Annie Lampman’s fictional writing career began far before she decided to sit down in 2007 and dedicate herself to the completion of her literary thriller “The Sins of the Bees”. Writing her whole life, Lampman graduated from Lewis and Clark State College and moved on to her Vandal career to receive her Master of Fine Arts in creative non-fiction.Lampman originally selected UI because she wanted to work with Kim Barnes, a professor of non-fiction writing, but upon learning she was no longer teaching at UI at the time she began to question her path.
“I just remember talking to Clair Davis in the hall at UI and crying because (Barns) wasn’t teaching non-fiction,” Lampman said. “That’s when Clair looked at me and said ‘Non-Fiction? Why would you want to do that when you can make sh*t up?’”
Fictional literature became Lampman’s new course of study and would ultimately lead to her career path, work on publishing short story collections and later “The Sins of the Bees.”
Lampman was still extremely critical about what she included in her novel. The novel follows its main female character through a sexual assault resulting in pregnancy and ultimately leading to her path crossing with an anti-government cult in Hells Canyon.
“Even though it’s fiction it still pulls a lot from real life,” Lampman said. “Like ‘Almost Paradise’ is a reference to a place in Idaho called ‘Almost Heaven.’”
There are many subtle nods to things like the survivalist community. Almost Heaven was founded in the 1990s in Lampman’s book. She revealed that much of the action and behavior is seen in her book was directly taken from her research on the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon where a group of far-right extremist seized and occupied the wildlife refuge’s headquarters until the movement was shut down by law enforcement in February 2016.
Lampman also referenced her personal history in the novel such as the significance of Bonsai art in the main character’s life directly inspired by the author’s grandmother being a Bonsai artist.
“I didn’t know that what I was writing at the time was going to be a literary thriller,” Lampman said. “I don’t think I really knew what I was trying to do or say or comment on in the novel…as an artist that’s part of the journey.”
After publishing and learning that the book had been put into a genre of literary thrillers, Lampman first questioned the validity of the label, but after looking back at her work she “completely understood.”
“It really took the #MeToo movement for me to understand,” Lampman shared when asked about the heavy topics in her novel that began in 2007 and was published in 2020. “As a child growing up almost every family member, friend and acquaintance I had, had been the victim of some kind of sexual assault.”
“The Sins of the Bees” is set in the year 2001, and the author said she feels that this reflects the ever-growing complexities of topics she discusses in her book, not only sexual assault and harassment but what it means to be anti-government as well. Amid a decades long battle for equality, the Black Lives Matter movement has been accused of and had protestors adopt an anti-government label.
“That’s why the place and time are so important,” Lampman said. “What it means to be anti-government is not what it was when I first started writing, what I was trying to get across was this ‘Group Think’ mentality.”Lampman said her goal was to capture Idaho and the West’s staple ideas on what it means to be anti-government, and though her book is fiction the content within was thoroughly researched and inspired by real events and behaviors. Lampman says that this was one of the reasons she felt it was so important for her book cult leader to have been male and have many child brides.“Tragically, we know how common it is for women, girls, to be sexually harassed,” Lampman said. “This story highlights what women face in and out of the workplace.”
According to the author the mentality of the interior west is one easily reflected in a story about anti-government survivalist communities that appropriate sexual assault.
Rebecca Pratt can be reached at [email protected].