All Interviews

Southern writer Patti Callahan Henry has been compared to Anne Rivers Siddons, Mary Alice Monroe and Dorothea Benton Frank. With a touch as graceful as a twilight breeze, she explores the lives of women;old and young and in-between;in novels like Losing the Moon and Between the Tides. Her fifth book, The Art of Keeping Secrets, is a delicately wrought exploration of the unlikely relationship that forms between two women, Annabelle and Sofie, after the untimely death of Annabelle's husband, Knox Murphy, in a plane crash. The Art of Keeping Secrets delves with kindness into the dilemmas of history and memory, love and duty as Annabelle and Sofie are forced to confront and examine the truth about Knox and their pasts;something each has actively avoided until now. We caught up with Henry at her home near Atlanta to ask about the new book and the appeal of the literary life.

This is your fifth novel in five years;and you came to writing after pursing a career as a nurse. What has been the biggest adjustment you've had to make to the writing life?

Before I was published, writing was my private passion, something I did for my own heart and soul. The biggest hurdle came for me when I had to somehow integrate my passion into a job a blessing and a struggle simultaneously.

Is there something about writing that's surprised you?

My two biggest surprises and joys have been the relationships I've made with other writers and then the life lessons I learn from the craft of writing. When I first began to dip my toes into the literary life, I immediately found a world I hadn't known existed, a world where other people cared as much about books, words and novels as I did. My life has been enriched with these newfound relationships.

Secrets and their consequences are the centerpiece ofseveral of your novels. What fascinates you about the nature of secrets?

I'm intrigued as a storyteller about the unlived life, the road not taken, the secret not told. I'm always thinking about what-if scenarios, that "Y" in the road where a character makes what seems a small decision at the time, yet it is something that changes a life for better or worse. These are the things that have me returning to the page again and again.

Your novels center on the myriad relationships between women. Do you draw inspiration for these supportive relationships from your own life?

I have been blessed with wonderful, kind women in my life, so I am sure I draw from those feelings and memories both intentionally and unintentionally. I also think that we as writers paint a picture of the way we would like things to be, or how we would like things to turn out for all of us.

There are some beautiful scenes connected to dolphins in The Art of Keeping Secrets. How did you do your research? Are dolphins really that smart?

Thank you for the compliment. Those scenes were a delight to write. I spend my summers on the South Carolina coast where the dolphins are an integral part of the landscape. I have watched them for years, touched their sleek backs, believed they were talking to me and inspiring me. I can take a walk along the beach and watch a dolphin follow me, flicking his tail at me as if trying to tell me something important. They can make me cry. I also did research to get the facts right. I read numerous books on dolphins, read research papers and contacted a marine scientist at Duke. And, yes, dolphins are that smart – but that's just my humble opinion.

If a book club chose to read your book, what is an appetizer or small plate you might suggest to complement the mood?

Knox's famous crab cakes [mentioned in the novel]. OK, so I have no idea how to make them, but they sound good.

What books are in your beach bag this summer?

I've heard this called the summer of women's fiction, so after my book tour, I'll grab a handful and hide with my family. I can't wait for Anne Rivers Siddons' new book, Off Season, and Mary Alice Monroe's Time Is a River. I'm also a big fan of Elizabeth Berg and I know she has a new one. So many books, so little time.

Novelist Barbara Samuel writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Southern writer Patti Callahan Henry has been compared to Anne Rivers Siddons, Mary Alice Monroe and Dorothea Benton Frank. With a touch as graceful as a twilight breeze, she explores the lives of women;old and young and in-between;in novels like Losing the Moon and…

For 25 years Andre Dubus III has been trying to get one story off his chest. "Like so many writers, there is part of the canvas that wants to come from my life," Dubus says during a call to the incredible-sounding house he has been building in the woods outside of Newburyport, Massachusetts, for nearly five years. "I didn’t grow up a lost boy in Sudan and I didn’t grow up in the ghetto with a 9 mm pointed at my face. I was the son of a great writer of short stories. My mother was a social worker. But it was a poor childhood, as in no money, divorce, a lot of physical violence – just this long story of poverty and moving around and drinking and drugging, all before age 15."

In conversation, Dubus, who nine years ago published the acclaimed novel The House of Sand and Fog, is a kind of natural force. Words and ideas spill from him in a torrent. His anecdotes brim with passion. But there are eddies, too. He pauses to ask his interviewer many questions. He quotes writers who have influenced him. He is friendly, familiar, effusive, self-aware. Each of his assertions is followed by a reflective pause. Sometimes he reverses course. One senses the writer – or writing teacher or carpenter – at work as he shapes his material.

"I’ve been trying and trying to write this autobiographical novel," he says. "One of the attempts at this was called Lie Down and Make Angels. Terrible, man. It was just so bad. . . . So I think I’ve decided I’m not one of those fiction writers who can write from my life. It’s like calling a dog. Maybe the dog just doesn’t want to come. Maybe you’re whistling for that dog and instead a rooster walks in. I guess you’re writing a rooster story."

One of Dubus’ "rooster" stories was the wonderful The House of Sand and Fog. To Dubus’ surprise it became a bestseller, an Oprah pick and a movie starring Ben Kingsley. Until its phenomenal success, he had worked as a bartender, a carpenter and an occasional teacher of writing (he now has a permanent appointment teaching writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell), to support his wife and young family (his children are now 15, 12, and 11). Until then he had never owned a home. With the book’s earnings he bought his mother a truck and with his brother and friends, began to build a house.

"I went a little cuckoo. This is just one monster of a house. I built this beautiful in-law apartment for my wife’s parents. I built my wife a dance studio – she’s a dancer with a dance company. You know? I built a big house and quickly ran out of money. So for the last year the floor’s been painted plywood subfloor. I wrote the last part of the new book, The Garden of Last Days, in the future master bathroom on a plywood floor near a hole in the floor where the toilet will go. But I tell you, the whole thing was completely absorbing. It was one of the most beautiful experiences – one of the most beautiful ordeals – I’ve been through. It’s funny, I’m 48 and we moved in three years ago and I realized that this is the first time in 45 years that I didn’t have a landlord."

This is just one of the many ways in which Dubus makes a point that he repeats throughout the conversation: "There is a distinction between the writing and the career. As a provider for a family of seven, I’m very grateful for the career that I stumbled into, especially since The House of Sand and Fog. But writing should be looked at like the practice of yoga or praying. It’s a daily meditative practice where you learn over the years that if you just do it you’ll look back and there will be a story or novella or a novel. That’s got to sound disingenuous on one level because I did have a contract for The Garden of Last Days and I needed it financially. But I honestly believe I have to ignore the career and give the writing permission to completely fall apart and be a nine-page essay, a novella or a poem."

Luckily, Dubus’ new novel, The Garden of Last Days, did not fall apart and might be another career-making novel. It vividly portrays the lives of an unexpected set of characters who collide – to emotionally wrenching effect – in a Sarasota, Florida, strip club in September 2001.

"The novel began with this image of cash on the bureau," Dubus says. "I didn’t know where it came from but it soon became clear that it belonged to one of these women I had read about after the literal and figurative smoke cleared after 9/11. I remember reading a couple of brief references to the terrorists being seen in strip clubs and wondering what that was about. But what captured my curiosity even more is what it would be like to be a stripper and realize that some of the money on your bureau is from one of these guys who went on to kill 3,000 innocent people."

Dubus is a writer who is driven to take risks. "I talk to my students about the ‘n’ word," Dubus says. "I tell them writing takes a lot of nerve. A lot of nerve. Especially after you are two or three years into writing a novel." In The Garden of Last Days, Dubus exhibits a novelist’s steely nerve by making his young stripper, April, the terrorist Bassam and the hapless working stiff AJ – who form the novel’s central, desperate triangle – as humans deserving our empathy at least as much as they deserve our condemnation. He does this in part by revealing these characters’ elemental loneliness.

"Loneliness is a common theme in the books I’ve written. I don’t want to over-psychologize, because I think the roots of a writer’s characters are mysterious; their origins go beyond a writer’s experience and tap into something universal. But, you know, I was a new kid in school about 12 or 13 times growing up. I did eventually find my place and my friends. But who knows? That little boy could be working out a lot of demons in these stories."

Could be, too, that Dubus’ compelling new novel will have the same astonishing reception as did The House of Sand and Fog. If so, then one must surely wonder: what new edifice will Dubus build in his woods and how long will we wait until the next "rooster" wanders into his yard?

Alden Mudge writes from Oakland, California.

 

For 25 years Andre Dubus III has been trying to get one story off his chest. "Like so many writers, there is part of the canvas that wants to come from my life," Dubus says during a call to the incredible-sounding house he has been…

Many of Ronald Kidd's novels for children and young adults are built on keen historical research. Monkey Town (2006) explored East Tennessee in the 1920s during the infamous Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution. Kidd's latest, On Beale Street, offers readers a trip back to the Memphis of the mid-1950s, a city mired in Jim Crow racism but also the site of an upcoming musical explosion.

"Memphis is a seminal place," Kidd says. "As someone who as a kid listened to a transistor radio under my pillow, I got fascinated with the idea of a teenager in Memphis being exposed to black music and having it open up a world for him."

The protagonist in Kidd's new book for teens is 15-year-old Johnny Ross, a spunky and inquisitive young man facing identity and class issues. Johnny is also drawn to the rhythm and blues he hears on Beale Street, Memphis' musical mecca, and this passion leads him to landing a job with legendary producer Sam Phillips, whose Sun Records cut the first Elvis Presley hits and later helped launch the careers of music immortals like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. Kidd deftly merges the real-life Memphis music people and events with his cast of fictional characters.

The author, who lives in Nashville, was a musician himself in earlier days. "It's great to return to that in my writing," Kidd says. "It just seems like a bunch of stuff came together in Memphis in the '50s—the cult of celebrity, rock 'n' roll, how the blues went R&B—and I became fascinated with that point in history." Like his creator, Johnny Ross becomes enamored of the Memphis musicians and clubs and DJs of the day, even befriending Elvis and hanging with icons like guitarist Scotty Moore. Kidd asked Moore, now 76 and also a Nashville resident, to give his book a read in the manuscript stage to assure historical accuracy. Kidd also includes some valuable endnotes in the book, which delineate a dozen or so Memphis personages.

On Beale Street also works a strong racial theme, which becomes very personal for Johnny yet is also reflected in the confluence of musical styles, serving as a harbinger of Elvis' eventual success. "If I could find a white boy who sang like a Negro," Kidd quotes Phillips, "I'd make me a million dollars." Johnny Ross embodies the coming together of black and white. "I had to deal with the racial issue, which I embarked on with some trepidation," says the author. "Like who am I to write anything about the experience of being black in the U.S. or in Memphis at that time? But I thought the story called for it, and if I told it from the point of view of someone who is white, then that would give me a way in." The totally fictional side of Kidd's tale features credible characters who represent various aspects of the Memphis racial and economic divides, from Southern white bigots to at least one young black man who has strong ideas about justice and change. Johnny becomes fully caught up in the social collision, and surprising revelations have a dramatic impact on his future.

"I'm interested in the mixture and the sparks that are struck when different groups meet and clash," says Kidd. "Plus, the world that Johnny Ross discovers in this book is essentially gone. That's one reason I wanted to try to recapture it—because it was a really special, gritty place." When he's not a novelist, or working his day job as an editor of religious nonfiction, Kidd is also a playwright. "When I write plays," he says, "they're for adults or a general audience. But for some reason, when I write novels, they're for teenagers. It's nothing I turn off and on—it's simply the way I think about the story. It's always someone in their teenage years who's at a turning point in their lives."

Next up for Kidd is The Year of the Bomb, due out next spring. The setting is again the 1950s, his heroes four 13-year-old boys, his theme revolving around McCarthyism. "I do lots of historical research," Kidd says, adding with a chuckle, "it's hard to know when to stop. But between the Internet and books and helpful librarians, I'm always finding a pathway into my material."

Martin Brady is a musician and writer in Nashville.

Many of Ronald Kidd's novels for children and young adults are built on keen historical research. Monkey Town (2006) explored East Tennessee in the 1920s during the infamous Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution. Kidd's latest, On Beale Street, offers readers a trip back…

For true believers who wish confidently upon stars and blow out their birthday candles with sure expectation, Noelle Oxenhandler's new memoir will surely please – while perhaps winning over a nay-saying wish skeptic or two. The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul follows a year in the author's life as she decides to try "Putting It Out There." An essayist and Buddhist practitioner, Oxenhandler is facing 50, with a painful divorce and spiritual upheaval behind her, when she finds herself ready for change. She openly, though doubtfully, plunges into "wishcraft" and declares three desires: to purchase a house, find a new man and heal her soul. With honesty, humor and soulfulness, the author chronicles her year-long effort to "desire, ask, believe, receive," exploring the ancient mysteries of wishing, facing her ambivalence about desire and negotiating the intricacies of focus and receptivity. Wishes can come true, she tells BookPage, with a bit of "vision, hope and hard work."

As an essayist who loves logic and rigorous argument, what led you to try your hand at the uncertain mysteries of wishing?

After having lived in the cold, gray snowbelt of upstate New York for 15 years, when I returned to California – which is where I grew up – it felt already as though a great wish had come true. It seemed natural, then, to reclaim other lost loves – like painting – and that led to my first real experiment in wishing.

How did you reconcile your spiritual background with your desire for material things?

I think there actually was a kind of conversion experience that happened for me in the course of my experiment. In various ways I was led to shed my previous incarnation as a "wish snob" and to open myself to the touching humanness of wishing for things – not just spiritual things, but very concrete and tangible things too. Now I've come to feel that so long as we stay aware of the relative importance of things, there's really no contradiction between wanting "a happy death" and wanting a puppy dog (to use an example from John F. Kennedy's childhood).

Though your three heartfelt wishes came true, you still take wishing with "a grain of salt." What is "the grain of salt that hasn't dissolved" for you?

I think the grain of salt is more temperamental than anything. I simply do have a skeptical nature, and I'm superstitious about courting too much earthly happiness! And then I really do believe that the greatest happiness of all comes when we are able to wish for what is. One of the supreme experiences in my life occurred years ago during a 100-day training period in a Zen monastery in northern California. One extremely hot day I was assigned to the utterly disgusting job of feeding rotting garbage into a compost machine, which then sent this stinking splatter all over me! For the first three hours, I thought I was in hell. It was so bad that at some point, something inside me shifted and I let go of all resistance. After the noon break, I found myself rushing back to the garbage heap as though I was going to meet a lover! I couldn't wait to get back there because I had discovered the incredible sense of freedom that comes when we realize that we can be happy no matter what our circumstances.

The Wishing Year could very well kick off a national wishing movement. Do you believe that, employed collectively, wishing could have greater positive impacts and benefits for humankind?

Yes, I really do believe that. In my now 50-plus years of existence, I feel that I personally have never witnessed such a globally dark and dangerous time – a time when the very fate of the earth is in question. The temptation to despair is so very great – and the act of wishing is a very powerful antidote to despair. But not passive wishing. What's needed is that good old-fashioned combination of forward-looking vision, hope and hard work.

Do you plan to continue practicing "wishcraft"? If so, what will you wish for when you blow candles out on your birthday cake?

Well, I really don't want to sound like a "wish snob," but right now – and to a large extent thanks to my wishing year – I'm feeling as though most of my significant personal desires have been met. So, apart from my wishes from this fragile planet of ours, I'm wishing that those who are younger than me and facing big transitions – in my own life, that would be my daughter, my sister and my students – will find happiness in their unfolding paths. As to my own more tangible desires for myself: I confess that when I blew out the candles on my last birthday cake, I wished that The Wishing Year would do well!

For true believers who wish confidently upon stars and blow out their birthday candles with sure expectation, Noelle Oxenhandler's new memoir will surely please - while perhaps winning over a nay-saying wish skeptic or two. The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul follows…

When David Maraniss finished his much-praised biography of baseball superstar Roberto Clemente (Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero), he was "determined not to write another sports book anytime soon." He had previously written a highly regarded biography of perhaps the greatest football coach of all time, Vince Lombardi (When Pride Still Mattered), so his feeling was: been there, done that.

Besides, during a 30-year career at the Washington Post, Maraniss had developed a reputation as a great observer of the American political scene. In 1993, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his series on the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency. (He also shared in the 2008 Pulitzer given to the Washington Post team that covered the Virginia Tech shooting.) He published an astonishing account of the 1960s (They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967). He wrote a seminal biography of Bill Clinton (First in His Class). And, as Maraniss finished his work on the Clemente biography, the preliminary jockeying for position in that other great American contact sport — the run for the presidency — was already beginning.

Unfortunately for Maraniss — but not, it turns out, for readers — Roberto Clemente and the Pittsburgh Pirates were on their way to the World Series at the same time that the world was traveling to Rome for the 1960 Olympics.

"I was doing research on August and September 1960 and I kept seeing these names in the sports section – Rafer Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, Abebe Bikila, Cassius Clay," Maraniss says during a call to his home in the Cleveland Park section of Washington, D.C., where from his third-floor office he can see the spires of the National Cathedral. Maraniss and his wife, Linda, the "quirky saint" to whom he dedicates Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, now divide their time between Washington and Madison, Wisconsin, where they grew up. "Those are pretty intriguing names. That’s what first struck me. But I kept saying I really don’t want to do a sports book."

As he read on, however, Maraniss noticed that this was the time when Nikita Khrushchev was about to make his first visit to the United Nations in New York as the Cold War turned serious. "Black Africa was gaining its independence that summer, so that was another layer. Then I read that a doping death had taken place that year and that it was the first televised summer Olympics. And that was enough." From these strands and additional stories turned up through the prodigious research and reporting that is typical of his books, Maraniss fashions a completely captivating and frequently surprising narrative of the 17 days of athletic competition and political intrigue in Rome during August and September 1960.

First of course, there are the athletes. This was the Olympics when a brash, unknown 18-year-old boxer from Louisville named Cassius Clay burst on the scene. But in that moment, the future Muhammad Ali could not hold a candle to the immensely respected decathalon winner Rafer Johnson, who was the first black athlete to lead the American team and carry the United States flag during the opening ceremonies. It is one of the wonders of Maraniss’ storytelling that he can present a charmingly callow Cassius Clay, bragging his way through his fear of flying, without succumbing to the huge temptation to make Clay’s the dominant story of these Olympics.

"The one thing people know about the 1960 Olympics is Cassius Clay," Maraniss says. "But that’s not where Rome 1960 focuses. The other story that I downplayed, but for different reasons, was the basketball team. I love Oscar Robinson and Jerry West. I think that backcourt is for the ages. But I have never thought that basketball represents the Olympics, so I didn’t want to get sidetracked on that."

Instead Maraniss writes marvelous, suspenseful accounts of competitors from around the world. Among the most fascinating of these is the story of the eccentric Joe Faust, an American high jumper who didn’t come close to winning and yet remained so obsessed with the sport that he continued to jump with almost religious fervor into his 70s. "What an interesting life and mind," Maraniss says of the hours he spent interviewing Faust. "He’s the kind of character that as a reporter you’re always looking for."

Just as important to Rome 1960 are the intense political battles that were being waged behind the scenes. This was a time when Cold War antagonisms were nearing their height, and the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. vied mightily to win the Olympic propaganda war. Among his many discoveries, Maraniss uncovers the story of the American’s ham-fisted attempt to get Soviet athlete Igor Ter-Ovanesyan to defect. Maraniss also offers a ground-breaking account of the fierce political competition between China and Taiwan that played out during the summer of 1960.

"In Rome 1960 you see the roots of what exists today," Maraniss says. "The Chinese are using the Olympics for political purposes just as the U.S. and the Soviets did during the Cold War. You can’t take politics out of the Olympics no matter how hard you try. So you probably shouldn’t try. I don’t think anybody should boycott the Olympics, but the athletes and countries that go should say whatever the hell they want to say about China."

Then, ever the consummate journalist, Maraniss adds, "The Chinese have never experienced the world press the way they will during the Olympics. I don’t know what will happen but it will be fascinating. But I’m not going. I have asthma and I don’t want to be in all that air pollution."

That’s too bad. Imagine the stories he would tell.

Alden Mudge writes from Oakland, California.

 

When David Maraniss finished his much-praised biography of baseball superstar Roberto Clemente (Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero), he was "determined not to write another sports book anytime soon." He had previously written a highly regarded biography of perhaps the greatest football…

Here’s a classic tale: the well-meaning but gullible innocent, seduced by corruptors into a morally murky enterprise, must question everything he holds true in order to redeem himself. In Clyde Edgerton’s ninth comic novel, The Bible Salesman, 20-year-old Henry Dampier hitches a ride from a smooth Clark Gable look-alike named Preston Clearwater, point man for a car-theft ring working the backwoods of North Carolina following World War II. Clearwater cons Henry into becoming his accomplice by convincing the boy he’s actually an undercover FBI agent moving vehicles in America’s great chess game against communism. When Henry eventually wises up, it’s a safe bet there will be blood.

The provenance of Edgerton’s latest novel is worth exploring, if only to gain a glimpse of how this idiosyncratic humorist, longtime professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and lead singer of the Rank Strangers routinely produces magic from mayhem. With Walker Percy long gone and T.R. Pearson AWOL, few writers today mine the rich Southern idiom like Edgerton. Who else can so seamlessly weave scripture-quoting housecats into a rural Tar Heel narrative and make it fly? Or explore existential themes of uncertainty and impermanence through the lens of a "Jesus Saves!" bumper-sticker salesman whose handiwork washes away with the Carolina rain?

Trouble, or at least literary mischief, sauntered Edgerton’s way when two Southern dark humorists, William Gay (Twilight) and Tom Franklin (Hell at the Breech), approached him to write a short story in tribute to Flannery O’Connor for a Southern Review anthology. Edgerton responded with "The Great Speckled Bird," a story that throws together two archetypes from O’Connor’s work: the Bible salesman from "Good Country People" and the misfit from "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Intrigued by the resulting interplay between these two borrowed characters, Edgerton decided to expand the short story into a novel. A really long novel. "In my early draft, I took Henry from 1930 to 2000. It was a life story of this character," he recalls. "As I started to work, I realized I was going to be unable to finish a book that big, so I decided to stop at 1950." Even as Edgerton was tailoring back his tale, he imbued in young Henry his own lifelong quest to understand the confounding and sometimes contradictory nature of Scripture.

"The first 18 years of my life, I was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that every word in the Bible was inspired by a knowing, present God. I gradually began to doubt that, and did not have the insight that it was possible to throw out the baby with the bath water; that Christianity was a little more complicated than a belief in the literal interpretation of every word in the Bible," he says.

Edgerton, who admits he tends to follow his interests first and then worry about how to fit them into his fiction, became particularly intrigued by two translations of the 23rd Psalm.

"One of the inspirations for writing this book was stumbling on that last line of the 23rd Psalm, in which the Greek translation, which was from Hebrew, said ‘and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ OK, that indicates a life after death. The Hebrew Bible on the other hand, the source of that Scripture, says ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord down to old age.’ There’s an astounding difference; the difference between those two passages is infinity!"

Such biblical puzzles have Henry stuck literally on page one of the Old Testament, trying to figure out two conflicting versions of the Book of Genesis. His earnest efforts throughout the novel to talk through and resolve these Bible brainteasers with anyone who will listen, be it Clearwater, his cousin Carson or his girlfriend Marleen, ultimately help him recognize the jam he’s in and make the split-second decision necessary to save himself.

So what’s with the Scripture-spieling housecats? Edgerton issues the chuckle of a lad caught skipping Sunday school.

"Wow. I’ll tell you what’s up with cats. I did a lot of reading of different translations of the Bible and biblical commentary and scholarship, the differences between Jewish traditions and Christian traditions and the melding of the two, so I had a lot of notes and information. I ended up having no way to use that information because I didn’t have any theologians as characters to discuss it. In my case, the only way I could get it in was through these damn cats," he explains.

"Near the end, maybe two or three drafts from the last draft, those cats talked for pages and pages, Old Testament and New Testament, Christianity and Jewish arguments. My editor didn’t understand any of it and advised me to cut it, which I did. I think the book is better as a consequence. I knew I couldn’t solve the centuries of disputes between Jews and Christians in one novel."

Unlike most of his previous novels, from Raney (1985) to Lunch at the Picadilly (2003), The Bible Salesman reveals little about the man behind the mischief, theological felines notwithstanding. Edgerton chalks that up to having started with Ms. O’Connor’s archetypes in developing his characters. "Henry and Clearwater and the situations were more made-up than any novel I’ve ever written," he says.

Edgerton hopes to continue that trend in his next project, an exploration of ’60s music and race relations that centers on "seven white boys who try to do James Brown’s Live at the Apollo album from the first note to the last note verbatim."

"I wouldn’t mind a different direction," Edgerton admits. "I just kind of follow my nose. In my first eight books, I used a lot of stuff from my life and people I’ve known; it’s all been a translation from real life to fiction. My guess is, starting with this book it will be more whole cloth than before. I find myself counting on and wanting to just make up more stuff."

 

Jay MacDonald writes from the Bible belt in Austin, Texas.

Here's a classic tale: the well-meaning but gullible innocent, seduced by corruptors into a morally murky enterprise, must question everything he holds true in order to redeem himself. In Clyde Edgerton's ninth comic novel, The Bible Salesman, 20-year-old Henry Dampier hitches a ride from a…

Just before his 30th birthday back in 1999, Canadian Andrew Davidson realized with a start that he had not yet lived in another country. Living abroad was one of the 35 items Davidson had included on his "things to do before I die" list back in his 20s. So without much fanfare, he soon took off to Japan to teach English for a number of years.

This summer, Davidson will cross another item off his life list with the publication of his first novel, The Gargoyle. Publication, it seems, is both climax and anti-climax for Davidson. Climax because the manuscript of The Gargoyle set off a spirited bidding war that left Davidson the highest paid first-time novelist in Canada in decades. Anticlimax because Davidson has been writing seriously, "with consistency and discipline," since he was 16. The Gargoyle itself took seven years to complete, much of the work being done at night while Davidson was in Japan.

"I would work from 10 in the morning until 7 at night at my office job," Davidson says during a late-night call to, well, to his laptop in fact, located somewhere in Winnipeg, Manitoba, near where he grew up (Davidson does all his telephoning over the Internet, a holdover from working abroad). "I would walk home, which took me one hour and five minutes. That time was necessary to clear away the workday. I would spend maybe two hours watching television, answering emails, playing computer solitaire, and then I would work from 10 or 11 at night until 2 in the morning. It was the closest I could get to an overnight schedule. The natural rhythms of my body, strangely enough, are to be awake at night." Perhaps Davidson's nocturnal writing habits explain the dreamscape – or nightscape – feel of much of his first foray into long fiction. The Gargoyle tells the story of the unnamed narrator's gruesome car crash, his vividly described recovery in a hospital burn ward, and his meeting and developing relationship with Marianne Engel, a possibly insane sculptor of gargoyles who believes she has known and loved the narrator for more than 700 years.

"The book really began with the character of Marianne Engel," Davidson says. "She arrived first and she arrived with her name and with her look, which is the wild hair and the eyes that shift colors. She came in an image standing in front of a church saying things that could quite possibly sound insane. But I knew they weren't. She started intruding on my other writing until I couldn't ignore her any longer and had to give her a larger space to function in. I had worked through all the other forms – I started writing poetry and then stage plays and screenplays and short stories. I finally felt I was ready to try a novel, and Marianne Engel demanded it of me."

Fairly quickly, Davidson also realized he needed a narrator to encapsulate Marianne's story. And then, as so often happens, his narrator required a life of his own. "I get interested in the strangest things," Davidson says. "At the time I began the novel I was fascinated by the treatment of severe burn survivors. For years I've been thinking about the idea of people being 'burned by love' and I've wondered what if a romantic relationship didn't end with that feeling but began with it. So I just took it to the most literal level of having an actual burn survivor as the protagonist. I thought I just needed someone to tell the story of Marianne Engel and then I realized that the story was actually also about him."

To bring the threads of his story together, Davidson did an "an awful lot of research, from burn treatment to Dante and life in the Middle Ages to German mystic theology, from Viking times to Victorian times, from Japanese glassblowing to medieval book making."

The result is that Davidson infuses The Gargoyle with historical detail and with borrowings from earlier literary eras. With a nod to Dante, for example, Davidson's nameless narrator takes a harrowing journey through hell as he detoxes from the morphine he has subsisted on in the hospital. And, mining the Medieval tradition of stories within the story on the theme of love, Davidson offers four gem-like tales of love throughout the ages that illuminate the emotional dilemmas faced by Marianne and her beloved burn victim.

"I have a particular affection for the story of Sei, the Japanese glassblower," Davidson says of the fictional girl who filled the glass sculptures she made with the sighs of her forbidden love, sighs which burst hauntingly forth when each glass container was broken. "On one level it has to do with my affection for Japan. It's also a story that I think could go out into the world outside the context of the book."

In 2004, Davidson returned to Winnipeg to "concentrate on my writing and play old-timers hockey. I have a lot of family and friends in Manitoba. It's so cold in the winter you want to stay in, so you might as well stay in and write overnight. One of the things that I like very much about now being able to living as a professional writer is that it affords the opportunity to live anywhere. So why not Winnipeg, really?"

The move certainly didn't hurt his writing career. Last year the literary world buzzed with the news that the unknown Canadian author had landed a deal with Doubleday for more than $1.25 million for his first book.

"I understand why that's the story," Davidson says with a hint of resignation. "The book's not out there and reporters need something to write about. I'm really looking forward to publication, when the book is really out there for the public and that becomes the story. For any writer, and I'm no exception, it's about the story we want to tell."

To Davidson's apparent relief, that vivid story will finally reach readers' hands this month.

Alden Mudge writes from Berkeley, California.

Just before his 30th birthday back in 1999, Canadian Andrew Davidson realized with a start that he had not yet lived in another country. Living abroad was one of the 35 items Davidson had included on his "things to do before I die" list…

Journalist Tom Vanderbilt has made a career out of writing about topics from the mundane to the obscure, including sneakers, Quonset huts and nuclear fallout shelters. His writing is distinguished by its attention to detail, with exhaustive research used to explore every nuance of a given subject.

Vanderbilt does just that in latest book, Traffic, an eye-opening and entertaining journey into the experiences of driving. The book examines virtually every aspect of driving, from why traffic jams form to why the other lane always seems to be moving faster. BookPage asked Vanderbilt (who drives a 2001 Volvo V40) to serve as a tour guide in negotiating the challenges we face on the road – and in the parking lot.

What motivated you to write Traffic?

I've always been an "early merger" at places like highway work zones where you're forced to merge from two lanes of traffic into one. On one occasion, I became frustrated in a long queue as vehicles kept passing me in the "closing" lane. I jumped to the head of the queue and "late merged." I felt guilty about it, but as I began to study the literature, I found that if the system were set up the right way, more traffic would flow through the bottleneck if everyone did not get over sooner. What I had thought my whole driving life was the right thing to do was in fact wrong. That made me wonder what else I had misunderstood about this curious everyday environment.

Why do drivers take on different personalities when they get behind the wheel?

In traffic, we are largely anonymous, secure in our own enclosures, and there is little actual human contact or immediate consequence for our actions – at least until that guy with the gun rack on the pickup truck you gave the finger to pulls up alongside you at the traffic light! All of these factors lead us to behave in ways we might not otherwise. An interesting comparison is the Internet, whether it's "cyber-bullying" or flaming someone in a chat room. It's been called the "online disinhibition effect." Whether we are corrupted by the medium or expressing our true selves is another question altogether.

Why is it that drivers should take the first spot they see in a parking lot instead of circling for the best spot?

A couple of interesting studies have found that people who search for the "best" spot, i.e., the closest to the entrance of the building, often end up spending more time searching for a spot than it would have cost them to simply grab the first one they saw and walk; or sometimes, what people thought was the best spot was actually further away than a spot a few rows away from the entrance (but closer to the beginning of the row). This is a great example of how "heuristics" – our little rules of thumb that guide our decision-making – often trick us into not making the best decision.

What is distinctive about the way Americans drive?

We certainly drive more than anyone else in the world. No other country has as many SUVs or light trucks in its vehicle fleet. I've also not seen another place so disposed to putting bumper stickers on cars. There's another thing I've noticed in driving culture here that perhaps seems American: We all feel as if we have rights, but we also don't want our rights to be violated. Sometimes these bump up against each other in traffic; for example, some people feel they have the right to speed, some people feel they have the right to go the speed limit, and not be tailgated by someone behind. We say the left lane is for "faster traffic," but faster than what? To quote the late George Carlin, "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

 

How do you think rising gas prices will change American driving habits?

As we're already seeing, people will drive less – cutting out so-called "discretionary" driving, switching to cycling or public transport for more trips. We'll also drive smaller cars – and better smaller cars, mind you, than those econo-boxes from the early 1970s. It might also cause people to "drive smarter" – not accelerating as quickly from a stop, trying to avoid stopping and starting all the time by timing traffic flow better, and just driving slower in general. Fuel consumption is nonlinear: it costs more to go faster, even after accounting for time savings, and the percentage increase rises with speed.

Americans are in love with drive-through restaurants. Do you have a favorite drive-through order?

That's easy. The "Double Double" with fries and a Coke at In-and-Out Burger, which sadly doesn't exist in New York. But please, park before you eat – and shut off the engine!

John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Journalist Tom Vanderbilt has made a career out of writing about topics from the mundane to the obscure, including sneakers, Quonset huts and nuclear fallout shelters. His writing is distinguished by its attention to detail, with exhaustive research used to explore every nuance of…

Even superstars get the jitters. Christopher Paolini tries not to dwell on the huge expectations surrounding Brisingr, the third book in his blockbuster Inheritance Cycle fantasy series.

With the first two books in the series selling 15.5 million copies worldwide, Knopf is preparing for Brisingr's September 20 release with a 2.5 million-copy first printing, its biggest ever for a children's book. Meanwhile, fans are squealing messages like, "I can't wait!" and "OMG. I need it!" on web discussion boards."As an author, I found that I can't really allow myself to think about those things," 24-year-old Paolini says, speaking by phone from his home in Montana. "I actually fell into that trap with the first part of Brisingr… sat there and I started obsessing about every single word."

He worked past it by turning away from the keyboard and writing with an ink-dip pen on 80-pound parchment paper. His mother transcribed the pages. Now it's readers who are obsessing, spinning the meager bits of information Paolini has teased out to them into full-blown speculation about what will happen to Eragon, Saphira and the rest of the inhabitants of Alagaësia.

Among the clues: Eragon will meet a new and terrifying enemy ("He likes to laugh a lot and not in a good way," says Paolini), Eragon will meet a god and one of the characters gets pregnant.

Paolini says Brisingr is more complex than the two books that preceded it, Eragon and Eldest, in part because of its multiple points of view. For the first time, portions of the story are told through Saphira's eyes. How did he find the voice of the smart, loyal and brilliantly sapphire female dragon? "I drew upon my own experience of the pets and animals that I grew up around, especially some of the cats I had," he says. "I thought a dragon would be like a cat in some ways, that same sort of self-satisfied attitude."

Beyond that, weighty moral dilemmas and the sheer number of events make for a rich narrative, he says. The story is so complex, in fact, that halfway through the writing of the book, Paolini decided to turn it into two books. "At a certain point, I realized that if I wrote the rest of Brisingr as I'd planned, it was going to end up being about 2,000 pages," he says.

What had been billed for years as a trilogy became a four-book cycle. As it is, Brisingr is no lightweight at 784 pages. Paolini acknowledges that the book's sophistication reflects his growth as a writer, but he also sees it as the inevitable result of having spent nearly a decade immersed in the fictional world he created when he was just 15.

The home-schooled teenager had earned his high school diploma early and wasn't ready to plunge into college yet when he began writing Eragon. Two years later, he gave it to his parents to read. They decided to self-publish the book and by the age of 18, the boy who'd grown up sheltered, living in the shadow of Montana's Beartooth Mountains with his parents and younger sister, suddenly found himself touring libraries, bookstores and schools to peddle his book. And he did it while wearing a medieval costume.

Eventually, the book ended up in the hands of Michelle Frey, executive editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers, who offered Paolini a publishing contract. After that, success came at Paolini so hard and so fast that he found it difficult to fully grasp what he'd become.

"When Eragon came out I was—I'm going to use a cliché—pleased as punch, of course, and delighted, but I didn't really feel like I was a writer," he says. In fact, it's only been recently that he's felt comfortable using that word to describe himself.

Now that he has embraced the label, he's eager to keep growing and proving his abilities to himself. He knows that once he completes the fourth and final book in the cycle he will deeply miss Eragon and the land of Alagaësia, but he's looking forward to exploring other fictional worlds. He's already experimented with writing in different genres, including science fiction and noir.

And even as fans wait breathlessly to get their hands on Brisingr, Paolini is taking nothing for granted. "There's always this feeling like, well, I still remember when I didn't have this and it still might not stick around," he says. "It's good not to be 100 percent comfortable, because if you're 100 percent comfortable, you can lose your edge."

Karen Holt is a freelance writer who lives in Connecticut.

Even superstars get the jitters. Christopher Paolini tries not to dwell on the huge expectations surrounding Brisingr, the third book in his blockbuster Inheritance Cycle fantasy series.

With the first two books in the series selling 15.5 million copies worldwide, Knopf is preparing for Brisingr's September…

Considering the pain and suffering he experienced at the hands of no-nonsense headmasters during his Catholic school days in Limerick, Ireland, it's a wonder even to Frank McCourt that he went on to spend three decades as a high school English teacher in the New York City school system. Had he not, late in life, written Angela's Ashes, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and became, in his words, "mick of the moment," he would have slipped, upon retirement, from anonymity to obscurity: just another faceless, voiceless foot soldier on the frontlines of illiteracy. Today, the world seeks the insights and opinions for which, as a mere teacher, he was never asked.

"I think becoming a teacher was the craziest thing I could have done," McCourt says by phone from New York. " I would have been quite happy in an office somewhere, nine to five, although that would have driven me crazy looking at the clock. But I wouldn't have cared about what I was doing. There would have been no challenge. Going into the classroom was a mighty challenge." Submitted as proof: Teacher Man, the final book in his autobiographical trilogy (with Angela's Ashes and 'Tis), a more-bitter-than-sweet look back at age 75 on a teaching career about which McCourt has decidedly mixed feelings. Here, McCourt takes to task bumbling administrators, callous instructors and an educational system that seems perpetually intent on doing everything but educating. Suffice to say, this is no Up the Down Staircase.

What McCourt always wanted to do, he says, was write. But by the time he returned to America at age 19, his impoverished Irish childhood had shattered his confidence and left him with minimal expectations.

"The lowest! The lowest! I never expected to go to college. I was ready to settle for some low-level job, clerk in a bank or insurance company, anything. I would have made a great elevator operator or something like that," he says. "You get out (of poverty) but you don't get out; it's with you for the rest of your life unless you're very conscious and you go on and study what it was and look at the damage that was done and you remedy it. But I wasn't like that." In Teacher Man, McCourt describes how, fresh out of New York University, he was almost fired his first day of teaching at McKee Vo-Tech on Staten Island for intercepting and eating a flying baloney sandwich. His second day, he triggered calls from angry parents for a classroom comment about friendship with sheep. Just showing up for work in those Blackboard Jungle days took every available ounce of will.

"I had absolute dread similar to what I felt as a kid going to school in Ireland," he recalls. "We went to school in a state of terror because you never knew which way the schoolmaster would jump; you never knew what you didn't know and of course he would ask you what you didn't know and then he would pounce on you and drag you out of your seat and knock you around the room. Kids here complain about going to school but we had reason to be terrified. Our knees would knock." McCourt soon learned to use his lilting accent and natural storytelling gift to capture and hold the attention of a classroom full of adolescents. His techniques were admittedly unconventional; he once assigned students to write their mother's favorite recipes, then bring the finished products to a class potluck lunch in the park. By his estimation, it took him 15 years to figure out how to actually teach with authority.

"They knew I was a novice and I think they gave me a break, mainly because of my accent and my stupid inability to do anything right," he says. " Except that I would make an occasional breakthrough, which consisted of me being human and honest, and that's what carried me along for the next 15 years, going from McKee to Fashion Industries to Seward Park and Stuyvesant, which was heaven." The harder he worked, the more he resented the school administrators with their private offices, secretaries and leisure time.

"It's a big racket, they get so many benefits," he says. "The real hardest workers in the system are the people in the classroom. It's the only profession where you're paid more for not doing it! And there are the peripheral jobs: walking the hallways, checking the lavatories, supervising the cafeteria. This is demeaning, and you only do this to teachers. You don't expect a surgeon to mop the floor in the operating room, but that's the equivalent of what teachers have to do." If he had it to do over again, would he go into teaching? Probably not.

"I suppose in the back of my head the thing I always wanted to do was write, but write what? I didn't know. Nobody told me you had to find your own style; I wanted to be Hemingway or Sean O'Casey. In retrospect, I would have thrown caution to the winds and become a busboy and lived cheaply and repaired to my attic and struggled with my writing, but I didn't know enough. And I certainly wasn't going to write about my life; that was the last thing on my mind, to write about this poverty. The shame; it was the shame. But the opposite prevails in American life, which is, this is your material so get into it, buster. Which is what I did."

Does Teacher Man truly mark the end of his memoirs? "Yeah, that's it," McCourt says with finality. "If you call me next year, you won't find me talking about myself. I want to write a novel that has nothing to do with me; maybe the ideal me, a debonair buccaneer lover of the ages, a man who defies the Vatican and the White House, something like that. Maybe I'm entering my epic period!"

Jay MacDonald writes professionally in Oxford, Mississippi.

 

Considering the pain and suffering he experienced at the hands of no-nonsense headmasters during his Catholic school days in Limerick, Ireland, it's a wonder even to Frank McCourt that he went on to spend three decades as a high school English teacher in the New…

Although he's now a popular and prolific children's author, Dan Gutman says his own love for reading and writing was slow in coming. In fact, when he was a boy, he admits, "I hated to read. I thought it was boring and hard to do."

Although it might sound counterintuitive, it was his new enthusiasm for sports at age 10 or 11 that led Gutman to discover an affinity for the written word. "When I got into sports, I realized I had to read about stuff if I wanted to learn about it," he explains. "That's what got me interested in reading."

He kept reading, and started writing, too: after college, he penned articles and screenplays, and in 1982 he launched a magazine called Video Games Player (which closed in 1985). He wrote several sports-centric books for adults, and continued to write about sports and technology for magazines and newspapers.

But it wasn't until his son was born—and he tried his hand at writing children's books—that Gutman felt really excited about what he was doing.

"My son inspired my whole career," he says. "When Sam was born in 1992, I started reading kids' books for the first time since I was a kid." The experience sparked an epiphany: "I instantly felt, this is what I'm good at—this is my calling."

Since then, Gutman has written 75 children's books, with more on the way. He writes from an office in his Haddonfield, New Jersey, home, but doesn't tend to stay put for long: he regularly visits schools across the country, where he does readings, answers questions and lunches with students. "It's much more fun than eating with grownups, and it's great to bounce ideas off the kids," he says.

Fittingly, his My Weird School books, a 21-book series for early readers, have been a big hit with the younger set. The wacky stories—which have titles like Miss Daisy Is Crazy! and Mrs. Cooney Is Loony!—offer a kids'-eye view of the seemingly (and sometimes genuinely) bizarre antics of the teachers, principal and other denizens of Ella Mentry School.

Gutman says the series was inspired by his daughter Emma. "She was in second grade, reading the Junie B. Jones books, and I thought there should be something like that told from a boy's perspective." Enter A.J., who routinely declares that he hates school (but always ends up having fun there, somehow). A.J. goes to school with know-it-all Andrea, crybaby Emily and a host of characters that kids and parents alike will enjoy.

This year marks the launch of the My Weird School Daze series, which follows the children from the My Weird School series into third grade, where they embark on fresh adventures.

In the first book of the new series, Mrs. Dole Is Out of Control!, second-grade graduation goes hilariously awry: two PTA moms get in a fight, A.J. accidentally tosses his cap right into the eternal flame, and a bunch of animals escape from a nearby petting zoo. In the second entry, Mr. Sunny Is Funny!, the gang is spending summer vacation at the beach, where Andrea develops a crush on the hunky lifeguard. Those sorts of goings-on certainly keep kids reading—and Gutman writing.

"As the Daze series has progressed, it's gotten more wacky. There's usually a climactic ending where all hell breaks loose, and kids love that stuff. Grownups are always the ones who say a story is too far-fetched. Kids never say that—they get that it's fiction, so anything could happen."

But although that wackiness is humorous and freewheeling, there's a serious purpose behind it. "I'm really trying to reach the kids who are tough nuts to crack, especially boys who refuse to read," he says. "I try to write a story so captivating that they open the book and two hours later, don't even feel like they were reading. It should be effortless, it shouldn't feel like work."

He adds, "I don't spend a lot of time describing things. Kids don't care—at least not the reluctant readers. I have a short attention span, too, so I can relate to them. Kids who are really good readers can read Harry Potter, or books by Philip Pullman. Those who aren't, can read my books."

And readers of all ages would do well to heed Gutman's take on things—specifically, the value he places on having fun. Just as he is driven by a desire to make reading fun for kids, he says, "I enjoy what I do, and love what I write. I don't have to push myself to get to work." Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Linda M. Castellitto wishes more of her teachers' names rhymed with adjectives.

Although he's now a popular and prolific children's author, Dan Gutman says his own love for reading and writing was slow in coming. In fact, when he was a boy, he admits, "I hated to read. I thought it was boring and hard to do."

Although…

John Grogan is more like Marley than he might want to believe. An affable, unassuming rabble – rouser, the author who penned a bestseller about his goofy dog gets up to some hilarious antics of his own in a new coming-of age memoir, The Longest Trip Home.

Our phone call to Grogan's home office near Philadelphia interrupts the former journalist and editor as he writes an entry in his journal, which he has kept since he was a teenager. "All my writing is steeped in 25 years of journal experience," Grogan says. "A lot of it makes you cringe, but important things surface." Things like the effect of an untrainable Labrador retriever on his marriage and young family. Grogan first wrote about Marley in a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in which he bid a sad goodbye to the naughty dog. The column got such a strong response from readers that he expanded it into a book, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog. Grogan's account of life with Marley became one of the biggest sellers of the year, spending 23 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Readers from all over the world discovered universal truths in the minutiae of Grogan's life as he juggled marriage, kids, family, jobs, in – laws and a rambunctious canine. "I didn't connect the dots at the time, but [Marley & Me] was about accepting loved ones, flaws and all," Grogan says.

That universal theme began to bubble inside him as he sat in church at Christmastime, "feeling unmoored" on the first anniversary of his father's death. It dawned on Grogan that he should write about his funny and painful youth being raised by devout and loving Catholic Midwestern parents, while at the same time having serious doubts about God.

Despite all the "misery memoirs out there," Grogan could only write what was true: that he had a happy life with typical growing pains while searching for his place in the world."My parents were the epitome of unconditional love," he says. "It was an important lesson to me as a parent." Trying to reach their lofty expectations, he grows up in the process – but not without a series of "Leave It to Beaver" – style mishaps first.

His humorous teenage exploits in suburban Detroit in the '60s and '70s would test even the most patient parent – like the time he was told to stay away from a notorious beach popular with burnouts and potheads but manages to rationalize taking the family boat over "for a look" and ends up on the front page of the local paper after the beach gets busted."Growing up in that period, with older brothers and sisters, it was a culture of throwing the establishment out and going down this new path," Grogan says. "Lots of kids got lost in that period and never came back."

Grogan manages to absorb the best of his parents' teachings while struggling to make his own decisions against their old – world thinking, editing the weed – inspired counterculture newspaperInnervisions in high school, being hauled to the principal's office twice, and later sleeping with girls in college."Before I could answer," he writes about his mother's long – distance grilling, "she started in about the sanctity of marriage and the need for God's blessing of sexual relations, and the repercussions of one irresponsible act. It was time to abandon ship. The SS Honesty was going down."After fudging about where his girlfriend slept during homecoming, "they finally seemed to buy it," he writes.

John Grogan is more like Marley than he might want to believe. An affable, unassuming rabble - rouser, the author who penned a bestseller about his goofy dog gets up to some hilarious antics of his own in a new coming-of age memoir, The Longest…

Laurie Halse Anderson sometimes thinks her career as a children's author is too good to be true. She says she expects someone to tap her on the shoulder and say, "Honey, we gave you the wrong life – you're supposed to be an accountant, or shovel manure." It's unlikely she'll need to brush up on her manure-shoveling skills, though. In the last decade, Anderson has written a range of well-received books for young readers, from picture books to young adult novels. She is perhaps best known for Speak, a 1999 National Book Award finalist and Printz Honor book that was adapted into a television movie.

A former journalist, Anderson says she was invited to help with the screenplay, but decided to leave it in the hands of the filmmaking team. She did take a small role, though: "I was the lunch lady. All I had to do was drop mashed potatoes on a plate, and it took seven takes. It made me realize I shouldn't give up my day job." The latest result of Anderson's "day job" is Chains, a historical novel for middle-grade readers, set in 1776 New York City. "The idea grew out of a really compelling need to understand what slavery was like in the Colonial period," Anderson explains during an interview from her home in upstate New York. "I'm a Northerner and always thought it was a Southern thing, a Civil War thing. I had a lot of learning to do."

Isabel, the 13 – year – old protagonist, was the first of the book's characters to make her appearance in Anderson's imagination. "I went to a marvelous exhibit called 'Slavery in New York,' and as I walked in, there were shapes of a man and woman made out of thin wire. Your eyes could almost go over them and not see them," she says. "I thought a lot about what it might've been like to be a person who was enslaved during a time when everyone around you was talking about freedom and liberty – only they weren't talking about you."

In Chains, Anderson describes the overlooked people who were sold into slavery and brought to New England by masters who, even as they worked to win freedom for a new nation, did not grant it to those forced to serve them. Chains is a suspenseful, sad and engrossing tale made all the more vivid by Anderson's devoted attention to detail, from the smells of the city to the characters' clothing.

The author takes a two-pronged approach to research: she begins by reading secondary sources written by historians. As the information takes up residence in her brain, the characters begin to make themselves known. "The magical part happens when a character starts to whisper … when I'm running or in the garden, and I hear the voice. Then, my task is to come up with characters and find a way to braid those characters with the historical events he or she is involved in," she says. Anderson also looks at primary sources, such as newspaper accounts, letters and countless runaway slave advertisements. Then, she says, "I go through and make sure I have enough sensory details for my readers, who know a lot about video games but have no context for the 18th century."

In addition to providing education, entertainment and historical context, Anderson also believes her books can offer young readers something more: "I have a theory about historical fiction, particularly for middle-grade readers," she says. "Fifth grade or so is a time before you get into the really difficult challenges of late adolescence. Books allow kids to test themselves out against a scary world, but in a safe way – and historical fiction allows kids to test their morality, too." There are plenty of moral questions in Chains, but Anderson is careful to keep things from being too cut-and-dried: sometimes even cruel people can inspire sympathy, and a decision that seems beneficial may have negative consequences for others. Anderson says these paradoxes – and their role in history – are well worth exploring. "My editor and I have had such incredible, good conversations about America and race. How can we love our country and our history when there are things that make us uncomfortable?" She adds, "We came to the conclusion that the best way to love our country is to look at things that are uncomfortable, look them full in the eye and say, 'Wow, this is making me squirm. I need to learn more about it, take those lessons and move forward.'

Laurie Halse Anderson sometimes thinks her career as a children's author is too good to be true. She says she expects someone to tap her on the shoulder and say, "Honey, we gave you the wrong life - you're supposed to be an accountant, or…

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