Janet Lewis — The Wife of Martin Guerre with Iris Jamahl Dunkle

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great books by forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes. The book we're discussing today reminds me a little bit of an episode of Law and Order. 

KIM: I'm totally down with that. I'm ready for the suspense, the intrigue, the slew of witnesses taking the stand.

AMY: Oh yeah, we're gonna have all of that. But the crime and trial that's the focus of this historical novel, it's based on a real incident, happened a long, long time ago in 16th century France.

KIM: And yet this book, Janet Lewis's The Wife of Martin Guerre, was originally published in 1941.

AMY: Hollywood a spin on the same premise in the 1990s and that was set during the American Civil War.

KIM: And that's maybe because this story resonates no matter the place or time. It's the tale of one woman's struggle to reconcile cold hard facts with the truth within her own heart.

AMY: The subtitle for this episode could probably be, Love the Player, Hate the Game. What would you do if you found yourself in the tricky predicament of the book's title character? It's a question we're sure author Janet Lewis would have wanted you to consider.

KIM: Yeah. And we've got tons more questions for our guest today, returning guest, in fact, who suggested we consider this lost lady for an episode. We can't wait to welcome her back. So let's raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today originally joined us on the show back in 2021 to discuss her biography of Charmian Kittredge London, that's the wife of Jack London, an author in her own right. And I think Iris was Incredibly brave to come on when she did, because we were just brand new fledgling podcasts. She didn't know what to make of us. But Charmian and that episode made me want to channel my inner Valkyrie, for sure.

KIM: Me too. Iris, who teaches at University of California, Davis, also wrote the 2021 poetry collection, West: Fire: Archive, and she's hard at work on another biography we can't wait to eventually get our hands on, it's about lost lady of lit Sanora Babb, whose Dust Bowl novel got lost in the shadows of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

 Side note: Steinbeck used Babb's research material to write his book.

AMY: Which is causing me to feel an altogether different kind of wrath. But I will save my Sanora Babb indignation for a future date, because today we have another lady to discuss. So welcome back to the show, Iris Jamahl Dunkle.

IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE: Thank you so much. It's so great to be back with you guys. I love the work that you're doing here. It's so important.

KIM: So you'd suggested Janet Lewis and this novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, as a potential topic for our show. And little did you know that we would instantly rope you to come back onto the show to discuss it. When did you first come across Janet Lewis and what made you think of her for this podcast?

IRIS: So as a biographer of lost ladies, your next biography on this person, which usually I'm like, Okay, thanks.

But in this case, the request came from one of my dear friends, my mentor Dana Joya, the poet. He immediately sent me a copy of her novel in the mail and was like, Just read it. You need to write her biography. And I was like, Okay. So of course on New Year's Eve, because I am a nerd, on New Year's Eve I cuddled up with a book. I started at, I don't know, like five o'clock and I'm like, I'll read a little bit and then have dinner or do something fun. I literally read it cover to cover. I didn't stop, much to my family's chagrin. I was like, This is the most amazing novel I've read in years. And after that, I just obsessed a little bit on who Janet Lewis was, and I found so many overlaps, just by doing the initial research of trying to understand who she was and why I didn't know about her.

KIM: I love your New Year's Eve. You're such a kindred spirit there.

AMY: Heh, totally. Your husband's standing there with two glasses of champagne. 

KIM: A party hat.

Yeah. 

IRIS: Totally. I'm like, Shut the

door, I got to finish this book.

AMY: Yeah, so speaking of connections, Janet Lewis was a poet. It's something the two of you have in common. You were actually the poet laureate for Sonoma County back in 2017. So what can you tell us about her poetry, and did she think of herself as a poet first and foremost?

IRIS: Yeah. So this is where the first amazing overlap happened when I started researching her life. I was like, Oh, of course she's a poet. That's why she writes such amazing novels. And it turns out that her first work was published in Poetry magazine, which is where the American version of Imagism really started. And she was a part of that movement, and I wrote my dissertation on the poet Amy Lowell, who was an Imagist. And so her poetry immediately made sense to me. And she was first known as a poet. She married one of the most famous male poets of the West Coast, Ivor Winters, who was a New Critic and they both believed that poetry was superior to prose. And so what I've noticed is that she thinks through her novels through poetry before she writes them in prose, which is my process. So I was like, I love her.

KIM: Oh, that is so cool.

AMY: For the non poets among us, including myself, can you briefly define what Imagism is?

IRIS: Yeah. Imagism started in England. So we've got Ezra Pound and H.D. And Arlington. They're at the British Museum meeting at the tea room and translating all these new Greek fragments being discovered. And through that process, they realize the image is the most important unit. You may have heard of In the Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound. So it's this two line poem that was originally like four pages long. And that was the essence of images poetry, but of course, I love the women who write Imagist poetry, like Amy Lowell. And H.D., she was actually called De Imagiste, so the Imagist, at the bottom of the page in the first issue of Poetry magazine that published Imagist poetry.

AMY: Yeah, we need an H.D. episode

KIM: We do. Cause she's come up a few times. 

IRIS: I've visited her grave. It is, it's in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It's amazing. She is a strong, fierce woman.

KIM: Okay. Mental note. We've got to come back to her. So do you have any favorite Janet Lewis poem, maybe a short one you could share with us so we could get a feel for her poetry?

IRIS: Yeah, I thought I would share one of the poems from her first collection which is collected in Poems Old and New 1918 to 1978. Some of her poetry is hard to find but this one is called The Reader. Sun creeps under the eaves and shines on the bare floor while he forgets the earth Cool ashes on the hearth, and all so still, save for the soft turning of leaves. A creature, fresh from birth, clings to the screen door, heaving damp, heavy wings. 

KIM: Beautiful.

AMY: It's really making me think of this novel, in fact. In descriptiveness of these like, country peasant houses. It's got that sort of quiet, distilled feel to it. 

IRIS: Totally. And this poem is actually from one of her earlier collections where she's writing, she's considered this regional writer because she wrote about Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And so this was really the Ojibwe community she was living in. And um, can you hear the dog

AMY: It's yeah, it's fine. Don't worry.

KIM: We both have dogs too. It's fine.

IRIS: My shih tzu's name is Shirley Jackson. 

KIM: Oh, great. Oh, my God. I love it! Yeah.

IRIS: So in the Upper Peninsula she wrote about the first really invasion of white settlers in her first novel, but she first wrote about that through poetry, and this poem comes from that. So that idea of moral brooding and what is truth and what is real and her always questioning that because the truth that's represented in the history that's presented to her doesn't seem quite right. So she's thinking of this rebirth of how we think about the frontier, which to her was completely, the definition of the West at the time was completely ridiculous because it didn't include women, it didn't include indigenous people. 

KIM: Yeah. And we're going to be connecting that idea of truth and what is truth when we talk more about the novel too.

IRIS: Awesome.

AMY: So what else do we know about her life?

IRIS: She grew up outside of Chicago. Her father was a professor at a community college, and she actually attended that college, and she really identified with her father. He's the one that, when they go to Michigan, they went every summer, he would take her boating, he would take her fishing, hunting. She was out in the wild, basically with him, and so he encouraged her to become a writer because he saw that's how she processed the world. She grew up in Oak Park and she went to the same high school as Hemingway. Very different writer, but another poet of the same Lost Generation, right? She attended the University of Chicago. And at that time, University of Chicago was deeply connected with Poetry Magazine. And so it's at that time that she applied to be part of the Poetry Club, and unknowingly her future husband is the secretary, Ivor Winters. But she ends up attending these meetings and really focusing her craft as a writer, as a poet. And then once she graduates, as one biographer said, she didn't even wait for her diploma. She just went to Paris. She was a French major. And so was living in Paris right after the First World War, and so she's rooming with a war widow, working at the passport office. She's really immersed in this culture, and she comes back to the U. S. six months later and gets tuberculosis, which, as you probably know, at this time could be very fatal. So many writers died of tuberculosis. So she went to a sanitarium in New Mexico, spending time recuperating in bed, but also she began to write her first novel. She ended up marrying Ivor Winters while she's recovering from tuberculosis. They moved to Stanford where he does his graduate work and then just gets brought on as a professor. And they live in Santa Clara near Stanford in this small home for the rest of her life, basically. She ended up really spending a lot of time as a wife and a mother, which Tilly Olsen pointed out was a huge loss for the rest of us, because if she would have had all this time to write, we would've gotten even more of her writing. She actually dismissed Tilly Olsen's words, but did admit that women that didn't have children and a husband were able to write a lot more. Which is the truth.

KIM: Yeah. And on the plus side compared to our recent Elizabeth Smart episode of getting involved with a poet, they actually had a very stable, happy relationship. 

IRIS: They did. They did. And a lot of that had to do with the compromises that Janet made, I'm pretty sure, because she really, at the heart of all of her novels, and we'll see that when we talk about this novel, is this hearth, like this well ordered kitchen, this well ordered homestead like experience. To her, that was the epitome of morality, and it was a symbol to her of a real stable environment.

KIM: So let's start talking about The Wife of Martin Geurre, which was first published in 1941. Upon its publication, The Atlantic Monthly called it one of the most significant short novels in English. The New Yorker described it as Flaubertian in the elegance of its form and the gravity of its style. Larry McMurtry, in a piece for The New York Review of Books, called it a masterpiece. And he was actually a big fan of Janet Lewis's writing. Anyway, the story behind the inspiration of this novel is very interesting in its own right. Do you want to talk about it a little, Iris?

IRIS: Definitely. There's different versions of this, but the essence of it is there's this murder that happens on the campus at Stanford. This woman is found next to her bathtub, and immediately the husband is suspected and put on trial. And it's hugely public, and Ivor Winters, her husband is deeply disturbed by this because it's all circumstantial evidence, and because of that, I'm sure that's all they talked about in their household. And he's working on the defense for the accused and eventually someone gives him this book called Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence, which was published in 1873. And somehow he gave it to his wife. And at the time, she was still trying to finish her second novel and was stuck. And so she started reading this book, and as she read it, she started to really identify with the female characters in these cases. How they were put in these horrible situations and had to deal with moral decisions that were really just life changing. And so this book inspired three novels that she ended up writing and they're called The Circumstantial Evidence Novels, which I love. So the idea is that she was so inspired that she just sat down and wrote this novel.

AMY: Wow. It's funny. I didn't know about the Stanford murder connection. I just thought the husband had given it to her like, Thought you might enjoy this. 

KIM: Or it 

AMY: this book for you. Yeah. I didn't know about the murder. That's interesting. Okay. So this novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, it's really more of a novella,it's a very quick read. It's Lewis's vivid imagining of one of these court cases that she stumbled across in the book. And it's pretty salacious. It's like something you would see on Medieval Court TV.

KIM: I love that.

AMY: True crime aficionados, this is the novel for you.

IRIS: I want to watch that show.

KIM: I know. We need a Medieval Court TV. 

AMY: Can you totally picture them in costume?

KIM: I love that elevator pitch.

AMY: Iris, why don't you go ahead and set up the plot and what this actual real court case was about.

IRIS: Yes. The book is about... Bertrand de Rols,, a young woman who is married to the son of a wealthy landowner. The name of her husband is Martin Guerre. And they ended up being married at 11 years old. Everyone comes over for a big feast again in a very well ordered kitchen. We get so much description of the kitchen and the stores they have, and really, you can tell how important the symbol of the kitchen is for Janet Lewis. So after they're married, they don't actually have to live together yet. Eight years later, she moves into this household and we watch her mature. She ends up having a son and the husband, Martin, he has big plans for how he is going to run his successful farm. And basically does not agree with his father and has ideas of how he wants to do it. Like any teenager, right, he wants to do his own thing. And so at some point, he ends up stealing from his father and realizes he has to run away. And he promises to come back once he makes his money and they can go live on their own, but he leaves his wife and his son alone in this household. And he's gone for eight years. Meanwhile, all this time, she's growing up. She's a mother. She's learning how to farm. She's learning how to run a household. And by the time he comes back, she's a lot more sure of herself. The beautiful part of this book is her character and how we actually get to see her as she evolves over this long period of time in the short novel. And so when the husband comes back, the thing is, she doesn't know if it's really him.

KIM: That's a great setup. And it reminds me a little bit of Aphra Behn's The History of a Nun, which is also about the predicament of a young woman who moves on to a new husband after her first goes missing. And then the original husband reappears. So let's talk about Bertrande, Lewis's heroine. What do we make of her and the fact that Lewis chose to make her the focal point of this story?

IRIS: I think it goes back to the idea of truth. That's so important to her as an author. Her whole essence as a writer is to reestablish this idea of history with women in it, with these strong characters with agency, who actually change and are dynamic characters. And so it's not surprising that she chose to focus on that character. What's amazing about our view into this protagonist is, when Martin first appears, he's literally like a body double, right? He's nearly the same physically, but what's different is that he's actually kinder, right?

KIM: He's a nicer person.

IRIS: He's a nicer person. He's a better lover. He's a better father. He's just better. That's how she knows something's wrong. It makes the moral decision even harder.

KIM: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's Okay, this guy's great. Do I need to do anything about this? Why would I do anything about this? It's a good fit for her now.

IRIS: Right? It's not only her. Everyone's Yeah, this guy's great. I like him so much better than the other guy.

KIM: Yeah. The servants like him better. 

IRIS: Yeah. Even the priest is like, “That's your truth. Not mine.” 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: His own sisters like him better, the original guy. And I think it's important to point out, too, that this case had been the stuff of legend. But in anything else that it was written about, whether history books or whatever, it never really focused on her. She was peripheral. So this is the first time somebody's like, Let's look at it from her perspective.

KIM: She's the one that's most impacted by all of this, obviously. Come on. 

AMY: Funny. 

IRIS: Totally. Even, I think you guys know that there were two film adaptations of this book, and even in those adaptations, who is featured in the films?

AMY: The guy.

IRIS: The story is not about them 

AMY: yeah.

IRIS: After several years of living with this person that she realizes is an imposter, Bertrande finally realizes that she has to make a decision, right? It's creeping in her brain like she keeps realizing more and more. This person is not her husband. She ends up having another child with this quote unquote imposter. And she's growing up in this era of the Catholic Church, which is both a compass and a prison, right, for a woman. And at the time she's like, I am, cheating against my husband. This is wrong. I'm doing wrong. Even if I like this guy, I can't actually condone this. So finally her uncle sides with her. Yeah, there's something different about this guy. And they end up telling the courts. They tell the police that they feel like this imposter has come into their life and it's a real moral dilemma for her because she has a child with this man and she actually likes them better than the previous Martin, right? She's faced with this man that she actually likes being on trial, and it goes to trial, and they can't quite convict him. And they're about to do a second trial and this man walks into the courtroom and guess who it is?

AMY: Bachelor number one. Husband number one.

IRIS: The grumpy Martin comes back 

AMY: What a moment. And it really happened . That's what's crazy. 

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: Yeah, and that's the scene that I want to read to you is once that happens. She's, like, trying to explain to him that she's doing the right thing. And he's like, You were an adulterous, right? You slept with another man, I don't like you anymore. So this is that scene: After a time, the door to the courtroom opened and she was admitted. She made her way through the crowd to the space before the judge. Without looking up to see it, she yet felt the intense curiosity of all these unfamiliar faces bent upon her like a physical force. In the silence of the room, the insatiable interest of the crowd beat upon her like a sultry wave.

She reached the open space and stopped. There, she lifted her eyes at last and saw, standing beside Arnaud Duteau, the man whom she had loved and mourned as dead. She uttered a great cry and turned very pale. The pupils of her partly colored eyes, the lucky eyes, expanded until the iris was almost lost.

Then, reaching out her hands to Martin Guerriere, she sank slowly to her knees before him. He did not make any motion toward her, so that after a little time, she clasped her hands together and drew them toward her breast and recovering herself somewhat, said in a low voice, My dear Lord and husband, at last you are returned.

Pity me and forgive me, for my sin was occasioned only by my great desire for your presence, and surely from the hour wherein I knew I was deceived, I have labored with all the strength of my soul to rid myself of the destroyer of my honor and peace. The tears began to run quietly down her face. Martin Guerrero did not reply immediately, and in the pause which followed, one of the justices leaning forward said to Bertrand.

Madam, we have all been very happily delivered from a great error. Pray accept the profound apologies of this court, which did not earlier sufficiently credit your story and your grief. But Martin Greer, when the justice had finished speaking, said to his wife with perfect coldness, dry your tears, Madam.

They cannot, and they ought not, move my pity. The example of my sisters and my uncle can be no excuse for you. Madam. Who knew me better than any living soul, the air into which you plunge could only have been caused by willful blindness. You and you only madame are answerable for the dishonor, which has befallen me.

KIM: I mean, the women get blamed all the time for everything, and this is just another time where it happens. She put herself in complete jeopardy by coming forward in the first place.

AMY: I know, and it's Arnaud du Tilh,, this Husband Number Two, he's the one who's on trial, but it almost feels like she's on trial. 

IRIS: Totally. 

KIM: Yeah, totally. Yeah. The victim is on trial again. 

AMY: I know I mentioned Medieval Court TV but I'm also thinking like Medieval Dateline because whenever I watch Dateline I always waffle back and forth between commercial breaks. I'm like Guilty Oh, no, he didn't do it. And I knew the whole time that du Tilh was an imposter but I kept waffling in my brain about what her response should be, because it's like, Girl just keep your mouth 

KIM: shut!" 

 The whole family was telling her to shut up, basically. 

IRIS: Totally. When this book came out the reactions were mixed, right? They were like Why didn't she just take what she had? Why didn't she just stick with what was good? But one thing that Lewis said in response was It's just not the truth. And that was the most important thing about this character, was that at her essence, she could not live with not following the truth. And I think that is so suggestive of who Janet Lewis was as a person.

KIM: That's so interesting. And also, doesn't Bertrande feel like she's going to be punished in the afterlife if she doesn't come forward too? So she honestly has a true fear for her very soul.

IRIS: Yeah. And that's the prison of Catholicism at the time, right? You were just on earth getting ready for your future life in heaven or hell, right? Or purgatory. 

AMY: It's also making me think of the real case, and there's a historian, Natalie Zeman Davis, who wrote about this trial as a nonfiction book in 1983, and there's a lot more information about the real story in that, but one of the major differences between what she claims is the real version and Janet Lewis's version is that I feel like Janet Lewis makes Bertrande more noble, more of a victim almost. If you're looking at it from the real world, like, why did she do this? It's saving her skin, because she was vulnerable to accusations of adultery. So if she was the one to come forward and say, I'm just going to put it out here before I get in trouble, it's a little bit different than how Janet Lewis presents it, which is interesting.

KIM: Yeah, and what do you think is, what do you think is correct based on what you know. Do you know about the real trial?

IRIS: Yeah, I do. And actually, Janet Lewis also knew, she learned about that at the same time. And she was like, Oh, man, I'm so glad I didn't know that when I wrote that book. She said she couldn't have written the book that she wrote if she 

KIM: Knew it at the time. 

IRIS: Exactly. So it was actually a mistranslation, right? And because of that mistranslation, she was able to find the story of a strong woman who was really battling with morality at a time when evil was like in the news all the time, right? That idea. And that was really the premise of the book for her. What would happen if we didn't have the power to turn away from evil, even when it was better, it felt better? Yeah. When we knew what was good, right? I think that's why this book is so deep. It's not just about the trial. And I don't know about you guys, but I couldn't stop reading it. It's such a page turner. 

KIM: Yeah. It totally is. And the way that she goes about letting herself believe and how she slowly, those barriers that she put up to the truth for herself get stripped away. And it's so fascinating reading that as it's happening.

AMY: And also in today's climate, truth almost doesn't even exist anymore, sadly. That this woman had this conviction that she was going to do what was true, no matter what it cost her, the love of her life. And just the idea of like memory and testimony to memory and trials, even still today it's not reliable evidence. And du Tilh in the novel, he is able to come up with a lot of information that even though you knew this guy's an imposter, I can see how that court case would have been so daunting to decide. Because he was able to come in with minutia. 

KIM: And some of the weird physical things, too, that were like, okay, 

AMY: Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: The way she tells the story, you are slowly developing through her point of view, right. So you don't see everything that's different at first. She still wants that to be her husband. Wouldn't you want your husband to come back? This reveal is really slow. You feel this like dialogue in your head of Why isn't she doing anything? Or Why is she doing something, right? You have a moral dilemma yourself about what is integrity in this situation? And I think that's what's so brilliant about this book. It makes you question that. 

AMY: Question what would you do.

IRIS: Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah. Can we also say she was very lonely during those years? She had fallen in love with her first husband, as grumpy as he was. He wasn't perfect, but she had a sexual relationship with this new imposter that was passionate.

AMY: And side note, Kim, part of what was brought up in the real case was when she and the original Martin Guerre were together, they could not consummate their marriage because he was having issues and they tried all kinds of things. They went to witch doctors. So for several months, that marriage was not consummated. That would have been an out at that time for her to leave the marriage. She would have been able to walk away when that happened, but she stuck it out. And they were able to use that in the trial to justify that she was telling the truth. Look, if I didn't want my original husband, I would have left him back when he couldn't get it up. 

IRIS: Exactly. I know in the trial they make a point of saying that's a sign of her commitment to her husband, but at the same time, what other choices does she have? She needed to make it work because if she didn't, she would be a used woman, right? Even if it wasn't consummated.

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: So it was a Catch 22 for her.

KIM: So Lewis spent a short stint living in Paris that you mentioned after she graduated. She wasn't there long, but reading the book, you get a sense she really was familiar with the French countryside. She writes about the natural surroundings so beautifully and maybe that's also the poet in her. Do you see shades of her poetic style in her writing, or what other strengths do you see in her writing?

IRIS: Totally. You can see that idea of Imagism. When we enter a room, everything is described. When we go out into the fields, we feel what it feels like to be there in this place. And you know that she's been there. She stood on that soil. She smelled the landscape. She's felt the sensory experience of being there. She did end up going back to France when she's writing the third of this trilogy of Circumstantial Evidence Books. She got a Guggenheim and ended up spending some time researching the last of the three novels. The final book in the trilogy was called The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron, which she published in 1959. But she got a Guggenheim in 1951, and that's when she went back to Paris. 

AMY: Are the other two books in this trilogy as enticing? Are the court cases as good? 

IRIS: They're different, right? Like the trial of Soren Qvist, the first four chapters are basically about the ending of the story. This guy's been accused of this murder and the person who they thought had died comes back. And that one is also a page turner. I haven't read the last one yet. It's on my list and I can't wait, but I'm trying to read her books in order. What's sad is that she did stop writing novels in 1959. But she did write a lot of short stories. And you can see that probably that had something to do with her domestic duties and what Tilly Olson was pointing out the idea that she didn't have as much time to because she was so focused on running a great household, being a great partner supporting all these like graduate students that are coming to their household all the time. But she didn't spend as much time writing, and I think it's a real loss because she's a brilliant novelist, especially with the novella.

AMY: And she wound up turning this into an opera libretto.

IRIS: Yes, she wrote several of them, actually. In fact, I'm about to interview Alva, a gay man who was living with her after Ivor Winters died. He was writing operas, and she started writing these librettos and they are beautiful. Um, I can read part of them. Let me find one.

Okay, this is from Songs for Cora, which was from The Last of the Mohicans. She composed this with Alba Henderson. She composed the libretto. One on the way to Fort William Henry.

Green covers us green leaves that screen us from the summer sun. Let shine the sunlight through a brighter green. God's wilderness surrounds us in a maze. Of leaves of light of fragrant air, evil forbear into this wilderness, trusting in God, we dare.

AMY: I love it, but aren't you going to sing it?

KIM: Yeah. I know. I thought you were going to sing it. Yeah.

IRIS: I'd need several margaritas for that.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: So she lived until the age of 99. Wow. 

IRIS: Yeah. She lived a very long life, especially for someone who suffered from tuberculosis, right?

AMY: Yeah,

IRIS: She taught some classes at Stanford, but she was a part of the whole essence of the literary community. Everyone would like, go visit Janet Lewis. And actually, in the Stanford collections there are sound recordings of her reading all of her poems, and I can't wait to listen to all of it.

KIM: That's so cool.

AMY: I just was inspired by hearing about how normal she really was and how normal her life was. I mean, no offense Iris, but you think of poets being wacky and having crazy drama in their life, or that you can only write if you've had some wild experiences that are really unique, but she lived a pretty normal life but was able to write this masterpiece just by drawing on history. 

IRIS: Right? Think about it, the conflict that she saw was history. She didn't need to have issues within her own personal life. And perhaps there were some issues, but the reality is that she saw issues with American history, with the way women were depicted in these trials, right? Saw these places that she could have a conversation with and open up a new space where we could see the experiences of women in a different way. And I am so grateful that was her focus. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's great that yes, we might've had more from her, but she had a stable, happy life. That's pretty good.

IRIS: I'm like, should I write a biography about her? Because 

AMY: Oh yeah, is there going to be enough to make it intriguing? Charmian had all kinds of wild times. 

IRIS: Sanora Babbs, too. I can't wait till you guys read Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb, which I just found out it's getting published in Germany. It's being translated. So the push for Sanora Babb's work coming into the world, so to speak, is happening. And I'm really excited about it. 

AMY: And when is your book on her going to be available?

IRIS: So my book comes out next fall, so fall 2024. I'm in the final edits. 

KIM: So exciting. Yeah.

AMY: I saw you on Instagram doing this erasing of Steinbeck's What was that? It was so interesting. You were changing his book?

IRIS: Yeah. I started writing this biography a couple of years ago, as you guys know, and the idea of it came from the fact that my grandmother came over in the Dust Bowl. And so when I read The Grapes of Wrath, my grandmother was like, That is the worst book. He totally got it wrong. And I was like, Okay, Grandma. Years later, I reread The Grapes of Wrath. And I read Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown next to it. I'm like, Oh my god, this is so true. But to take on Steinbeck as a writer who grew up in California and was raised on Steinbeck as THE author, Steinbeck and Stegner, they were like, Oh, You know, it was really hard. I was scared to be like, Oh Steinbeck got it wrong. So what I did to empower myself is I got my copy of The Grapes of Wrath. And actually, I was flying to Oklahoma to do a reading at University of Oklahoma, so I actually stopped in the bookshop in the San Francisco airport, bought a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, got some colored pens and just started erasing it. So what I do is I like, find letters and words and I use those to create my own poems. And so what I've written out of The Grapes of Wrath is a book of poetry called The Rape of Worth, which is from the title The Grapes of Wrath that are about Sanora Babb and what happened to her, about my grandmother and what's happened to her. Because this ghost of my grandmother kept talking to me as I'm trying to write my biography, and you can't have your grandmother's ghost in your biography. So she came out in the book of poems.

KIM: All right. Oh, that's great.

AMY: Amazing. And it's like a work of art, too. Because it's just colorful and beautiful. And

IRIS: Yeah, it's been super fun to be on planes and I'm putting gold leaf in there and I'm, like, stitching and, people that sit next to me on planes are, like, Oh, that lady. But It's really been an exciting adventure to use erasure as a form of empowerment. I feel a real sisterhood with Janet Lewis for the same reason, so she used her poetry as a way to warm herself up, to be able to write in prose. And I totally get it as a poet. You gotta process it imagistically and emotionally before you can create a narrative out of it. Like you said, Kim, the idea of the imagery that you see in the novels. It's so vivid. You feel like you're there. She inevitably wrote poetry about these novels, but I've never found them. Maybe I will 

someday. But 

KIM: That would be amazing to publish them together. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah, it's an interesting way to approach it. And until I'd met you, I didn't even know that anyone did that.

KIM: Yeah. 

IRIS: There are several weirdos out there. 

KIM: Love it.

AMY: I'll just mention really quickly that there are two movie adaptations of this story. One is from the 1980s starring Gerard Depardieu. It's called The Return of Martin Guerre. I haven't seen this one, but it looks really pretty. It looks like something we would like, Kim.

KIM: Sounds like it. I love Gerard Depardieu, especially 80s Gerard Depardieu.

IRIS: Right.

AMY: And then the other one is from the 90s. It's called Somersby starring Richard Gere...

KIM: I've seen that one. Jodie Foster

AMY: It's cheesy,

but it's, 

yeah. 

KIM: yeah. 

IRIS: I totally want to rewrite it, don't you? Cause Jodie Foster could rock this.

AMY: Oh 

KIM: She totally could. So much more depth in this story from Janet Lewis.

Yeah. Imagine a 

Jane Campion version of The Return of Martin Guerre. Wouldn't that be perfect? Yeah.

IRIS: I was going to suggest the woman who did Lady Bird. 

AMY: Greta Gerwig. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: I want her to just do every single one of our episodes, just turn them all into movies. 

KIM: Yeah, she's 

going to be too busy making sequels to Barbie now.

IRIS: I know, right? 

KIM: Iris, it's been a blast reconnecting with you over this book. I'm so glad you shared it with us. And thank you for filling us in on the Sanora Babbs book too. We're so excited. We can't wait for that. And just thank you for coming on the show.

IRIS: It's been my absolute pleasure, and it's so fun to get to hear episodes every week from you guys. So keep up the good work. I really appreciate it.

KIM: Thanks. We will. We love talking to you.

So that's all for today's episode. If you want to talk more about this book or the movies surrounding this case, jump on over to our last ladies of lit Facebook forum. We'd love to know your thoughts and what you would have done had you been in Bertrande's shoes. You can find out what we do as well.

AMY: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with the con artist all the way. 

KIM: Amazing.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.