Copper Crown

Eleven years after graduating as a magna cum laude English major, Lane von Herzen '84 was back in the classroom to discuss her first novel, Copper Crown, in English Professor Ivy Schweitzer's course on Women, Race, and Writing. An achingly beautiful story of interracial friendship and struggles in Texas during the first part of this century, Copper Crown is on Schweitzer's reading list as a springboard for examining issues of racism, sexism, violence, and patriarchy. But von Herzen told the class, "I don't approach work with the theme first." Instead, she starts with stories.

Von Herzen says her novel is based on a lifelong friendship between her grandmother and a black friend and on an incident von Herzen heard about during family visits to Texas. Her great-aunt told of her best friend being killed on the day of her high-school graduation. The murder sparked 17 lynchings and several fires. The surviving black men fled, the white men joined the army to escape prosecution. In one summer the town's population dropped from 800 to 200, mainly women and children. On each visit to Texas, von Herzen, who lived in the Northeast, grew morefascinated. "I heard the stories in their voices," she says. Still, she traveled a long road before writing Copper Crown. As an undergraduate she thought of becoming a lawyer. But English professor Richard Corum insisted, "Don't do that, you have to be a writer." Good thing. Copper Crown has achieved critical acclaim along with her second novel, The Unfastened Heart. Columbia Pictures has already bought movie rights to the second book.