Author’s debut is a love letter to the Northwoods
Andrew J. Graff was standing alone in his kitchen in Ohio when The New York Times review of “Raft of Stars” unexpectedly arrived on the same morning as his book's release.
The praise for his “engrossing and largehearted debut novel” filled him up and then some.
“I read it and I just sat down on the stairs and cried,” Graff said. “It was so affirming.”
It was seven years ago, while living in northern Wisconsin along the Peshtigo River, that the Niagara native and Lawrence University alumnus first pulled out a small notebook and wrote about the sound of two boys walking their bikes down a gravel road, the smell of ditch clover and the sight of a redwinged blackbird landing on a cattail. It would become the opening chapter of “Raft of Stars.”
Released March 23 by Ecco-HarperCollins Publishers, the story of two 10year-old boys who flee into the Wisconsin Northwoods after believing they committed a deadly crime has been generating warm and wonderful buzz as a nostalgic coming-of-age tale.
The Boston Globe called it “exquisitely crafted” with “echoes of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'” Booklist said it's reminiscent of “Stand By Me.” The American Booksellers Association named it one of its 20 "indie next great reads" for April with "a setting that is real enough to feel, touch and smell."
The book's heart — courtesy of not just the two young main characters, Bread and Fish, but also the four adults who embark on journeys of their own as they go looking for them — turns up in nearly every review. That he has written a story that leaves readers with a feeling of hope, redemption and optimism, perhaps a little braver to navigate their own wilderness, has been especially gratifying for Graff.
He grew up in the '90s at the end of a dead-end road in the small town of Niagara (population: 1,999 in those days) in the far reaches of Marinette County, not far from the border of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The Menominee River and Piers Gorge rapids, some of the fastest-moving water in Wisconsin and Michigan, are nearby.
The natural beauty of the region is the setting of "Raft of Stars," and memories of Graff 's own childhood come alive in its pages.
“The sights and sounds and smells and a lot of the small towns and characters, I leaned very heavily on my own youth. I think that's why it was tempting for me to set it in 1994. I would've been about the same age as these boys,” he said.
“It was a great way to grow up. I loved it. I had two brothers and a Siberian husky and woods to play in and a barn. We lit off firecrackers in silos and ran through cornfields and rode down to the river with our fishing poles. That was growing up for me.”
Finding his voice as a writer at Lawrence
Graff left Wisconsin after high school when he enlisted as an aircraft mechanic in the U.S. Air Force. At 19, he was deployed to Afghanistan, “the driest, most blinding desert I could imagine.”
After four years of military service, at 22, he enrolled as an English major at Lawrence University in Appleton and graduated in 2009. He received his master's degree at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was teaching at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and living along the banks of the Peshtigo River in 2014 when, looking at the black water between snowy islands, he was inspired to write the first words of “Raft of Stars.”
“I knew then that's where I wanted those boys to go. I wanted them to spend time in the forest, on canoes, digging up worms, listening to coyotes, watching the stars,” he said. “I think being home in that space definitely inspired the beginning and then I became very happy to try to share that space that I loved so much. As I moved away, it was good to reenvision it and close my eyes and go walk along the river banks.”
Graff moved to Ohio five years ago and is an English professor at Wittenberg University in Springfield. Writing “Raft of Stars” allowed him to spend years revisiting that beloved landscape of his home with its rivers, pine forests, granite outcrops, snapping turtles, coyotes and black bears.
He set the story in the fictional small town of Claypot in Marigamie County, his own creative mashup of Marinette and Outagamie counties. Some of the opening scenes with marshes were inspired by the area east of Appleton where his wife, Heidi Quist Graff, grew up. The two met at Lawrence University, on the water, appropriately enough. They were both in the rowing club.
After a setback, comes success
Graff spent seven years writing his first manuscript, a novel set in Afghanistan after 9/11. He secured an agent, but when it was time to send it to editors, nobody was interested in picking it up. It was a crushing blow. Graff didn't write anything for a year and a half.
Then came “Raft of Stars.” After five years of working on it, he initially had trouble finding an agent and thought to himself, “If this one one doesn't go, it's going to be really hard to start the next one.”
He was visiting family at a rented lake house in central Wisconsin when his agent sent the finished manuscript to editors, and along with it the characters he had come to love.
“I had this really strong feeling of all the characters sort of paddling off in canoes to New York City. I really, really felt like I was sending off real family members for some sort of big audition or interview," he said. "I felt excited for them and I felt nervous for them all at once.”
He landed a deal with Ecco-Harper-Collins in July 2019. The weeks surrounding the book's release have been “the best sort of whirlwind,” Graff said, with a flurry of interview, podcast and virtual book festival requests. He's hoping to participate in person at the Fox Cities Book Festival in Appleton in October.
He and his wife quietly celebrated the career milestone last week by getting a babysitter for their four young children and enjoying lunch out and some time browsing local bookstores.
“I wouldn't trade the process. It's had its ups and downs and dark nights of the soul for sure, but I'm so happy with how this particular story turned out,” Graff said. “I'm glad that ‘Raft of Stars' is my debut instead of things that I was working on before. I don't think there's any way to arrive at that without writing something and failing to publish it and starting again and starting again.”
“Raft of Stars” may have arrived at just the right time. The central question asked by the main characters, each lost literally and figuratively in the woods, is one that sounds familiar as the world grapples with a pandemic: Am I going to be OK?
“I think all of us, all year long, have been convincing ourselves we are strong enough, we are going to make it. We just had to keep going. We're all looking for encouragement wherever can find it,” said Graff, who is at work on his next book, also to be set in northern Wisconsin.