Father Knows Best: An Interview with Fran Cannon Slayton

When the Whistle Blows follows the adventures of Jimmy Cannon, a boy growing up in a rural West Virginia railroading town. Jimmy’s family has worked on the railroad for generations, and that’s what he dreams of doing. But the times are changing, and the town’s old way of life is in danger of disappearing. What inspired you to write your first novel?

It was inspired by my dad’s stories of growing up in 1940s Rowlesburg, West Virginia, as the son of a B & O foreman. When the Whistle Blows is basically about Jimmy’s Halloween adventures every year, from the ages of 12 to 18, as he discovers more and more about his father’s participation in a secret society.

Late at night, Jimmy sneaks into the funeral home and sees the secret society give his recently deceased uncle one last drink of whiskey. Is that fact or fiction?

One of the stories my dad told me was about how my grandfather and a bunch of friends went to an old Irish wake for one of their buddies. They got the guy’s body up out of the casket and had a last drink with him. When I was a kid and heard this, I thought, “That is fascinating.” Maybe for these guys who didn’t necessarily wear their hearts on their sleeves, this was just a way of saying good-bye in a loving and heartfelt way.

Photo by Chip Mitchell/ Getty Images for Reed Business.

The time period might be a combination of the fact that I grew up with my dad’s stories and, because I know the town so well, I could picture those stories. And I’ve seen lots of old-time photographs of what the town was like back in that era. The place was easy to capture. I’ve gone back to Rowlesburg my whole life since I was a kid. I still have an aunt and uncle who live there. At one point, my husband and I even owned a house there—a house there costs the same as a new car, basically. We had to sell it recently because it was just too hard and far away to keep up. But I love the place. I wish you could see it. It is the most gorgeous little town in the world. There’s a river that wraps around the town like a horseshoe and hugs it, and there are mountains on every side. The steam trains from way back when and now the diesel engines still go through it. And when the whistle echoes, it is the most incredible sound as it bounces off the mountains and the river.

What did you learn about yourself from writing the story?

One of the things I learned was very surprising to me. One day I was in the middle of writing it, and I started sobbing in front of my computer with this longing to have met my grandfather, who died when my dad was 16 or 17. I guess I’m very much like Jimmy in that regard—I think there’s always been a sadness for me because I wasn’t part of those stories.

Your novel has received rave reviews. In fact, Kirkus has called it a masterpiece.

I just can’t believe it. If you get me talking about this, I’ll start cracking up, because it’s just shocking. After I got that first Kirkus review, I went away from the review for a while, and then I thought, “I know I read it wrong.”