Author writes what he'd like to read

It only takes one moment for a person's interest to be piqued and a life-altering decision to be made.

For Bruce Machart, an American literature and English professor at Lone Star College in Houston, that moment came when he was about 23 and sitting in a sophomore-level literature class. His teacher read "Powerhouse" by Eudora Welty, and everything changed.

"It was like someone had pealed my scalp back," Machart said in a phone interview with the Deseret News.

"It had a strong devastating effect on me. I didn't know why it worked, but I knew that it worked, and I would say that's where the curiosity came from. I wanted to figure out what made stories work the way that they do."

After that, Machart started taking creative writing classes. He eventually went on to earn a graduate degree in the field. Since then, he's been teaching and writing and has published a collection of short stories.

A few weeks ago, Machart released his debut novel, "The Wake of Forgiveness" to rave reviews. The author will be in Salt Lake City Thursday evening to greet fans at the King's English Bookshop.

"The Wake of Forgiveness" opens in 1895 as a Czech immigrant looses his wife during the birth of their fourth son, Karel. Karel grows up haunted by thoughts of the mother he never knew, and he suffers daily from the silent blame his father carries for him. The yoke the four brothers are forced to wear plowing the family's fields leaves a permanent mark, and Karel longs for more. But the price could be costly.

The idea for "The Wake of Forgiveness" sprung out of two family stories Machart remembers from his childhood. One such tale was that of two sisters living together three generations back. One of the sisters had a husband who left the picture while she was pregnant, and she later died during childbirth. Despite the fact that the two sisters were lifelong friends and advocated for one another, the surviving sister couldn't bear to even hold her new nephew. She associated him too strongly with death of her beloved sister.

"It always sort of stuck with me," Machart said. "As a writer, I try to write what I don't know. Otherwise it doesn't hold my interest very long. … I started thinking about what it would be like to be a boy with no mother and a boy who'd never really know his mother. And a boy onto whom there fell some, not necessarily blame, but onto whom there fell some unpleasant association with that loss.