Nicholas Sparks can’t always remember the way a book idea comes to him, but for the bestselling author’s newest novel, “Counting Miracles,” Sparks knows exactly how it happened.
“Not all my books are so clear,” Sparks says by phone in mid-September from his home in New Bern, N.C. “But the original inspiration for this one is I got this image in my head of this old guy, hurt and injured in a forest with no one around him, and his dog standing guard over him.
“I can’t tell you the second idea or the third idea, which led to the rest of the story, but the original inspiration I just couldn’t get that picture out of my head,” he says. “And you start asking yourself questions, and little by little, a story comes together.”
In “Counting Miracles,” the old man stranded in the Uwharrie National Forest near Asheboro, N.C., is Jasper, an almost hermit-like figure who retreated from most contact with the public after a family tragedy years earlier.
Then there’s Tanner, a former Army Ranger, who most recently has worked for United States aid efforts in Africa, comes to Asheboro in search of his father. He meets Caitlin, a divorced doctor and mother of two. A romance begins as the town is captivated by reports of a sighting of a rare white deer in the forest.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Sparks talked about weaving the biblical story of Job into his romantic drama, how Tanner and Caitlin compare to characters in his other novels and more.
Jasper has had all sorts of trials and tribulations in his life. He’s a Job-like figure who comes to question his faith. How’d you settle there?
I think a lot of people, more common than not, are familiar with the story of Job. That they feel as though they’re being tested by life itself at one point or another. I remember when I was in my 20s. My mom died in a horseback riding accident. Not too many years later my dad died in a car accident, and my younger sister died of a brain tumor.
More than anything, what I try to do when I write these stories is imbue a sense of universality to all of these elements of their story, with the knowledge that, of course, everyone has their own unique story.
But you create many more details beyond the basic hardships someone like Jasper has endured.
When it comes to Jasper, I figured, OK, he’s a hermit in the woods. Well, why is he a hermit? Why has he withdrawn from the world? Somewhere fairly soon in the conception of this story, prior to writing, I said, you know what, what if I did a modern retelling of Job?
I said, OK, let’s make a little bit of those elements in Jasper’s backstory. Of course, Job was this great man of faith, so Jasper had to be this great man of faith, right? So his dad was religious and his grandfather started the church. Then you just kind of follow the story, giving him something to do at the present moment. So he tries to save the white deer from poachers.
I liked how he’s constantly thinking of the Bible verses his father taught him. Were these verses mostly ones you already knew or did you have to research to find the right ones?
Certainly for some of them I had to research but others were at my fingertips. I think it’s important to note that I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a Christian book. It’s just Jasper was one of the characters, and part of his character included a lot of religious elements in his childhood background through adolescence and early adulthood.
Let’s switch to Tanner and Caitlin, who are more of the traditional romantic love interests. How are they similar to couples you’ve written in the past and how are they different?
Tanner, of course, was kind of a mirror image of Jasper, in that one of the themes of the novel is the study of grief. How does one deal with grief in their life? You have Jasper, who pretty much retreats from the world, and then you have Tanner, who reacts in an opposite way. And he’s rootless. He’s an unsettled soul, so to speak.
And that differs a lot from many of the previous characters in my novels. Most of them, with the exception of a couple, are more settled in their lives than Tanner has been. He’s lived in places but they’re not home. That’s one of the worries that his grandmother sees in him, that you’ve got to find where you belong.
And Caitlin?
She differs from my characters in that, look, she’s been in love before. Some of my characters have, but not all of them. Sometimes I write about first love. She’s divorced, and again, I’ve done that a couple of times. And she differs in that she’s got a pretty professional job. She’s a physician, and she views her job as also being a mother.
So she’s always torn between that balance. That just really mimics a lot of the women in their 40s that I know in my life.
