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Local author tells about coming of age in the '80s in novel

By Mary Gottschalk

Kate Evans believes her newly published first novel For the May Queen is something that high school students will want to read, but she has no illusions that it's going to end up on any curriculum guides.

In the first chapter, 17-year-old Norma Rogers is "parentless for the first time," spending her first night at college in her co-ed dorm. She's also very intoxicated and playing strip poker.

"Obviously, it's very sexual and the book has a lot of sensual themes in it," says Evans, a lecturer at San Jose State University and a Shasta Hanchett Park resident.

"It has a lot of alcohol and drug use. Probably there are parents who would not want their teenagers to read it, but when I was that age I would have loved to have read it."

Although Evans tells students in her creative writing classes to "write what you know" and she did attend Sacramento State in 1981 where the novel is set, she says it's not her story.

"Definitely a lot of parts are semi-autobiographical, but it's also universal and very similar to the experiences of a lot of young people," she says.

"I have students who read little pieces of the novel and I've done readings and they say, 'This is so real.' To them, the character is very much like them, but Norma is her own person.

"I enjoyed the freedom of having similarities to my experiences and letting characters do whatever they were going to do."

Evans sees the book as a crossover work that appeals to both young and older adults.

"Leaving home is something everybody does at one point or other, and for many it's going away to college," Evans says.

"I had that experience and Norma has that experience. You're taken out of your comfortable environment and put in a totally new environment.

"You have one foot in childhood and one foot in adulthood, and it becomes fraught with interesting tensions."

Evans says she did consider giving the novel a contemporary setting, but "I wasn't sure if I could make that voice of today's young person as vivid and real as the era when I was a young person."

So Evans turned the clock back to 1981.

"There is something really fun about reliving that time period," says Evans, who turns 46 in November.

"There's something nostalgic for people of my era to read about that time, to have references to pop culture of that time and also the music.

"I think young people enjoy that retro feel."

The title of the book is found in the first chapter when Norma and her new friend Billy are singing the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven while he plays his guitar:

Soon we got to the weird lyrics that almost no one knows. Billy stopped singing, but I continued.

"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. It's just a spring clean for the May Queen."

I expected him to be impressed that I knew those lyrics, even while drunk. But he didn't say a word, just finished the song, set down the guitar and pulled me over onto his bed.

The title came to her when she and her partner Annie Tobin were on a driving trip and discussing ideas for it.

"The memory of some of those Stairway to Heaven lyrics came to me," Evans says.

"The idea of the May Queen resonates with a lot that is going on in the novel. Spring is the time of rebirth and certainly an important part of the coming-of-age experience.

"The idea of the queen as both a woman and someone who is not a princess or a girl anymore.

"Also the possible gender ramifications that go along with it, with women. It's also slang for a gay man, and there are some queer surprises in the novel that are important parts of the book."

As for Norma's name, Evans says, "It just kind of came to me, but it could have been my unconscious playing around with her being the normal everywoman."

Evans is delighted with the publication of For the May Queen, which she actually completed four years ago.

"It's been a journey of highs and lows," she says.

While her agent found receptive editors at two major publishing houses in New York, review committees weren't sure about marketing and they passed.

An independent publisher agreed to bring the book out, but folded.

"I basically had pretty much resigned myself to accepting it may not get published, and I wrote a second novel and started a third. I kept writing," she says.

Then Evans found Vanilla Heart Publishing in Everett, WA, and decided to send them her manuscript.

"Kimberlee Williams, who owns Vanilla Heart, got right back to me and said, 'I love your book, I want to publish it.'

"I was so excited, but I thought this is another small press that may or may not last. Kimberlee turned out to be phenomenal.

"I'm grateful I was able to find Vanilla Heart."

The first five pages of Evans' second novel Complementary Colors is included at the end of For the May Queen,

Evans says that book, which will also be published by Vanilla Heart, is "about a straight woman who falls in love with a lesbian. It's also a coming-of-age novel. The narrator is about 30 years old, and it takes place in San Jose."

Evans' third novel is a historical work set in the early part of the 20th century and is based on the lives of three real women writers: Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles and Marty Mann.

Although this is Evans' first novel, she is previously published. She wrote Like All We Love, a book of her poetry, and Negotiating the Self, a nonfiction book about lesbian and gay teachers.

A native Californian, Evans grew up in Auburn in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

She first came to SJSU in 1989 as a graduate student, earning her MA in English in 1991 and returning to earn her MFA in creative writing in 2004.

After teaching stints at SJSU and UC-Santa Cruz and in Yokohama, Japan, Evans earned her Ph.D. in education at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2000.

Evans has always loved writing and started her first novel in the fourth grade.

"It was about a boy who lived on a farm with his old grandfather, and he had a special relationship with his dog. There's also a love interest in it.

"It was my version of Heidi, and I illustrated some of it, too."

While Evans has personal appearances scheduled in Los Angeles and Atlanta, she has nothing in San Jose until Feb. 18, when she will speak at 7:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. library at SJSU.

However, Evans says she is willing to participate in discussions of her book with local book clubs who contact her at kate.evans@sjsu.edu. The first chapter of For the May Queen can be found on her blog at www.being andwriting.blogspot.com.

The paperback book sells for $14.95 and can be ordered through any bookstore or online.