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| Barbara Linn Probst (photo: David Heald) |
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Barbara Linn Probst is a former researcher, teacher, and therapist whose novels explore complex themes through the lens of different artistic crafts. In her fourth novel, Roll the Sun Across the Sky (She Writes Press, May 13, 2025), she unravels the story of a writer whose life as a daughter, mother, and grandmother is shaped by words both in and outside of her control. Probst writes frequently about the craft of writing, and currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley.
How do you describe the themes of Roll the Sun Across the Sky?
I think it's about the question: What kind of human being am I? What defines me? Am I more than my worst acts? Can I be more? Is it possible to search for goodness even if you're not always good? That's what interested me in writing the book, and I hope it interests readers as well. Arden is complicated, as we all are. We've all done things we regret, but that doesn't mean we're not capable of rising above them, especially in how we treat others. If I had to give a true elevator pitch, I'd say it's the story of a woman's life from her early 20s to age 60. She has to come to terms with the complexity of that life, and it's not over yet.
She has a life with many chapters.
Yes, it has to do with place, with who she is in relationship with.
I love that. Context shapes who we are and how we show up in the world.
Yes, and it's literally a journey. The novel begins with a train ride, based on one I actually took myself.
Does that make this an autobiographical novel?
I didn't do any of the things Arden did, but I did take that train ride on the Orient Express. I recently found a bunch of really bad short stories I had written after that trip. As bad as the stories were, the sensory details were good. Those impressions of Luxor, the tombs of the workers, the train ride through Bulgaria and Istanbul. I absorbed that and let it germinate into this, but Arden is not me.
The novel also includes details from a real train crash that happened in 2013, on a line I frequently travel. These two trains, these journeys, became symbolic. Life is a journey, and sometimes things happen that change everything, beyond our control.
Arden has certain expectations about the train ride, shaped by literature and idealized notions, but reality doesn't align with them. That idea seems to extend throughout the novel--things happen outside our control, and our expectations don't always match reality.
Absolutely. One of the novel's themes is the contrast between the idea of the story we tell ourselves and how it really is. Arden has an image of the train ride on the Orient Express, but the reality is different. And she tells herself a particular story about what she did to Robert, but that's not quite how it happened. She frequently tells stories that aren't quite the truth, for different reasons. By the end, she even crafts a new story for her granddaughter; is it true? We don't know, and it doesn't matter, because the way she re-stories, re-narrates this moment helps her granddaughter heal. We all have events that we give new meaning to, remember in a certain way, project in a certain way, and tell about, which can have an impact for better or worse.
That makes me think of the "spotlight theory," where people believe they are the center of everything when, actually, there's an entire cast of unseen players influencing the story.
At one point in the book, Arden says, "The only story that interests me is my own." As you mature, you begin to include other people's stories and what you might do to help them have a better story. Part of her transformation is understanding that she wasn't the essential character in someone else's life, and that realization changes her.
Storytelling itself is a force in the novel. Arden wields words in different ways, even weaponizing them at times.
All of my books have been framed around an art form--the previous novel [The Color of Ice] was glass-blowing--and this one is writing. Words are a character, a force in this novel. The things she regrets, her bad acts, are things she says. She says things in moments of thoughtlessness or when she feels trapped, sometimes saying cruel things deliberately. That's her weakness, and she has to live with that. In the end, her growth comes from choosing when to withhold words or reshape them into something healing.
Which is not to say the book is very internal; it's very fast-moving. Readers who have not liked Arden have still said to me, "I couldn't put this book down." And that to me is the greatest compliment as a writer: maybe you don't like my protagonist, or she makes you uncomfortable, but you still want to know what happens next.
Arden is complex.
Yes, humans are all complex. Which brings me to what ended up being the title, this image of a scarab beetle, the symbol of the sun god in Egypt, who rolls the sun across the sky each morning to begin again. Even more than that, the beetle lays its eggs in a ball of dung; new life emerges from waste, from ugliness, from what we would think of as vile. That's a powerful message: we can rise from our own mistakes and find new beginnings. Given the state of the world, I think we need that hope, that sense that goodness and light can still be ours. Something can be built from waste. It's not a sappy hope. It's not sentimental. It calls us to be brave and strong and try again even after we've not been the person we would wish to be.
Hope is critical. And Arden's story involves deep grief and loss, yet she finds ways to continue forward. But the novel isn't just about that loss--it's about what happens after. How do we move forward? How do we find meaning again? That's why the story begins with that tragedy rather than ending with it. The novel is about the journey beyond loss.
The novel moves through time, from 1977 to 2013, jumping between past and present, yet it never feels jarring. How did you manage that balance?
Each timeline is chronological within itself. And each transition has to be so organic, it has to feel necessary. I paid close attention to how each chapter ended and the next began, ensuring a seamless flow, and there is always a link. I'm conscious of the portals between the timelines, and that things are unfolding as you need to know them.
I actually pulled out each timeline separately at one point into a separate little mini-book to ensure they worked as standalone narratives. I also think about writing as an experience--not just telling a story but creating a space where the reader has their own emotional journey. I like books that really invite you to chew over some stuff, with that kind of depth: a page turner, yet a slow burn. --Kerry McHugh