INTERVIEW: In Victorian times, flowers were used as a code, but the real inspiration for Vanessa Diffenbaugh's book 'The Language of Flowers' is from her experiences as a foster mother. She tells SINÉAD GLEESONabout taking on three children within 16 months and how she spent a $1 million advance
THE FIRST THING Vanessa Diffenbaugh does when we sit down to talk in a sleek hotel lobby is show me pictures of her children. There is a boy and girl, both under five, and blessed with the kind of flawless skin Diffenbaugh possesses and that women pay lots of money in pursuit of.
Another older child – a handsome, teenage African-American boy – is with them. "That's Tre'von," she says proudly. "He's been with us for five years, and has just gone off to college to study theatre." Diffenbaugh and her husband have been full-time foster parents for several years, and the experience has partly inspired her first novel, Th e Language of Flowers.
As a 21-year-old, before she and her husband PK were married, they realised that fostering was something they really wanted to do. PK was a high-school principal in a school that encouraged teachers to pass on their mobile-phone numbers to children for emergencies. Thanks to this initiative, they met Tre’von, who had run away from a troubled home. He called her husband, and the teenager came to live with them when their daughter Chela was six months old. The day after the couple went to court to get custody of Tre’von, Diffenbaugh found out she was pregnant with her son Miles.
“In 16 months, I had like three kids,” smiles the writer. “It was tough, but I knew that African-American teenage boys get sent to group homes, and we didn’t want that to happen to him. He’s a good, kind, smart, thoughtful kid.” Having watched numerous children being moved around regularly, families being split or sent to homes where they didn’t speak the language, Diffenbaugh was determined to keep Tre’von, and her experience of fostering other youths informs her debut novel. The book begins on the 18th birthday of a foster-home child, Victoria Jones. At 18, children in the US are “emancipated” into the system as adults, and a quarter become homeless or incarcerated within two years. As a result of a nomadic, and largely unloved life, Victoria’s character is traumatised and difficult, finding it hard to connect with people. She is a composite character based on various experiences, but is largely based on one young woman Diffenbaugh tried to help.
“This girl came to stay with us, who was beautiful and smart and spirited, but she had never had a family. Instead of a name on her birth cert, there was a number, and she had been in over 30 homes, never staying anywhere for more than a year. My husband really wanted to adopt her and although we knew we loved her, she struggled to love us back. Every decision I’ve made in my life has been guided by love, so I began thinking about how someone lives their life if they don’t know what love is because they’ve never had it.”
Diffenbaugh wrote the first draft chronologically, originally charting every day of Victoria’s life from birth until she was 30. Quickly, she realised it was too long, and “boring”, and her agent suggested that she focus on the year when Victoria became emancipated. Another motivator was trying to present all aspects of foster life, without drawing on stereotypes – the evil foster parent, the troubled child and the saintly parent who shows up to save the day. “There aren’t many stories that show the honest, emotional journey of two flawed, imperfect people trying to form a family,” says the writer.
What Diffenbaugh has done is introduce an unusual plot device. Victoria, for all her communicative blocks, is a keen gardener. She discovers that in Victorian times, flowers had individual meanings and were often used as a code between lovers. Where did that particular idea come from? “When I was 16, I discovered Kate Greenaway’s illustrated dictionary of flowers and it felt like discovering this huge secret. Of course, it had been huge in the 19th century, but by the time I was a kid, no one had heard of it. But this novel was always meant to be about a girl in the foster-care system. Crucially, the first scene that came to me was one where Victoria is in a flower market and there is conflict with another character. Because she is damaged, she doesn’t have the tools to communicate so she leaves and comes back a week later and gives him a rhododendron, which means ‘beware’, and it just felt right from the beginning . . . that it was her way into the world. She was a prickly character, and it was a way to soften it up.”
An entire glossary of floral meanings – daffodils for new beginnings, lavender for mistrust – exists, and although Diffenbaugh includes it at the back of the book, she was careful not to let it overwhelm her story. “Oh totally, I tried everything in my power not to make it cheesy,” she admits. “I was very aware that people might think that.” Publishers were not put off by it, and the manuscript became the subject of a very intense bidding war on both sides of the Atlantic. Her agent pushed her to rewrite and redraft – she rewrote the novel three separate times – and it paid off. It was duly dispatched to publishers on a Friday afternoon and by Monday it had gone to auction. Eleven publishers in the US, and nine in the UK haggled for the rights, and it was ultimately sold in 35 countries.
With it, came a hefty $1 million advance, which has helped to fund a personal project that connects to both Diffenbaugh’s life and the book’s story. After it was sold, she knew there would be a platform to do something practical. “So I set up a charity and called it the Camellia Network, because Camellia means ‘my destiny is in your hands’. I wanted to help as many of these newly emancipated foster kids, so I set up a system that works like a wedding registry. One kid might be heading for college and need sheets and towels for dorm life, or those looking for a job could request a computer, or a suit and briefcase. Alternatively, donors can log on, find a kid in their area and give them money.”
Diffenbaugh is delighted with her initiative, and has teamed up with the Literary Guild in the US to involve book groups in fund-raising. “If a group sponsors a child, and they’re reading my book, I’ll find out what night it’s on and call them so that they can ask questions.” She is dedicated, and sales of the book will raise funds, her profile and that of the charity. Its site has just launched and already has 20 profiles, which she hopes will rise to 65 or 70 by the end of the year. There have been enquiries about a similar UK model, and she hopes it can be rolled out globally.
For now, she is trying to cope with the non-stop schedule that publicity has brought, while trying to juggle family life. That morning, her husband flew back to London where her children currently are, but the couple managed to visit a Dublin restaurant last night for a date. She is 100 pages into a new book, but doesn’t want to say too much about it. “I had always wanted to be a writer, and as my husband was supporting us, I was acutely aware that I was blessed to be at home when my children were small. I knew I would want to go back to work, but I knew that if I really wanted to be a writer, I knew I had to use that time. I was in 100 per cent caregiver mode, because I was looking after babies and teens and my husband and to have something – writing – that was just mine, was wonderful.”
The Language of Flowers
is published by MacMillan. camellianetwork.org
