1. Story Statement:
Spare the Day is based on the true story of an immigrant couple from Iraq that builds a family in America, with reflections of moments in the ‘old country’ to their adventures in the ‘new world.’ During the changing tides of the ‘70s, Ashurdon, a Chaldean-American veteran, marries an Assyrian-Iraqi woman within a week in Baghdad, shocking his army buddies upon his return to Detroit. Free-spirited, broke and jobless, he attempts to live out the American Dream with his new wife, Vianna, whose ambitious nature parallels that of his critical older brother, Wahid. Meanwhile, his daughter, Francis, journeys through the increasingly “bad” Motor City of the ‘80s and the exploits of her reckless older sister, Abigail, who follows danger at every turn. Amid a series of quirky cultural characters, misfortunes and triumphs, a tragedy blindsides the growing family by the early ‘90s, plunging them into secrets, isolation and the impending loss of everything they built. Ashurdon, Francis and family, end up faced with the choice of either succumbing to the darkest challenge ahead of them or harnessing the beauty of their imperfections to stand together against the forces trying to tear them apart.
2. Sketch the Antagonist or the Antagonistic Force:
A successful engineer and Princeton graduate, Ashurdon’s oldest brother, Wahid, embodies refinement, financial stability and practicality – everything that “Ashur” is not. He boasts of a wife and kids, a home, a flourishing career while his younger brother drags his feet, barely scraping by. Wahid questions every move Ashur makes, from career choices to how he rears his children. As a result, Ashur battles the divide between admiring his older brother’s brilliance, finding his own self-worth and balancing the Chaldean and American cultures. He combats a short-temper that coincides with moments of inadequacy, especially in the wake of his wife’s business acumen and heavy hand, unsure of his place alongside it. Francis, similarly, experiences difficulty fitting in with a quiet-er personality than her rambunctious, popular older sister. Like her father, she experiences marginalization, only by way of the ethnic background written all over her face and a longing to fit into the American landscape of the 80s/90s. Her mother’s demeaning disciplinary practices further break her down as does her father’s waning laughter and the heavily guarded secrets that, once revealed, end up challenging the course of her life and that of her family.
3. Two Breakout Titles:
a. Spare the Day
b. To Grace the Waning Intrigue
4. Novel Comparables:
a. Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• For the underlying theme of finding identity
b. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• For hope in historic times of trial
c. Coming out of the Ice by Victor Herman
• Referenced in this novel for inspiring its raw truth, perseverance, Detroit relationship and human spirit – to which this writer believes “Ice” represents the greatest testament
5. Hook Line:
In 1970s-1990s Detroit, Ashurdon, a fun-loving Chaldean-American veteran and his underestimated daughter Francis, long to prove their worth amid the divergent cultures of Baghdad and America, battling against strong personalities and an eventual hardship that threatens the fabric of their lives.
6. Sketch out the Conditions for the Inner Conflict your Protagonist(s) has(have):
1st Major Conflict (Ashurdon): Metro Detroit, September 1974
• Upon his return from Baghdad, Ashurdon tells his army buddies – Montana (Monty) and Ziv – that he married an Assyrian woman from there within a week’s time. They urge him to realize that he’s broke and jobless, she doesn’t know it and he doesn’t really know her. In a couple weeks, she is due to arrive in the States after completion of her paperwork in London. The heightened stakes of responsibility hit Ashur. He wonders how she will react to his situation? Furthermore, how will he deal with his critical brother, Wahid’s, scrutiny who has been on his case about marrying the ‘right’ person and becoming financially secure?
2nd Major Conflict (Ashurdon): Metro Detroit, January 1989 & Tel Kaif, Iraq, 1952
• When Zain offers Ashurdon pivotal news, it throws him for a loop. Ashur remembers playing Qatta-w-Bilbil (Stick ‘n Birdie) with Zain as children … and how people go towards things that are toxic because there is some sweetness to the effects. He wonders when that toxicity will catch up to his brother and how that will affect him, still trying to find his way after many kids later and years of marriage. Zain is the brother he leans on when Wahid puts him down or other issues at home occur; he is the security blanket. With so many hardships behind him, Zain being ill is a crucial turning point for Ashurdon and his choice of subsequent coping mechanisms.
1st Major Conflict (Francis): Metro Detroit, September-October 1984
• Abby tells Francis about her anxieties – of their parents dying and of being separated. The school separates the play areas of Abby and Francis. Francis experiences the heartache of individuality, wondering what being without her loved ones means for her future. She is subsequently ridiculed at school, wets her bed and is disciplined at home in a demeaning way by her mother, whose personality she neither understands nor respects. The feeling is undoubtably mutual. There is back and forth conflict between Francis, an initially quiet girl, and her mother, who does not hide her disgust for Francis’s silence. Being separated from the older sister that speaks up for her, is a changing point for Francis, who has to come to terms with her own individuality.
2nd Major Conflict (Francis): Metro Detroit, March to September 1988
• When Francis gets glasses, she is teased by the biggest bully at school, Archie Sackus, who has been making fun of her for years. This time, however, Archie slaps her youngest sister, Kate. Francis, enraged, fights him. She gets detention; he is suspended and threatened with being kicked out of school. Archie gets back at her by telling Abigail that Francis says bad things about her father. Her parents – and Abby – believe him. Betrayed by her family’s greater confidence in the bully than her, Francis reveals her insecurities to Desmond, her friend and neighbor, uncertain she can forgive them, feeling like an undervalued outsider in a home with an increasingly bitter father and a mother that strong-arms her.
7. Setting (Inner City Detroit, Baghdad, Suburban Detroit):
Spare the Day is set mainly in inner-city and then suburban Detroit from the 1970s-early 1990s, with intermittent flashbacks of Baghdad, Iraq in the 1940s-1950s and 1986.
Brief Detail:
a. Inner City Detroit
When the 1970s-1980’s Detroit demographics shift, it creates a storm of social, political and economic challenges. Within this timeframe, the region experiences an influx of immigrants from various nations, including a high volume of Chaldeans and other ethnic groups from the Levant and Iraq. Surrounding this mix of cultures, in the subset of Motown, stretches Social Street, along which Ashurdon and Vianna Keldu raise their children, who dabble in the dangers of inner-city life. Between the “boaters,” “homeboys,” “honkeys” and the “Bad Bitches of Social Street,” political correctness does not exist. Kids are left to their own devices, chased with pipes full of piss, threatened with assault, while participating in street fights, going to American Catholic school and attending the Chaldean church of their eccentric uncle, Ammo Tobias, who’s a priest, a couple neighborhoods over. The Keldus dance between the American Hustle and Chaldean Khiga, navigating cultural experiences
b. Baghdad, Iraq
In counterpart, Ashurdon flashes back to Baghdad, depicting key moments of his childhood there in the ‘40s/‘50s and the changes he observes when meeting and marrying Vianna there in the ‘70s. They spar when she decides to go there at the height of the conflict in Iran in 1986.
c. Suburban Detroit
As Ashurdon and his family climb out of financial instability, the stakes change in the wealthier neighborhood. Minor challenges regard defending their cheap clothing, “ghetto” accents, and pockets too shallow to enjoy the finer things that their new neighbors afford, like swimming and skiing at high-end clubs. Their minor struggle takes a turn for the worst when an unanticipated sorrow occurs, putting their economic situation in the negative and testing the responses from the new “frenemies,” that come off as too snooty to care. It’s in this new space, where from the start, tragedy slams into them, and tests the true nature of what it means to belong, to recognize that the first perspective isn’t always the right one, and the power of human compassion versus the hate and darkness that particularly tempt Ashurdon and Francis. Some diamonds don’t have to come from the rough to shine.
The settings of the two falling cities – Detroit and Baghdad – mirror each other as the historical events within those decades and the family’s struggles match their decline. Skylab, the USSR, the Berlin Wall, all fall. As empires tumble under the weight of their division, families do the same, unless they discover the cohesive glue to help them stand.
