ZANA: When the Land Changes, Who Remembers the People Who Were There?

Some stories begin with imagination.

Others begin with a place.

For me, ZANA began with both.

Before ZANA became the title of my novel, Zana was the name of a real East Texas community in San Augustine County, Texas—a place connected to an area forever changed by the creation of the reservoir we now know as Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

That history made me think about something much bigger:

What happens to the stories of ordinary people when the landscape around them changes?

From Browndell to Zana

I grew up in Browndell, Texas, and that connection makes this story especially personal to me.

East Texas communities have always been connected by more than county lines. Families moved, married, raised children, attended churches, buried loved ones, and established new branches of their families in neighboring communities.

For families with deep roots in places such as Browndell and Brookeland, looking backward can sometimes lead into San Augustine County and other surrounding areas.

That became part of the inspiration behind ZANA.

Not simply the question of where did we come from?

But:

Who was there before us?

What happened to their communities?

And who will remember their names?

The Story of ZANA

ZANA takes readers back to 1965.

Alma returns from Oklahoma to East Texas searching for her family's connection to a disappearing community called Zana.

At first, she is simply looking for answers.

But then there is an unidentified photograph.

Strangers begin recognizing her face.

Family stories don't quite match the official record.

And three words seem to follow her wherever her search takes her:

DON'T FORGET US.

As the waters of a new reservoir transform the landscape, Alma begins uncovering pieces of a past that refuse to remain buried.

What she discovers forces her to confront a question many of us eventually ask:

How much of who we are began before we were born?

Fiction Rooted in Real Places

ZANA is a novel. Its mystery, dialogue, relationships, and events are part of a fictional story.

But its emotional foundation is rooted in something very real.

Places disappear. Records become difficult to find. Photographs lose their names. Elders pass away. Family stories change as they're handed from one generation to another.

And sometimes the only evidence that someone existed is a name on a document, a faded photograph, a grave marker—or a story somebody remembered long enough to tell.

That's one reason genealogy and family history matter so much.

We aren't simply collecting names and dates.

We're remembering people.

“Don't Forget Us”

While working with the world surrounding ZANA, those three words became more than a line connected to the novel.

Don't forget us.

They could belong to almost any generation that came before us.

That feeling also inspired the song “Browndell, Remember Me.”

The song speaks to the same themes that live inside ZANA: home, ancestry, land, memory and the desire to leave something behind that says:

We were here.

You can move a road.

You can flood land.

You can tear down a house.

You can watch an old community name slowly disappear from modern maps.

But as long as somebody remembers the people who lived there, their story isn't completely gone.

Maybe ZANA Will Make You Search Too

One of my hopes for this novel is that readers won't stop thinking when they reach the final page.

Maybe ZANA will make someone call an older relative and ask a question they've never asked before.

Maybe someone will finally write the names on the backs of those old family photographs.

Maybe someone will open a census record, search an old cemetery, or ask:

“Where did our family live before they came here?”

Because sometimes one question leads to another.

And another.

Until suddenly you're not just researching history.

You're finding your people.

And perhaps that's what ZANA has been about all along.

About ZANA

ZANA by T. Dianell Johnson is a historical family mystery about identity, memory, buried truths, and the things even water cannot erase.

Some places disappear from the map. Their people don't have to disappear with them.

— T. Dianell Johnson