Interview with Tina N. Shelton

SUMMARY: In this interview, Tina N. Shelton talks about how the South Side of Chicago, summers on her grandparents’ Mississippi farm, and years of ministry with older adults shaped What Remains Is Grace.

Tell us about the Chicago that shaped you. What corner of the city does your imagination keep returning to when you sit down to write?

I’m suburban kid who grew up in Evanston, IL. But my ex-husband was from Chicago and his father was of Grace Calvery United Methodist Church, which was on 78th and Loomis. We lived in the parsonage there for a while, with my father-in-law while we got on our feet. It was here that I fell in love with the community. Everyone watched out for each other and there was an after-school program that I took part in at the church as well as their Vacation Bible School in the summers. I recall the man at the fruit stand in the summer mornings and conversations with neighbors that just lifted my spirit. And I got to know the children who were so full of energy and loving life. It was a season I’ll always cherish.

Miss Nelda dies before the novel opens. What made you decide to build an entire book around a woman who is already gone? How did you keep her present on the page anyway?

One thing I’ve noticed in ministry is that the elderly want to be remembered for their accomplishments. We see them in their retirement days, when their lives have slowed down, but they are so happy to share about who they were, where in their hey day. In some cases, we hear these stories over and over again to the point where we can finish their sentences. But for some, when dementia sets in, the stories disappear, and we have no idea who people were in the past. Their history becomes locked in a human vault, and all you have are clues around the house to put together like a puzzle. I wanted to encourage curiosity in others. For Nelda, she was able to reach into her long-term memory and share what she could, but it didn’t give us the whole picture of who she was. I love it that Candi was on a mission to get to the bottom of things, and that’s essentially how I kept her on the page.

The novel alternates between Gracey's voice and Candi's voice. Whose voice came to you first? Was there a moment during the writing when one of them pushed back on you or refused to say what you had planned for her to say?

Gracey’s voice was the first to come to me, perhaps because my children are in their 20s, so I’m familiar with the age. But Candi was the one who pushed back the most. I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. I didn’t understand why she made the decisions that she did. I really had to wait and let her character speak to me. I wanted her to be my free-bird character, but in many ways I came to realize she wasn’t as free as I thought she was. It seems she lives on the outskirts of her family so she can breathe.

The title is What Remains Is Grace. How did that title come to be? If a reader closed the book and asked you plainly what actually remains for these women, what would you tell them?

I chose the title from a list the publishers presented. I appreciated the way they tied the title and the main character together nicely. So many Christian books have the name as a main character and it’s perhaps because grace is like honey to the bitterness we encounter daily. Grace makes it so we can get past the hard things and still be in tact. Gracey and her sisters give more than their fair share of grace to their mother, and they deserve more than a fair shair of grace in their lives. We all know the phrase, hurting people hurt people. The girls will have to continue to work to resolve their own trauma so that they can love in ways God calls them to do so. Each one of them can help a thousand just by sharing their story of overcoming rejection.

You weave the history of redlining, contract-for-deed sales, and Black land loss into the story with a light hand. What did that research require of you emotionally?

All of these stories are were floating around growing up, in the South and in Evanston. Now there are museums that cary this information. The Shorefront Legacy Center, for instance, can give detailed accounts of the housing deparites in the past in Evanston. I’m so proud of Evanston being the first city to give reparations in order to acknowledge the harm done to African-Americans in the past. I just wanted to highlight the harm done to our parents, grandparents and great grandparents. The more we talk about it, the more we can make a difference. Maybe measures can be made to make sure it doesn’t continue to happen.

The Mississippi scenes have a specific texture—the porch, the water, the family land. What did you have to know, or unlearn, before you could write them?

I spent many summer days in Mississippi on my grandparent’s farm growing up. I think I was just recalling as much as I could. Some days were great and some were miserably hot in a house with no air-conditioning. The porch was the front room. I’d sit on the swing and listen to my mother and aunts trade colorful stories. At one time I kept a journal of their conversations because they were better than television, but I lost it decades ago.

You've described the three generations of Downing women as living in a "love drought." What does that phrase mean to you, and where did it come from in your own life?

I feel like we all deal with love droughts at some time in our lives. I was married for nineteen years, but there wasn’t a lot of love. We did what we had to do to run a household, take care of the children, etc. but beyond that, there wasn’t much. It wasn’t until a decade after my divorce that I found someone who showered me with love and I realized I’d been in a drought. I found myself being more affectionate than I’d ever known myself to be outside of motherhood. This kind of love opened up a whole new world for me. I felt refreshed and still do. Mind you, I was quite happy as a single woman, but I continued to feel like there was an addition on the horizon.

You write Christian fiction that does not shy away from anger, betrayal, or the ways the church itself has failed Black women. How do you hold both faith and honesty on the same page? Was there a Scripture, a hymn, or a prayer that sat on your desk while you wrote this book?

I think faith and honesty go hand in hand. The whole reason we have faith, is because we see the truth everyday, whether we speak about it or not. Inwardly, we know the feelings we hold, jealousy, bitterness, resentment, hatred, lust, sadness, pride. These are all cards we hold close to our chest. Everybody struggle with something. It’s human nature. We have faith that God will somehow dig deep within and give us courage to have the hard conversations so that we can unearth some of these things and just work together to find peace. When a church causes harm, it takes time to recover. She might church hop for a while until she settles on church on demand via the internet. What if we could just learn to be better representatives of Christ in the church. Leaders have to deal with their own traumas before they pass them down to entire congregations.

Which of these characters stayed with you longest after you finished the book? Is there a moment in the novel where you almost put yourself on the page?

I suppose Nelda stayed with me the most. While she wasn’t my favorite in the first book, she became so in the second. She didn’t really ask for much. She had her feisty moments, yes, but really, she brought a tenderness to life that we don’t often see. In the first and second book, there was always this sense of, “I did what I could with this life I was given, now what are you going to do with yours?”

If a young woman like Gracey reads this book, what do you hope she carries away? What about a caregiver like Candi? What about a reader who has been Francine, the one who left?

I hope young women are encouraged to hold out for the guy who will love her they way she deserves to be loved. It’s so easy to want a boyfriend so bad you settle for the player, but it only hurts you in the long run. God has someone set aside and when the time is right, the two of you will stand out in 3-D from across the room.

For caregivers, I hope they give themselves permission to be patient with themselves. To embrace all the feelings, peace, gratefulness, joy, fatique, frustration, desperation… give them to God. Caregiving especially between loved ones, can be a very sacred space. God is very present as we are witnesses to our loved ones into life after death.

For Francine, sometimes you have to go to a place where you can think and figure things out on your own. Find the folks who will love you unconditionally and also guide you in the right direction without making you feel bad for being in the situation you’re in.

Your debut, This Ain't No Promised Land, won three major awards in its first year: the Christianity Today Book Award, the Foreword INDIES Gold, and the ECPA Top Shelf. Did those awards change the way you approached writing this second book?

Not at all. For some reason, I couldn’t really feel the awards, though I’m extremely grateful for them. Folks were so concerned for Gracey and her sisters, I just wanted to write about how they were doing, and Nelda’s story kind of rose up as well–folks wanted to know what happened to her.

What is one Bible verse that captures the heart of this book?

I saw a lot of people say that Proverbs 3:5–6 was the verse for my first book, but I really think it’s applicable for this second book as well. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.”

We start out leaning on our own understanding, and we end up trusting in God. So I feel like every problem is like that. Our own understanding says, “Oh my God, what are we gonna do? This is not gonna work out. Let me try to figure it out. Let me try to do this.” And then when that fails, we say, “Okay, let me trust God.”

God bless every single soul who can trust God first and learn to let go of their own understanding. They get there that much quicker, I believe.

Where can readers find out more about you?

Visit me online at TinaShelton.com or follow me on Instagram @authortinashelton