her cart against a big metal trash bin, tipped up its lid, and leaned inside.
Tamara scrambled to her feet. She scurried around to the front of the ARCO, her mind suddenly clear and her resolve set. She would do whatever she had to do to survive—to see to it that her child was taken care of and loved in a way that she was not. And to do that she needed to get away from this town and the people in it. The city of Eugene held nothing for her now except more heartache. She paused at the street corner long enough to get her bearings, then, shouldering her backpack, hurried off toward the freeway.
She was huffing when she finally got there, her legs rubbery, her skin moist and prickly. She shrugged out of her backpack and let it slide down her arm to the ground. She raked her fingers through her sweat-dampened hair, swiped moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand. On the other side of the railing, vehicles on the interstate whisked by in both directions, trailing exhaust fumes like phantom tails.
Tamara didn’t know where she was going—that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was going there to make a new and better life for herself and her child. Others may have turned their backs on her, but she would never forsake the beautiful being growing inside her. She hugged her swollen belly. “It’s you and me, sweetie,” she murmured. “All we’ve got is each other.” She drew a shuddering breath, beat back a surge of self-doubt.
When, moments later, a big blue car came chugging up the onramp, Tamara stood tall and thrust out her thumb.
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AN INTERVIEW WITH B K MAYO, AUTHOR OF TAMARA’S CHILD
Read Chapter 1 of Tamara’s Child
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Fir Valley Press
Tamara's Child
a novel by B K Mayo
About Tamara’s Child by B K Mayo
Fir Valley Press ~ P.O. Box 337 ~ Winchester, OR 97495
Tel. 541-677-7053 ~ Fax 541-673-2853
E-mail: books@firvalleypress.com
Copyright 2009 Fir Valley Press. All rights Reserved
MEDIA REVIEWS OF TAMARA’S CHILD
TAMARA’S CHILD a novel by B K Mayo
Reviewed by Tricia Dias
Douglas County News
December 16, 2009
© 2009 Reprinted by permission of the reviewer.
It is 1979 and Tamara Ames is in desperate trouble. She’s just turned 16, homeless, friendless, and six months pregnant! What’s she going to do? Where’s she going to go? How’s she going to care for herself and her baby?
Having left Eugene, she arrives in the (fictional) lumber town of Fir Valley, Douglas County, where she stubbornly sets out to make a new life for herself and her child. Unfortunately, she becomes one of the victims in a horrid scheme to steal her newborn baby. When she figures out what has happened, she refuses to give up her baby without a fight, even if she has to take on the town’s most powerful and richest family. Through it all, Tamara’s one controlling thought is, “What’s the best thing I can do for my baby?”
The storyline is as complex as it is sinister. There is evil personified, treachery, deceit, greed and murder. There is also the totally human need for family and love – the love of another and the love FOR another. Some of the scenes and language are necessarily gritty, but that’s the way life can (but shouldn’t) be. However, there is also tenderness and poignancy, especially for a lost child in pain who is, in turn, having a child. The author doesn’t ask you to pity Tamara or excuse her bad decisions, but you ARE asked to try to understand – put yourself in HER shoes – don’t judge, just reach out a hand to another human in pain and fear. These are very real characters and they draw you in immediately; their motivations include self-interest, self-sacrifice, self-doubt and selfishness. It took me less than 24 hours to read this book, because I couldn’t put it down.
This is B K Mayo’s first published novel. Another in the growing list of Douglas County writers and artists, Mayo has worked with “at risk” children (as part of the education system) for 20 years; the last 5 were as In-School Suspension Supervisor in Roseburg High School. Several Amazon.com reviewers talked about the “suspense with mysterious twists” while containing “a lot of heart.” One reviewer “got so involved with the characters that I felt like traveling to Oregon and looking (them) up so I could talk to them - - - but, oh, that’s right, it’s fictional.” I understand this last comment very well, as I, too, had very intense, negative feelings for one of the characters (as I was meant to have). This is a fine author with lots of good books waiting in his fertile mind. I look forward to his next one.
Tamara’s Child is available in the Douglas County library system and at While Away Books in Roseburg and Books Gallery in Sutherlin; also on-line at Amazon.com and firvalleypress.com.
Only through the reader does a story truly come to life.
THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Small Press Bookwatch
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
January 2010
Love is a powerful thing, but how to apply it is the real problem. "Tamara's Child" tells the story of a teenage mother who, faced with her new child, wants to do everything she can to protect it and care for it. When plans are put in place to separate her from her child, Tamara is left asking if resisting is really the best thing for her and her child. "Tamara's Child" is a thought provoking and heartstring jerking tale that should not be passed up.
Awards For Tamara's Child
Tamara's Child was chosen as a NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award Winner for Spring 2010 by the North American Bookdealers Association in the category "Novel."
Tamara's Child was named a Finalist in the "Popular Fiction" category of the 2010 National Indie Excellence Awards, which celebrates excellence in independent publishing.
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