Here it is!
As with SING FOR ME, Beth Adams, my editor at Simon & Schuster/Howard Books, and the imprint’s art director, Bruce Gore, were kind enough to include me in the discussion as they worked to create the cover.
We talked about some of what the novel holds: 1930’s imagery, the colors we associate with that era, and, yes, even the fonts. We talked the murals, posters, and documentary photography of the WPA. And journeys–cross-country journeys–the gorgeous trains and depots that existed at that time, the roads traveled down. We talked the East Texas and Oklahoma Dust Bowl, and California–the city of Pasadena, in particular, along with the vast farm fields, and the migrant worker camps, especially those barrios inhabited by the Latino population of that time, just east of LA. We talked about the Repatriation Act, set in place by the Hoover administration, and implemented by the federal government until 1939. Enforced deportation without due process. That was on our minds, too.
It took some time–Beth’s email inviting me into this discussion is dated March 25th–but in the end, Bruce, Beth, and team came up with the above image. They feel it’s evocative of the book’s historical setting, expansive enough to suggest the narrative content, without limiting the focus. Not TOO Grapes of Wrath–as, believe me, there’s no pretense, here, of trying to redo/one-up/elaborate upon John Steinbeck’s novel (great work/ American masterpiece/classic of the canon). There are all manner of stories from about the Dust Bowl, and California in the 1930s. I simply tried to tell a version of one I hadn’t heard before, and that, the first time I heard tell of it, pretty much knocked me off my feet.
I love what Bruce, Beth, and team came up with for the cover of BROKEN GROUND. I hope you do, too.
