James Lee Burke’s new novel, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, is, perhaps, his most personal. The 85-year-old titan of American literature claims the worst imaginable impetus for the book – the death of his daughter, Pamala. In his fascinating and deeply moving Introduction to Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, he pays beautiful tribute to his late daughter, and also explains how he returned to his Holland family series of novels to update the story of protagonist, Aaron Holland. Every Cloak Rolled in Blood finds Holland, himself a novelist in his 80s, living in Burke’s adopted home state of Montana, grieving the unexpected loss of his daughter.
Every Cloak Rolled in Blood provides a brilliant and heartfelt exploration of grief and trauma, while also returning to familiar, and always provocative and enjoyable, Burke territory of evil, injustice, and the enduring battle for truth, peace, and virtue. It manages to thematically connect the personal trauma of the protagonist with the traumas of America’s past, mainly the massacres of Native Americans, particularly the Battle of Wounded Knee, and those that took place in Montana.
In a rollicking ride of a story, Burke introduces readers to neo-Nazis, corrupt ministers, and Native American activists.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Burke over the telephone. I previously interviewed Burke for CrimeReads in 2020 and 2021.
David Masciotra: The new novel, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, makes narrative and philosophical connections in very interesting, vivid, and palpable ways…
James Lee Burke: I appreciate your perceptiveness, because that was certainly my intention. There are several stories happening simultaneously, and that was my plan. Usually, I don’t plan my work, but it actually worked out (laughs). Typically, I don’t know where a book is going, but this one was going in many directions, largely inspired by some of the greatest films ever made – My Darling Clementine and Shane. I continue to develop the story with my next book, but it probably isn’t a good idea to talk too much about a book that isn’t even out yet. So, I’ll leave it there.
David Masciotra: That’s interesting, though. Maybe there is a way you could talk about it more broadly without going into too much detail about the book-in-progress. One of the characters speaks beautifully about Shane in the novel, but beyond that scene, what is the thematic connection?
James Lee Burke: Shane, played by Alan Ladd, is the light bearer. This is the theme that defines almost all classical art, at least, in the Occidental world. The story of Roland, the story of Arthur, the Hellenic mythology that is pre-Christian. The story is the search for salvation. Salvation comes to us in that classical genre – that mythology – in the hands of a light bearer. In the film, Shane shows up in a little town in Wyoming, and the little boy realizes that something transformative is happening in his world. It is the most poignant ending of any film. The little boy is shouting, “Shane! Come back, Shane!” Then, of course, the last voice that we hear in the last pages of my book is the protagonist, Aaron, unable to accept that his daughter is going away from him. She’s already died, but now she is going away from him.
David Masciotra: One of the other influences that you cite, and that Aaron Holland praises in Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, is the great but often neglected novelist, A.B. Guthrie Jr.
James Lee Burke: He wrote the “Ulysses” of American literature with The Big Sky. Golly, it’s a poem – a beautiful and sad book, and he says it all in there.
David Masciotra: In the introduction to Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, you write that the book had the worst of impetuses, which was the death of your daughter, Pamala. You say that you rarely plan your work, but this one did have a plan. Did you set out to write a story that would explore grief by using the pain and mourning that you are feeling for own daughter?
James Lee Burke: Undoubtedly. That question and the previous question have the same answer. The more or less social and casual conversation is difficult for a person who is grieving. The person to whom he is talking, unless he’s also gone through the same experience, cannot begin to fathom the almost chemical aura that a grieving person has. I’m convinced that there are things in the spiritual metabolism, or maybe it is psychosomatic, that have a reaction to grief that doesn’t have any precedent. Something to compare it with: Aaron says that it is a hole in his chest. That’s how it feels. Andre Dubus was my first cousin. He wrote in his story, “The Father’s Story,” that “God had a son, but he never had a daughter.” In the obituary that I wrote for Pamala, I wrote that I believe God has many daughters. Nonetheless, there is a special relationship between father and daughter, daughter and father. It is something that appears throughout Greek mythology. They gave us psychoanalysis long before the birth of Christ. Freud borrowed his terms from Greek mythology. Anyway, Aaron is left with his time in the garden of Gethsemane, and I know that it is a really rough go.
David Masciotra: In the Introduction, you also write that your daughter helped you write the book? Do you care to elaborate?
James Lee Burke: I just believe that Pamala is still with us. Obviously, there is no demonstrable proof, but it is what I believe. Pamala was one of the best people I ever knew. She was extraordinary. I don’t have any knowledge about very much of anything. If a person lives long enough, they’ll come to the same conclusion. The same mysteries remain. We never solve them. We do know that if anyone claims to know the mind of God, it is time to run. So, I just ask my higher power to do something now and then to let me know that Pamala is ok. That’s what Aaron does too.
David Masciotra: It also seems that Aaron begins to observe a collision between the pain with which he’s wrestling, and the pain that remains embedded in the consciousness of the United States. Did you seek to make a connection between the protagonist’s personal trauma and the national trauma that still informs so much of American political debate?
James Lee Burke: Yes, but I might have chosen the wrong word earlier. I never really “plan” my work in the sense that I’m seeing beyond two or three scenes ahead. However, throughout all of my work, there are certain things that are always there. Since I’ve published my first story when I was 19 in 1956, everything I’ve written is about social justice. It is also about the Arthurian tale of the light bearer. I’ve been writing about all of these things all these years. I appreciate people’s attraction to the Robicheaux books, but I’ve never understood why anyone who likes the Robicheaux books would not equally appreciate the Holland books. They describe and contain the same material. Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel are alive and well in the Holland books. They are just sitting on the side of the road, quietly observing.
David Masciotra: Well, that’s interesting, because to pick up on that comparison with the Robicheaux books, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood is less of a detective story – less of a murder mystery – than it is an investigation of spiritual forces and historical realities.
James Lee Burke: That goes right to the heart of the matter. You got it. It is set in present Montana, but it takes us back to the year 1890, because this is where it happened. Our ranch, where I live in Montana, is built right on the path – the trail – that Chief Joseph took when his whole tribe came down the back of a mountain. It goes right into my office. The whole tribe carried everything they owned, and their children, on their backs, because they were driven out. This was a genocide. The Army eventually caught them, and massacred them. It is called the Battle of Wounded Knee. Then, the Baker massacre is beyond belief. It is the most horrible example of any scene that I know in human history. You can’t ingest the cruelty of it, because of its irrationality. Colonel Eugene Baker and the US Army massacred Native American men, women, and children, while they were asleep. This was the rule, not the exception. Custer did the same thing. William Sherman encouraged it.
David Masciotra: That’s a historical evil. So many of your novels, including the new one, deal with interpersonal acts of evil. Both Robicheaux and Aaron say that wisdom does not come with age, but after all these years writing about evil, what can you say about it? What have you learned about it, if anything?
James Lee Burke: Well, I’m afraid it is the latter – “if anything.” This is one 85-year-old man’s perception: We are not all from the same tree. There are people whom I will never understand. There is no explanation for them. They do evil things, and they are celebrated as national heroes. I do not understand it. There is something that is wrong in this gene pool. Think of it this way – The primary instinct is survival, and the second is making sure people have babies to keep the species around. Despite those instincts, people will turn themselves over to the will of evil men, and risk their lives or sacrifice their children, while dishonoring their decency. They will jeopardize themselves for a depraved person who will ruin their lives, and they will go through the rest of their lives never acknowledging it. People will carve out of their own entrance to a sacrificial altar. It is beyond me to understand it. These are people who will never change, and for whatever reason, they have embarked on a journey that ensures the destruction of what we cherish as human beings. Forget politics. We’re talking about human life. They will give up everything, and for what? There are people who believe they are making a moral statement by not getting vaccinated. I’m dumbfounded. I was around during the polio epidemic, and that’s part of Every Cloak Rolled in Blood too. It is about the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the symptoms of the deranged ethos at work made manifest: People who are proud of the fact that they don’t get vaccinated and they don’t wear masks, and they bring home the virus to their loves ones, and they think it is just great. And they’re doing it for Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, anyone can Google videos of glacial melt at the North Pole, and see tons of ice crashing into the ocean, because it is disappearing. Corporations have convinced people that we can dump plastics everywhere, pollute the air, drill and drill for oil, and that it is nature’s job to clean up the mess we made. I never used to feel this way. I used to think that multinational corporations were good, because they’d break through national frontiers, and replace nationalism. That was wrong. These guys will do anything for a buck. They would turn the Grand Canyon into a gravel pit.
David Masciotra: That makes me think of one of the characteristics of this novel, which is one of the great characteristics of all great art – the navigation of contradiction. The characters of this novel confront the evils of American history, like the Baker massacre, and the evils of greed, but there is also a nostalgic quality to the story. There are beautiful descriptions of life in Aaron’s past. That’s present in much of your work. How do you and your characters strike that balance between recognizing the horrors of the past, and also spotlighting the wonderful and beneficial aspects of our history?
James Lee Burke: John Neihardt was my first creative writing teacher at the University of Missouri. He was a poet. He once told me that civilization follows the sun, and he said that the American story is much older than us and the Republic. The story of the United States is actually the story of Eden. The greatest cultural influence in the history of the United States was the Puritan culture that was established in the year 1621. When those babies hit town, buddy, they were on rock and roll. They were not a kind, mild, and gentle people. They wiped out the indigenous. They gave us many gifts – work ethic, emphasis on education – but they were also fanatics. For good and bad, they are our antecedents. We have sex scandals throughout our history where when you look at the essence, you realize, wait a minute, this happens to about 50 percent of the population, and the other 50 percent are waiting in line. Anyway, the stories that I write are about Eden and the fall from grace. I’m not a literalist, but I mean it in the emblematic sense that the essential challenge to the human family is that we have this great gift – the great big blue ball in the universe – and we are stewards. But look what happened when the Puritans arrived. They cut down forests. They turned capitalism into a religion. The two people who were most aware of it, and feared its coming, were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. It is in their letters. They feared that the vitality of the revolution would be supplanted by the mediocrity of businesspeople.
The story of Eden, and how it influences my work, is not the story of a snake in a tree, but the story of what we are doing to the tree – what we are doing to the Garden.
David Masciotra: This is prevalent, as you say, in Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, as well in your other novels. In the new one, there are some profoundly lyrical descriptions of the West, and Montana, but it happens with an elegiac delivery. Is that part of the evil that you are describing in these books?
James Lee Burke: Oh, yes. That’s a big part of it. Montana has been taken over by right wing Republicans, and a governor who appears to have depraved inclinations. He’s a trapper. He illegally trapped a wolf, and killed it. In another recent violation, he used dogs to tree a mountain lion, and then shot and killed the animal. It is just sickening. He attacked a reporter, body slamming him. The governor is a big, powerful man, and he body slammed this young reporter who looks about 125 pounds. He’s a very popular governor. That’s what I mean. I just can’t understand it, but men like this are exerting control over our natural resources, and over our planet.
David Masciotra: Well, that brings me to another ubiquitous force in your books, which is violence. It is never gratuitous, but in this novel in particular, the protagonist makes connections between large scale acts of violence, and the smaller, more personal acts of violence that shape the story. What is it about violence that interests you?
James Lee Burke: Most of the violence in my work is off camera, or I should say, off the page. It is implied. It is, nonetheless, pervasive, and for the following reason: We look upon ourselves as a pacific people, and this is not true.
David Masciotra: What unique contribution can the novelist make to these issues that might elude the historian, philosopher, or theologian?
James Lee Burke: It is the artist’s obligation to bear witness. George Orwell, in an essay titled, “Why I Write,” says that every artist has a compulsion to share what he or she has witnessed. He or she has to transfer a moment of truth to others. That’s what Orwell did. Of course, when an artist does it, after two or three days rest, the real artist has to do it again.
David Masciotra: Arthur Miller once said that what separates a great artist from a good one is “moral outrage that is unquenchable.” It seems that moral outrage continues to motivate your artistry.
James Lee Burke: It is like this – You happen to wake up at two in the morning, and you stumble out of bed, look outside, and see a flame flickering in a neighbor’s window. You think, “I have to call 9-1-1.” You always feel like you have to call 9-1-1.
