Stories That Shape Us: A Conversation with M. E. Torrey on Fox Creek

Stories have the power to shape how we remember, how we understand, and how we move forward. In this thoughtful and deeply reflective conversation, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino sits down with author M. E. Torrey to explore the heart behind Fox Creek, a novel more than thirty years in the making.

Together, they dive into the responsibility of storytelling, the emotional weight of history, and the importance of compassion when examining some of the most difficult chapters of our past. This conversation goes beyond writing. It invites us to reflect on humanity, resilience, justice, and the role each of us plays in shaping a more compassionate future.

If you have ever wondered how stories can help us better understand ourselves and each other, this interview will stay with you.

You’ve said this book was 30 years in the making. What first sparked your connection to this story, and why did it stay with you for so long?

Even as a very small child, I have always felt drawn to the issue of slavery, and to the injustices that I saw in the world. I was in elementary school during the ’60s and vividly recall watching the riots on our small TV—riots about school desegregation, civil rights, and the Vietnam War. I listened intently to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches, especially the “I Have a Dream” speech, where “little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and White girls.” As a family, we would discuss all these issues around the dinner table, my parents instilling in us the understanding that all people are created equal. I feel in my soul that one of the purposes of my life is to bring injustice to light. One of the tools for doing this is to help us remember the past—not for the purpose of self-flagellation, finding blame, or reliving pain, but as a source of growth and healing in our understanding of ourselves as human beings.

And as to why Fox Creek stayed with me for so long, I will say that these characters have never left me. They live and move in me, telling their stories. Fox Creek is the first of a trilogy, so the characters’ stories continue to unfold onto paper. (I promise I won’t take thirty years for book two!)

Was there a moment when you realized this story needed to be told in the way you ultimately told it?

No, I wouldn’t say that there was ever an aha! moment as such. Instead, I think the breadth and voice of the book gradually took shape during my three years of research such that, by the time I was ready to write, it poured out of me. During my rewrites, I was able to fine-tune the narrative voice so that it was exactly what I wanted and what the story needed.

As a White author writing about the lived experiences of enslaved people, how did you approach this responsibility with care, intention, and respect?

In preparation for writing my novel, I researched for three years full-time, eventually reading many primary sources—journals, diaries, letters, autobiographies—written by people who lived during those times. What I learned was eye-opening, disturbing, and life-changing. So much of Black history has been “white-washed,” either intentionally or unintentionally by white historians, novelists, politicians, and others. As the author, it was my goal to represent the Black slave community as honestly as possible, portraying the vast differences in personality and worldview. Much like any group of people anywhere, we’re all unique. Yet, even in our uniqueness, at our center, our core, we’re all the same. We’re all human. It was my job to portray that humanity.

What did you learn—both intellectually and personally—through the process of researching and writing this story?

I learned that exploitation is powered by necessity, which eventually becomes powered by greed. From Colonial America up and through the Civil War, massive amounts of laborers were needed to clear land, build structures, roads, levees, and so on. Slavery was a logistical decision as growth and expansion would have been much slowed without the steady stream of slaves coming from the African continent. But by antebellum times, while the North became increasingly industrial, the South was still agrarian and relied on slave labor to clear, sow, maintain, and harvest the crops. Greed gradually replaced necessity as plantation life devolved into a “who’s who” of elite society. Who had the biggest ballroom? Who had the most land? The most slaves? Who could best afford to spend their time doing nothing? In fact, owning a slave was considered a status symbol. In his prime, a male slave sold for about $1,000 at peak prices. This translates to about $44,000 USD today. If you owned one slave, good on you. If you owned ten slaves, hey! you’re getting noticed! If you owned 100 slaves, you’re playing with the big boys now. Put in this perspective, it’s easy to see how necessity eventually gave way to greed.

On a personal level, while researching and writing Fox Creek, I confronted my own White privilege face-to-face. It’s an uncomfortable thing, something most of us White folk don’t want to hear about or acknowledge. 

One of the most powerful ideas in your work is that ordinary people can justify extraordinary harm. Why do you think that happens, and what can we learn from that today?

We tend to think of slaveholders as all monsters because extreme examples make for compelling literature or movies. But in reading autobiographies, letters, diaries, logs, and journals of plantation owners, I learned that, like slaves, slaveholders covered the vast spectrum of humanity. From kind and benign, to psychopaths and everything in-between, many slaveholders owned slaves simply because that’s what you did. That’s what society demanded. Are you part of the upper crust? Not if you don’t own a slave.

But what slaveholders really didn’t know was that owning another human being is a degrading proposition for all involved. Certainly, for the slave. But also, for the slaveholder, yet in more insidious, hard-to-quantify ways. Ethical lines are blurred. Morality is blurred. The urge toward cruelty is ever-present and, as in one journal I read, the writer no longer recognized themselves as who they used to be. As a result, extraordinary harm was not uncommon, perpetrated by ordinary folk.

The problem with thinking that all slaveholders had to have been monsters, is that it creates separation between us and them. We think to ourselves, “I would never have done such a thing!” while at the same time, all around us, atrocities are being mainstreamed today. Atrocities that are deemed necessary and promoted by ordinary, well-meaning people—all for a “greater good,” whether that greater good be national security, cheaper gas prices, or a particular version of religion.

Your novel explores both the perspectives of the enslaved and the enslavers. Why was it important for you to show that complexity?

Being from the North, the first time I went on a plantation tour back in the mid-’90s, I naively expected the tour guide to present a balanced history, the story of both the slaveholding family as well as the slaves. Instead, in tour after tour, not once were the slaves mentioned. It was the White family this and the White family that. At first, I was confused. But after a while, I was fuming. Life on the plantation was not only white-washed, it was being glorified.

I came home from that experience on fire. This was the genesis of Fox Creek. I knew that I had to tell the story of the enslavers as well as the enslaved and how their lives intersected. Not only would this be a story with layers of complexity, but somewhere within those layers, I hoped, would lie historical truth.

Fox Creek has been described as both harrowing and compassionate. How did you balance telling the truth of history while still creating space for humanity and connection?

When writing about slavery, I think it’s somewhat easier to follow the harrowing path. No one who’s not ignorant or lying to themselves is going to argue with you about how horrible slaves had it. The more challenging path is to write about slavery with compassion. Compassion comes when you recognize the humanity of each character, White or Black. You see their motivations, their fears, their dreams and hopes, and you give them a voice. Compassion comes when you love your characters, as if I were in a time capsule and had landed at Fox Creek Plantation. My arms are outstretched in love. Each character is within my embrace. No one is excluded.

When we have the courage to look back on history with eyes of love rather than judgment, we come closest to understanding why people acted the way they did. It is the same today. We can’t remedy today’s problems through accusations and mockery. We remedy today’s problems through love. Through compassionate action. Sometimes love is tough. It stands in the dark places. It speaks truth to power. And because the Source of love is greater than our little selves, it has the power to transform. (Unlike say, rage or self-righteousness, two examples of non-transformative motivators.)

Were there moments in writing this book that deeply affected you?

There were many moments, but I’ll give one example. Toward the end of the book (no spoilers!) there were a few scenes that I knew would be very sad (and difficult) to write. To prepare, I put the music track “We Follow a Star” by Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning on repeat. The track starts with a howling wind, then a haunting bass flute, then percussion and rhythm instruments. With my eyes closed, I began writing—typing on my computer keyboard. I was fully, fully immersed in the scene, absorbing the raw emotions of my characters, eventually sobbing and sobbing. It took me a week of writing this scene and the scenes following. (I should have bought stock in a tissue company.) But, as they say, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader!”

At its core, this is also a story about love and survival. What does resilience look like in this story, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

In Fox Creek, resilience comes in many forms. For Sawney, an adult male slave owned by the Jensey family, resilience means never bending your will to that of another. For Cyrus, a ten-year-old boy purchased by the Jenseys, resilience means to never do anything out of line. To always smile and be agreeable. No one will hurt you if you just follow the rules. For six-year-old Monette, a multi-racial girl sold into slavery upon the death of her beloved French Creole father, resilience means forgetting who you are, or who you used to be. She immerses herself in life with the Jensey children, pretending she is part of their family. For Sarah Jensey, the plantation mistress, it is her faith in God and in her husband. For William Jensey, the plantation patriarch, resilience sprouts from the soil, it rains from the sky, it’s found in the harvest of crops, in doing things the way they’ve always been done, generation after generation.

I hope readers understand that there was no single type of resilience. Resilience was as varied as the personalities involved.

How do you hope readers emotionally experience this book—not just understand it, but feel it?

Well, of course I hope readers fall in love with the characters, as I have! I hope that they feel the emotional textures, the hills and valleys, of each character. Maybe a reader will be aghast, or brokenhearted, or laughing along at the comedy that life can be. Or perhaps they’ll be outraged, dumbfounded, or even enlightened. And in experiencing all these emotions, the reader has traveled back in their little time capsule with me, at least for a little while. They feel the soil under their bare feet, hear the thrum of a bird’s wings, smell the cooking sugar, and taste the bitterness of captivity. These emotions can resonate so strongly that they can paint a different picture of the past than perhaps what a reader was expecting. It can invite us to let go of preconceptions, false narratives, and stories we’ve always been told.

Your quote, “Stories are blueprints for memory,” is incredibly powerful. Why do you believe storytelling is essential in how we remember—and how we move forward?

Of course, oral storytelling has been around long before written storytelling ever was a thing. In ancient human society, a group’s collective memory, or history, was passed on orally from one generation to the next. At some point, some of that story was written down, while some stories faded into obscurity. Collective memory became less about accuracy, passing what we know from one generation to the next, and more and more about who was writing the story, and why. I saw this as I read scholarly works regarding slavery. The older books, dating closer to the civil war, were very obviously biased based upon whether the writer was a Northerner or a Southerner. That distinction became less obvious as modern scholars attempted to be more objective. But scholarly works, written histories, will only take us so far. They invite us to learn about the past, but it’s rare that we feel like we’ve experienced it.

However, when a work of fiction takes on a heavy topic and does not attempt to tell the reader what to think—what’s right, what’s wrong, who’s evil, who’s good—that’s when the reader steps into the gap. It’s the reader who’s the scholar now, studying motivations, asking why, unable to judge a character offhand because they see both sides of the coin. These kinds of stories linger with us long after the last page is turned. They’re powerful tools in helping us remember our collective past because the reader isn’t just seeing dates and typeface on a page. They’re there—in the heat of the day, working the field, caressing a cheek.

We move forward by realizing that we do not stand apart from history. Nothing that we experience in the here and now would be possible without the individuals who came before us. Each generation stands on the shoulders of the generations before it, hopefully for the better.

How do you see the themes in Fox Creek connecting to conversations we’re having today about race, justice, and humanity?

I really think it’s almost impossible (for White people especially) to understand race relations in the United States without understanding how those race relations evolved. It’s not enough to say, “Yes, I know there was slavery.” Before I began my three years of research, I was well aware of the existence of slavery. But it wasn’t until I uncovered story after story of the Black race being crushed under the heels of the White race, not out of economic necessity, but out of greed, or simply because they could, that I finally understood. As the scales fell from my eyes, the taste of my own White privilege was pretty bitter.

I meet too many Whites who don’t think a conversation about race is necessary. “It was a long time ago,” they’ll say about slavery. “That wasn’t me. I never owned a slave.” Or, “I just mind my own business. I’ve never hurt anyone.” Or, “We’re all equal now. All lives matter.” And while I don’t push it, I do believe that being able to brush this uncomfortable and thorny issue aside without a backward glance is, in itself, a privilege—a privilege that Black people don’t share.

How can we ever attain a just society if the majority of us walk around with scales over our eyes? When, in response to “Black Lives Matter,” we cry, “All Lives Matter!” we once again fail to understand how our seemingly innocent statement of human equality is instead a refusal to hear the cry of an entire race of humans. A refusal to acknowledge their worth, their story, and to once again white-wash their history so that it’s palatable and safe.

You’ve lived a life that blends writing, faith, and global service. How has your work with Orphans Africa shaped the way you see the world and tell stories?

I like to think that I’ve had a more expanded worldview than the average person, having grown up in four different countries. However, working with Orphans Africa in Tanzania has expanded my worldview in ways I could never have foreseen. (Isn’t that the way growth always works?) 

When I was first in Tanzania, I stayed in very rural, poor areas without running water or electricity. To my dismay, I noticed that our communal dishes were being set in the dirt before being washed while chickens ran up and over, hither and yon. Being the Westerner with Great Wisdom (please note the sarcasm) I imparted my knowledge: Chickens aren’t clean; Chicken shit isn’t clean; We’ll all get sick; This is how germs are spread; Here, put the dishes on this newly constructed bamboo dishrack; Here, use a few drops of this bleach that I bought at the market. . . .

I thought all was well until the next year when I returned and the dishes were back in the chicken shit. It was a huge lesson for me. Whenever there is a power imbalance, solutions are not found through power over someone. Someone imparting knowledge. My solution didn’t work, because they didn’t understand. Germ theory was not in their wheelhouse. The dishrack didn’t stand the test of time and was burned for firewood. No one could afford bleach. (And what was bleach for anyway, other than to make White people happy?)

Only when power, or knowledge in this case, is shared can solutions become lasting. Through the nineteen years since I co-founded Orphans Africa, we’ve been successful because we’ve worked hand-in-hand with communities, listening to their needs, understanding their worldviews, and ultimately, helping them to succeed independently of us. More and more, they are the experts, not us. In fact, I learned that we never were the experts. We were simply willing to stand in the hard places. We were willing to walk hand-in-hand with people the world had left behind.

Through my experiences with Orphans Africa, I see the world as a place where cooperation and love become the way forward, the way to reconciliation and healing. Just think how healing it would be for Blacks to realize that they are no longer alone in their struggle to be heard. That there is an enormous White family that stands with them, ready to lay down our arms, ready to listen, to confront our own White privilege, and to learn. None of us are perfect. None of us have all the answers. But together, we have the power to transform the world. Power with, not power over.

I like to write stories that confront these very issues. Stories that don’t provide stock answers but instead invite the reader into the fray.

Is there something in particular that motivates you? (Fame? Fortune?)

For most of my life, I was the typical Type-A personality: driven, ambitious, and project-focused. But as I’ve grown older, especially as my relationship with the Divine has deepened, I can truthfully say that I no longer have goals. Having goals feels like a toy I used to play with but now can simply smile at and set aside. Instead, I live each day as it comes and allow myself full freedom within that day, within each hour, each moment. I am motivated by nothing other than to walk in peace and invite others to join me along the way.

If readers walk away with one lasting reflection or question after finishing Fox Creek, what would you want that to be?

How can we be better as a human race?

I pray that Fox Creek can illumine the mind, such that we recognize the immense value of every human life.

More About Fox Creek

The year is 1843 when six-year-old Monette, the pampered and beloved daughter of a French Creole sugar planter, is taken to New Orleans and sold into slavery. Sold along with her is Cyrus, a boy big for his age, torn from his mother without a chance to say goodbye.

Together they go to Fox Creek Plantation in “English” Louisiana, home to the Jensey family. While Cyrus is sent to the fields, Monette becomes the childhood playmate of Kate, the planter’s daughter, and catches the eye of Breck, the planter’s son. It’s easier and safer for Monette to pretend life is normal. That she belongs. To forget her past, even to forget Cyrus, whom she’d loved. But as the years pass, it becomes clear that children of color do not belong in the world of the white elite—at least, not as equals. The brutality and powerlessness of slavery begin to take their toll upon Monette.

Who is she now? Who will protect her? And who is that big boy from the fields who keeps pestering her?

Fox Creek is a powerful novel set during one of the most turbulent times in American history. It is a story of race, privilege, the battle of wills, and the denial of freedom. But most of all, it is a story of love, a love that transcends all that threatens to tear it apart.

Fox Creek is M. E. Torrey's first novel for adults. Torrey holds a B.S. in Microbiology and Immunology and an M.A. in Religion. She currently resides in Washington State and has lived and traveled extensively throughout the world. In addition to her writing and traveling, she is a co-founder of the charity, Orphans Africa. The charity works primarily in Tanzania, building boarding schools for children orphaned by disease and poverty. Her organization has educated thousands of children. M. E. Torrey, also known as Michele Torrey, is the author of twelve books for children (Knopf; Penguin, Union Square & Co).