On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club, Chateau Laux by David Loux #HistoricalFiction #AuthorInterview #BlogTour @ChateauLaux @maryanneyarde

 

I am once again working with The Coffee Pot Book Club to introduce you to your next favourite read!

A young entrepreneur from a youthful Philadelphia, chances upon a French aristocrat and his family living on the edge of the frontier. Born to an unwed mother and raised by a disapproving and judgmental grandfather, he is drawn to the close-knit family. As part of his courtship of one of the patriarch’s daughters, he builds a château for her, setting in motion a sequence of events he could not have anticipated.

What inspired you to start writing?

My grandmother Loux interested me in reading.  I was about seven and she stood me in front of the glass bookcase in the farmhouse living room and challenged me to pick any book, read it and report back to her.  The book I picked was Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.  At my age at the time, much of the language in the book was beyond me but I was hooked, nevertheless.  After that, I read voraciously, sometimes two books a day, and by my no doubt faulty recollection read every fiction book in the elementary school library.  With so many words going in, a few were bound to leak out, and my first foray into writing was a hop and a skip.

What was the hardest part about writing this book?

The hardest part was depicting the crime that inspired the book in the first place.  When I discovered the incident during my research into the provenance of the Laux surname, it affected me deeply.  Chateau Laux was my attempt to come to grips with it and understand how a family could live with such a thing.  I felt compelled to write about it.  But putting the incident into words was very difficult and I still react emotionally when I think about it.

Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?

All of the characters have a piece of me in them, but I would have to say that Lawrence has the most resonance.  As a child, his father was unknown and his mother struggled with failing health.  As such, he was symbolic of the new world he was born into, where European provenance was truncated and the new environment was in many ways hostile.  In his attempt to reinvent himself, he made a terrible mistake.  But he had the opportunity to play a meaningful role in shaping a new heritage, which was more than he could have expected.

If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?

That is a difficult question, because Pierre Laux is bigger than life to me, which is a difficult quality to capture.  Rather than think in terms of what actors would play which roles, I am more inclined to think in terms of who would best direct such an endeavour.  I hate to mention names, but without taking anything away from anyone else, the combination of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks would be compelling.

What do you hope your readers take away from this book?

My hope is that Chateau Laux engages readers across a full range of emotions, but also appeals to their reason.  We can’t always control the challenges that come our way.  But we have a measure of control over how we react to them and if we can sustain hope then all is not lost.

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David Loux

David Loux is a short story writer who has published under pseudonym and served as past board member of California Poets in the Schools. Chateau Laux is his first novel. He lives in the Eastern Sierra with his wife, Lynn.

Social Media Links:

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