Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Diane Botnick writes about Becoming Sarah, her debut novel out from She Writes Press.
If Becoming Sarah were a forest, it would be one that had burned so thoroughly its verdancy could only be expressed in the past tense. The genus and species of its former inhabitants have been left unrecognizable, the trees charcoal spears, limbless spokes of a wheel going nowhere, the ash taking so long to settle—years, really—that the ground no longer remembers the dapple of sunlight or the silvered shadows cast by the moon. Day or night, what could it matter with the sky now a lens through which everything is colored the sepia of history. And with no more pillows of moss or spongy peat, any rainfall rushes through in torrents, washing away the paths of desire carved in the forest’s floor by its former inhabitants. The creatures of the earth and air expelled, sent to look for refuge elsewhere. A lost place.
In the book that is now a forest, those who’ve lived through too much change to be able to absorb any more of it, good or bad, cling to the place they remember, not remembering their part in its demise, how careless they were, admiring it from afar, painting or snapping pictures of it on an occasional Sunday, pilfering its ferns, flattening its ephemera under picnic blankets, carving into tree trunks or rudely splashing onto boulders the random initials of those never bound to return, even if there were anything to return to.
But in the second act of this forest of a book, the sky will blue; the ash will turn the ruined ground to a lush carpet of opportunity, and even the most reckless of them will be rewarded, in ways they don’t expect or even want, since all they want is what’s no longer, and living, growing things resist replication. Fortunately there are those who won’t miss what they never knew. The forest primeval has no future, and what’s taking its place is newer and fresher and jazzier. It’s what’s inevitable. It’s what is needed.
And in this new and fresh and jazzed terrain, repopulation is unhindered, its speedy progress aided by all breeds of adventurers—flyers, crawlers, intrepid hikers —dragging with them the remnants of their travels through still-living forests—bugs fluttering like tiny national flags, seed, and pollen from foreign lands, stowaways in the cuffs of pants, the treads of expensive running shoes. Where once stood Sugar maples and Red oaks, beech and white pine, serviceberry and dogwood, now is a crowd of surprisingly mature Norway maples, which, come fall, will light a million candle flames of yellow, their trunks twined in Virginia creeper the color of blood. Rhododendron will escape from the footings of suburban homes, but their robust flowers and leathery foliage will be pleasing stand-ins for the scraggly, shier mountain laurel that used to be. Under a thickened canopy will lie impenetrable mats of vinca. And yes, this terrain may be even more vulnerable to fire and water, but at a certain moment in the spring, the show of periwinkle is too winning for anyone to care.
If Becoming Sarah were a forest, it would be one destined for a new generation. Fast growing and full of exotics. Adaptable. And, most importantly, replaceable. The aged may beat their chests over long-gone “old growth.” The future has no time for chest beating. Or regret.
Diane Botnick’s debut novel is about a baby born in Auschwitz destined to spend the next century surviving whatever life presents. Becoming Sarah, published by She Writes Press, will be out this fall (2025). Born and raised in the Midwest, she called New York City home for years, working for various organizations in support of the performing and visual arts. She and her husband currently live in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Order Becoming Sarah here.