photos by Randi Radcliff
written by Rick Amburgey
Sara Evans has been a major force in country music for more than a decade, having a string of hits including “No Place That Far,” “Born To Fly” and “Suds In The Bucket.” She made some guest appearances on television shows during her career and competed on “Dancing With The Stars” in 2006.
Still, there’s one thing Evans said she never thought she would do – write a novel. Her first novel was released January 5 and it is already getting positive reviews from critics and readers alike. “The Sweet By and By” is the result of the creating pairing of Evans and Christian author Rachel Hauck. The book is the first in a series of four novels.
Evans explained the main character in the novels is Jade Fitzgerald. She said the first book sees Fitzgerald engaged to be married to a prominent lawyer in Chattanooga, and she trying to decide if she’s going to send her mother an invitation to her wedding. “It sets up all these struggles that she’d had in her life,” Evans said.
Evans said the book is not an autobiography. “Her life has a lot of similarities to my life,” she said. Even though the character and Evans may be alike in many ways, there are some major differences. “I’ve never had an abortion,” Evans said. She said that she and Hauck tackled the touchy subject because they wanted to bring up a difficult topic. Fitzgerald also has a lot of conflict with her mother, and Evan said that isn’t a similarity either. “That is not my mom.”
Evans said she wanted to include the conflict so Fitzgerald would have to deal with her mother. She said the character is angry with her mom because she was never there in her life. “We all deal with our mothers,” she added.
While working on the book, Evans said she felt like Fitzgerald was her friend. Instead of talking about her problems, she was talking about the character. Evans explained that she sent many text messages to Hauck about the story. She said she knew Fitzgerald had to be traumatized as a child.
Evans spoke very highly of Hauck, saying that she could not have written the book without her. Hauck is the one who did the majority of the writing, and then she would send pages to Evans for review. “I’m the idea girl,” Evans said.
Although the first book was recently released, the second novel in the series is already written. “The second book is even better,” Evans said. “That’s when everything explodes into full-force drama.”
She hinted that the second novel would see Fitzgerald encounter an issue with her husband. “She’s going to have to depend on her relationship with Jesus. She’s going to have to depend on her relationship with Him to get her through it.”
Evans is working on a new album, which is being produced by Nathan Chapman. “I’m trying to write most of the songs,” she said, adding that her goal for the new CD is for the vocals to be bigger and better than ever.
