How far would you go for what you love?
That line serves as a preamble to New York Times editor Ken Jaworowski’s second book, ‘What About the Bodies.’ The novel, set to drop this fall, delves into three characters and their lives in a gritty rust-belt town in Pennsylvania. The book follows Jaworowski’s debut read, ‘Small Town Sins,’ which was recently optioned by Sony TV and nominated for an Edgar Award.
The locally grown author used his time in the city, at Shippensburg University, and at the University of Pennsylvania to build inspiration for his work, and has plans to continue to do so in the future.
“When I was living in Philly, [there was] this cool program at Penn, the Master of Liberal Arts. You could go there and tailor your master’s degree, so I did American Literature. And this is the ringer: They said, instead of writing a thesis for your master’s, you could write a creative project. So I wrote a play,” he remembers.
The play route led to his work being staged in New York and across Europe. That grew into inspiration to write novels on top of his decades-long career at the ‘Times.’ But that route took some time—until ‘Small Town Sins’ came to the creative’s mind.
“With [‘Small Town’], I wrote a different way. I’m not going to be self-deprecating here: I don’t know if I’m a good writer and I truly believe that…but I am a good editor. The ‘New York Times’ has been paying me for 20 years to do that. So I said, you’ve been writing all these novels and they’ve gone nowhere. Stop trying to just write a novel, and edit one instead,” explains Jaworowski.
“The second thing, I read a great quote by Scott Smith, who wrote ‘A Simple Plan.’ The ‘Times’ interviewed him and he says: ‘At my core, I was always afraid of boring the reader.’ And I swear, it was just like something clicked in my head. So, I started paying as much attention to the editing and to the reader as I did to myself as a writer.”
‘Small Town Sins’ was the first of Jaworowski’s “rust-belt thrillers” set in the fictional Locksburg, Pennsylvania. ‘What About the Bodies’ follows suit in terms of the setting, which was largely inspired by the author’s time at Shippensburg.
“I lived in Philly my whole life. I rarely ever left the city up until the time I left for college. I was a city guy, grew up right off of Ridge Avenue on Dawson Street in Roxborough. When I went away to Shippensburg, I got woken up about the third day by this sound. It was the Amish clip clopping down the street. I never really left Philly, and now here I am in the middle of Amish country being woken up by them. My dorms were filled with kids who grew up on farms and everything too,” he recalls.
“I completely forgot about it until my daughter got ready for college. And we do the tour, we do Bloomsburg, we do Shippensburg, we do Penn State, we do them all. And it all came back. I was inspired by going back to these small towns, and it all just unfolded from there.”
‘What About the Bodies’ alternates character views through each chapter. There’s single mom Carla, who’s hiding a secret out of loyalty and love. There’s Reed, an autistic young man who is sent off on a personal mission fueled by a promise he made to his mother on her deathbed. And then there’s Liz, a hopeful creative who’s life becomes at risk, and she has to pay a debt to keep herself safe.
“I think sometimes readers want you to change your perspective and your take. I like doing it, and it felt good to me and it felt right and interesting. Changing the viewpoints, a lot of it was inspired by theater too,” says Jaworowski.
“I like the characters and I really like the questions: How far would you go for your kid? And then conversely, how far would you go for your mother? How far would you go for a promise? How far will you go for your dream? Those are the questions, and what interests me about each one is how far will they go and how far will any of us go? Hell, I don’t know. We’ll say we will, but there’s got to be a stopping point somewhere.”
‘What About the Bodies’ will be released on Sept. 2, preorders are available now through sites like Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble and Hudson Booksellers. Locals can also catch Jaworowski at the Roxborough Public Library (6245 Ridge Ave.) on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 5:30 p.m. for a live reading of the new book.
“There’s a Donna Tartt quote, and I’m paraphrasing: The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty,” says Jaworowski. “She goes on to say there are people who read your books who are sick, sad, or sitting in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. And it’s true, books are written by the alone for the alone. What a great quote, I love that.”
In the future, more works from Jaworoski can be expected, though they’ll hit a little closer to home.
“There’s another book in the works, and it’s going to be the last one set in Locksburg,” he finishes. “Then we move [the next one] to Philly… and we’ll see what happens there.”
To learn more about Ken Jaworowski and ‘What About the Bodies’, visit kenjaworowski.com
