For a photo of Tommy Hays, click here.

The Pleasure Was Mine:
Author Tommy Hays Shares His Latest Novel
About Love, Loss, & A Family Facing Alzheimer's Disease
On North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, Sunday, October 2, at 5 PM

Author Tommy Hays writes in his latest novel: "My wife has gone. I can't say that I blame her. ... She had probably had enough of my temper, my dark moods, my foul mouth, my all-around disagreeable self. ... She had probably had enough of what most everybody wondered and some, over the years, were rude enough to ask: How in the world did a tall, thin, fair-skinned beauty and one of the most respected high school English teachers ... in all of South Carolina ... wind up married to a short, dark, fat-faced, jug-eared house painter?"

While this sounds like the prelude to a typical novel about divorce and infidelity, for author Tommy Hays it serves as a setup for the fictional transformation of a family in which an older man cares for his wife during her descent into Alzheimer's. Hays' penetrating description of a disintegrating marriage frames the landscape of this brilliant new novel about love, loss, marriage and family, The Pleasure Was Mine.  On the upcoming episode of UNC-TV's local literary series, North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 2, at 5 PM, the Asheville author shares with host DG Martin his hopeful treatment of this difficult subject.

After losing his own father to Alzheimer's disease, Hays turned his own personal experience into a compelling book of fiction, The Pleasure Was Mine.  "My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a year before he died and when he was diagnosed I started writing a memoir about my father, trying to embody the scenes that we had as a family with him," says Hays. "I wrote about 200 to 300 pages of memoir and then it became depressing and in a strange way it made me feel powerless.  I decided to set the memoir aside and write a novel instead using the voice of a cranky uncle I had in my family who is forced to reverse roles and take care of his ailing wife."

The "cranky uncle" is the unforgettable character Prate Marshbanks, who retires to care for his wife Irene that he is gradually losing to Alzheimer's. To complicate things, Prate is also asked to keep his nine-year-old grandson, Jackson, for the summer. Already burdened, Prate is irritated by the presence of his moody grandson. But over the summer, as Jackson helps tend to his ailing grandmother, Prate and Jackson form a bond. As Irene fades, Prate, a hardworking man who has kept to himself most of his life, has little choice but to finally get to know his family.

Throughout the writing process, Hays was better able to get to know his own family. "The process of writing this novel allowed me to look at this experience from a different point of view," admits Hays. "With a memoir I was mired in myself; with this book, I was able to put myself in my mother's shoes. Looking back on it, a lot of the capability of Prate is embodied in what my mother did for my father."

Tommy Hays' has written two other novels-Sam's Crossing and In the Family Way, a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award.  Hays is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Director of Creative Writing for the Academy at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities.  He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circleand is a contributor to Our State magazine. Hays received his BA in English from Furman University and his MFA in Creative Writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.  He currently lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and two children.

Don't miss DG Martin's all-new interview with Tommy Hays on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 2, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During this season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: Shannon Ravenel (New Stories from the South, 2005), Emily Herring Wilson (No One Gardens Alone), Randall Kenan (Walking On Water), Ann B. Ross (Miss Julia's School Of Beauty), Lawrence Earley (Looking for Longleaf), Peter Perret (A Well-Tempered Mind), Timothy Tyson (Blood Done Sign My Name), Moreton Neal (Remembering Bill Neal), Quinn Dalton (Bulletproof Girl), Henry Petroski (Pushing the Limits), Bill Morris (Saltwater Cowboys), Amy Tiemann (Mojo Mom), Robert Irwin (Robert Irwin 40 Years), Mary Kay Andrews (Hissy Fit), Jerry Shinn (Loonis! Celebrating a Lyrical Life), Michael Parker (If You Want Me to Stay), Lawrence Naumoff (A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow), Martha Witt (Broken As Things Are) and Gerhard Weinberg (Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leader).

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh's independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV's ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV's other local productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.

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