Blog Tour: Not Without My Father by: Andra Watkins
Title:
Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444 Mile Walk of the Natchez
TraceAuthor:
Andra WatkinsPublisher:
Word Hermit PressPages:
240Genre:
MemoirFormat:
Paperback/Kindle
Purchase
at AMAZON
Can
an epic adventure succeed without a hero?
Andra
Watkins needed a wingman to help her become the first living person
to walk the historic 444-mile Natchez Trace as the pioneers did. She
planned to walk fifteen miles a day. For thirty-four days.
After
striking out with everyone in her life, she was left with her
disinterested eighty-year-old father. And his gas. The sleep apnea
machine and self-scratching. Sharing a bathroom with a man whose gut
obliterated his aim.
As
Watkins trudged America’s forgotten highway, she lost herself in
despair and pain. Nothing happened according to plan, and her tenuous
connection to her father started to unravel. Through arguments and
laughter, tears and fried chicken, they fought to rebuild their
relationship before it was too late. In Not
Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace,
Watkins invites readers to join her dysfunctional family adventure in
a humorous and heartbreaking memoir that asks if one can really turn
I wish I had
into I’m glad I
did.
Book
Excerpt #1:
ROAD
TO NOWHERE
Talking
Heads
The
journey is a long slog with an unpredictable number of mileposts.
One
can make the trip alone, but why not share it?
As
I traversed familiar mile markers and pulled up in front of my fa-
ther’s house, I could predict where I’d find him.
In
his recliner, his belly a shelf for a vat of popcorn. At eighty, he
whiled away days feeding his face and shouting at the television.
Whenever his throne was vacant, I eschewed all temptation to occupy
it.
Because
I imagined how many times he farted into the velvet uphol- stery.
Sometimes
while naked.
I
could hear the television when I stepped from the car. “Why am I
do- ing this again?” I whispered as I slipped through the back
door.
“Andra!”
There he was, sprawled in his recliner. A jagged scar played
peek-a-boo through his open pajama top. “What’re you doing here?”
I
opened my mouth and clamped it shut. Once I uttered my request, I
couldn’t take it back.
I
needed a wingman while I walked the 444-mile Natchez Trace from
Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. I planned to launch my
debut novel and be- come the first living person to walk the
10,000-year-old road as our ancestors did. Nobody could convince me
that an unathletic woman and her mid-life paunch were incapable of
walk- ing more than a half-marathon every day for a month.
Even
though my aversion to exercise was as spectacular as my father’s. I
wanted my walk to redeem my novel’s hero, American explorer Meri-
wether Lewis, one-half of the Lewis and Clark duo. He died of two
gun-shot wounds on the Natchez Trace, seventy miles south of
Nashville.
He
was only thirty-five.
Was
it suicide? Or murder? His death is one of America’s great un-
solved mysteries.
To
walk a forgotten highway for five weeks, I needed a wingman who could
shuttle me to my first daily milepost and pick me up fifteen miles
later. Someone who wasn’t busy. Someone available. Maybe this
person even craved an adventure.
I
scrolled through a list of prospects. My husband Michael couldn’t
be absent from work for five weeks, especially since his job paid for
my predilection to write. My friends all had children. Husbands.
Gainful em- ployment. I discarded people for an hour, my list a
scribbled mess that highlighted one harrowing name.
Dad.
My
father wasn’t doing anything. He was available to go on a five-week
jaunt through Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
His
stomach pooled over his thighs and his triple-chin jiggled as he
leaned into his response. “Go on a five-week trip? Just you and me?
I don’t want to do that, Andra.”
“Why
not?” I shouted even louder to penetrate his VA-issued, cir-
ca-1980 hearing aids.
“Well.”
He chewed a handful of popcorn. “Because…….I got furni- ture to
refinish.”
“It’ll
be here when you get back.”
Dad
dug his fingernails into the arms of his chair. “I cain’t be away
from my Sunday school class for that long.”
“God
won’t care if you miss church to spend time with your only
daughter, Dad.”
“Well,
uh…….I……..Linda might need me here.”
Mom
preened into the room with his bowl of ice cream. I never understood
why she didn’t just hand him the carton. She placed the spoon
between his fingers and smiled. “I don’t need you here, Roy.”
Her flawless makeup matched her leotard. “I’m going to the gym.
Be home in four hours.”
She
flounced out the door, leaving me with my jiggly arms and red hair I
forgot to brush.
I
sighed and turned back to Dad. “Why don’t you want to do this,
Dad? I mean, you haven’t been anywhere since your appendix ruptured
two years ago. You’re just sitting here in this recliner, waiting
to die.”
Dad
picked at his ice cream and avoided my gaze. “Spending five weeks
with you don’t sound like much fun, Andra.”
Dad
and I shouted down my teens, harangued through my twenties and
seethed away my thirties. For most of my life, our every interaction
disintegrated into hurtful words and pregnant silences. Yet, I was
willing to cast our history aside and endure his company for more
than a month, while he rejected me?
Wrong
answer, Old Man.
I
gnawed my tongue to regroup. Dad was my last hope to take readers
into my book’s world. To help my scribblings make me somebody. In a
uni- verse of words with little meaning and even less point, I
believed I created something valuable, a story that could make a
difference, a tale that would leave readers fundamentally altered and
pining for the next installment.
All
writers are convinced whatever they write qualifies, be it dreck or
brilliance. Our words are sperm and egg on the page. Merge them
together, and one can hold a physical chunk of the writer. It’s a
shame a book can’t arrive covered in blood and filth from the birth
canal, screaming and howling to breathe.
But
to get anyone to care about a story, the writer must make it about
the reader.
My
breathing even, I flashed my most fetching smile.
“All
right, Dad. Look at it this way. We’ll be riding near hundreds of
tiny towns with lots of strangers who’ve never heard your stories.
Think of all the junk shops and dive diners where you can enchant
people. Don’t they deserve to meet you before you’re gone?”
Dad’s
eyes took on a dreamy tinge. His yarns were Southern gothic legends,
tales he rolled out for every stranger he encountered. I imagined
myself spending the entire trip with a view of his broad back,
regaling ev- eryone but me. He must’ve conjured the same scene.
“I’ll do it, Andra. If the Lord lets me live ’til March, I’ll
go with you.”
Dad
would be my wingman on the Natchez Trace. Visions of literary stardom
floated in front of my faraway eyes. Because my secret dream was The
New York Times headline:
-
Debut Novelist Walks Her Way to Blockbuster Best Seller! -
I
basked in the mirage of that proclamation, in the glory of staggering
to my Nashville finish line with crowds of people. News crews. Fans
wav- ing my book and clamoring for an autograph.
My
swelling imagination burst when Dad heaved himself from the chair,
scratched his crotch and farted. “Yeah, Andra. This is gonna be
real fun.”
What
had I done? Besides self-scratching and legendary gas, his sleep
apnea machine didn’t stifle his explosive snoring.
And
the bathroom. I would have to share a bathroom with my father, whose
hulking belly obscured all ability to aim. A sodden fact that seeped
into my legs when I locked myself in Dad’s bathroom and plopped
down on the toilet.
I
didn’t want to spend five weeks with my father.
As
I winced through a sink bath, I studied my face in the mirror. The
beginnings of forehead wrinkles and crows feet. A hint of Dad’s
bulldog jowl. I stuck my tongue out at my green-eyed self. “Welcome
to Hell, you idiot.”
Andra
Watkins lives in Charleston, South Carolina. A non-practicing CPA,
she has a degree in accounting from Francis Marion University. She’s
still mad at her mother for refusing to let her major in musical
theater, because her mom was convinced she’d end up starring in
porn films. In addition to her writing talent, Andra is an
accomplished public speaker. Her acclaimed debut novel To
Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis
was published by Word Hermit Press in 2014.
Her
latest book is the memoir, Not
Without My Father: One Woman’s 444 Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace.
For
More Information
- Contact Andra.
Media
Contact:
Dorothy
Thompson
Pump
Up Your Book
P.O.
Box 643
Chincoteague
Island, Virginia 23336
Email:
thewriterslife@gmail.com
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