STATENVILLE — Author Janice Daugharty’s “Heir to the Everlasting” is a novel as big as its name.

Epic in scope, “Heir to the Everlasting” follows the adventures of a young girl named May at the turn of the last century into the older woman known by family as Hon by the turn of the next century.

Daugharty sets the majority of this book in the early 1900s, as May is raised by her matriarchal grandmother, Pinkie Alexander. From her grandmother, May learns about life and the ties of family and land. She learns from the example of a strong-willed woman.

Each chapter reveals a new adventure in Pinkie and May’s lives. At times, readers may think Daugharty hits too many notes. She piles on the events that happen to this family as May grows from child to young woman. But Daugharty orchestrates these many adventures into a symphony of story telling.

At times, “Heir to the Everlasting” seems to be a female epic on the scale of Larry McMurtry’s male-dominated “Lonesome Dove.” Daugharty keeps the adventures coming in the early years of this book while increasing the depth of her characters with every turn of the page.

In the novel’s second part, Daugharty fast-forwards the story to the late 1970s and beyond. Readers meet the older May/Hon as a matriarch who seems to rule more over the memory of a bygone era than a world that has changed so much during her lifetime. Yet, Hon wisely retains the land that shaped those memories, the land that has anchored her life. Daugharty brings to vivid life this land and Hon’s connection to it though, at times, with an overwhelming amount of detail.

“Heir to the Everlasting” is Daugharty’s latest novel in print. It is a reworking of what was originally intended to be her Staten Bay trilogy. “Just Doll,” the first book of that planned trilogy, was published, but Daugharty has reshaped “Heir to the Everlasting” into a book that stands on its own merits.

“Heir to the Everlasting” may be Daugharty’s latest traditionally published novel, but it isn’t necessarily her latest novel. She has been experiencing great success publishing her works as e-books for Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers. Some of her e-books have topped various digital bestseller lists.

A Pulitzer Prize-nominee, the Statenville-based author reached national audiences with a series of bestselling books in the 1990s: “Earl in the Yellow Shirt,” “Like a Sister,” “Whistle,” “Paw Paw Patch,” etc. She is the writer in residence at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.

During an email interview, The Valdosta Daily Times discussed her latest book, e-books, and the future of publishing. Excerpts:



THE TIMES: In conversation, you have mentioned the importance and power of family land. “Heir to the Everlasting” reveals these connections. Why do you think family land means so much to some people and almost nothing to others?

JANICE DAUGHARTY: “I don’t think family land is as important to people now as it once was. I’m from a family — and married into a family — in which land, inherited or bought, is almost sacrosanct. Love of land, as with the characters in ‘Heir,’ is usually something instilled in us from birth. Or as May/Hon says, ‘For some people the promised land ain’t nothing but a Walmart.’ For Hon and the other Alexander women, Big Eddy Plantation is the promised land.”



THE TIMES: This is a novel, fiction, but in your acknowledgments, you mention your Daddy and Aunt May’s old tales being the soul of this book. Does ‘Heir’ draw more on your ancestors’ experiences in Echols County than your other works?

JANICE DAUGHARTY: “Yes, of course, it’s fiction, but I drew from a wealth of told-tales in my journals. My Daddy and Aunt May never cared if they bored you. Never cared if they were retelling, over and over, the same tired tales. But my cousin Margaret Ann Levings and I never tired of the tales. I sometimes got lost in how the tales were being told, or my mind would race ahead to how I would write what I heard, but Margaret Ann, so much more intelligent than me, would bank all the details and dates in her head and fill me in later when I needed the information."



THE TIMES: “The Staten Bay” trilogy aside, this is your largest book. It seems these larger works, these sagas, are your favorites. Do you prefer writing longer novels? If so, why?

JANICE DAUGHARTY: “Dean, ‘Heir to the Everlasting’ is the combined last two books of the intended trilogy, with some minor changes. For instance, Doll, in Book One of the trilogy (2004), is now Pinkie in this family saga. I became frustrated with publishing problems following ‘Just Doll,’ and decided to try a different tact. I believe that publishing problems are a killer to creativity, and that’s one reason I’m currently so enthralled with independent e-book publishing. I’m on my own and I alone decide what should or should not be published. And to answer your question about writing another family saga, yes, I will. If God is willing. Why do I like writing the longer, more involved novel, mainly because that’s what I like to read and writing is like reading for this author. I get lost in both.”



THE TIMES: You mentioned e-books. You have been a prolific publisher of e-books, with what seems to be dozens of titles. How do you see e-books revolutionizing the publishing industry, as well as the connections between authors and readers?

JANICE DAUGHARTY: “... The e-book version is far outselling the print version, as with most books now. E-book sales are incredible, all around for me. I now have over 80 titles in e-book format — including novels, short stories and essays. You cannot predict what will sell; I have a short piece about the first time I saw ‘Gone with the Wind,’ and every month, I sell hundreds. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that piece is listed on the original GWTW page — just luck, I guess. Everybody in the world must have gotten some type of e-reader last Christmas because that’s when e-books began to skyrocket. But you don’t have to own an e-reader to read books from online book sites, you can read straight from your computer — and who these days doesn’t own some kind of personal computer? From what I can tell, and from what I have read, e-books are not really the coming thing, but ‘the thing’ itself.”