Reading Pachinko is like binge-watching every season of an HBO series. Instead of capturing a single time and place, Min Jin Lee’s heartbreaking historical novel spans the entire 20th century through four generations, three wars and two countries with a troubled past. A moving and powerful account of one of the world’s most persecuted immigrant communities—Koreans living in Japan—it may be remembered as one of the best books of the year.

But here’s a secret: Lee almost abandoned Pachinko after the first draft.

Twenty years ago, she quit her job as a corporate lawyer to become a writer. It didn’t go well. “I wrote a dreadful manuscript with a pretentious title that was never inflicted upon innocent readers,” Lee says. Her second attempt didn’t go much better, but her third attempt at fiction, Free Food for Millionaires, was published to universal acclaim in 2007.

And yet, Lee couldn’t stop thinking about her abandoned second novel, the one that would eventually become Pachinko. While Free Food for Millionaires focused on Korean Americans in New York, she still wanted to write about the Korean diaspora in Japan. “The fascinating history of the Korean Japanese,” Lee says, “is one of the clearest manifestations of legal, social and cultural exclusion in a modern, well-educated and developed democratic nation.”

The first draft of Pachinko was set in Tokyo during the 1980s. But when Lee returned to the manuscript, she realized that she had to go back much further.

In 1910, Japan annexed Korea. With the stroke of a pen, every citizen of Korea became a subject of Imperial Japan, and would remain so until Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. During those 35 years, thousands of Koreans immigrated across the sea to Japan, many of them farmers unable to prove they owned their land.

It is these Korean-Japanese immigrants and their descendants—the Zainichi—that Lee wanted to explore in the resurrected novel that became Pachinko.

The word Zainichi is Japanese for “staying in Japan temporarily,” which is misleading, since most Korean Japanese are permanent residents and naturalized Japanese citizens. Sadly, Zainichi have suffered decades of oppression in Japan. During World War II, Korean men were forced to fight for Japan while Korean women were kidnapped as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. After the war and throughout the 20th century, Koreans were disenfranchised, excluded from Japanese society and denied equal rights. In fact, Japan didn’t stop fingerprinting Koreans during alien registration procedures until 1993.

“The Zainichi are by definition considered foreign, transient and ‘other’ by many Japanese people,” Lee says. “Moreover, some Korean Japanese, especially children who are traumatically bullied, are seen as other to themselves. I was profoundly disturbed by this idea of being seen as permanently ‘other’ at key stages of one’s psychological development.”

In 2007, just after the release of Free Food for Millionaires, Lee and her husband moved from New York to Tokyo. 

“The move to Japan was a lucky coincidence for the book, but when I had to let go of the initial draft and start again—buddy, I was not a happy camper,” Lee says. “The field research forced me to throw out the initial manuscript and write a historical novel based primarily on one family.”

The result is Pachinko, a poignant, sprawling, multigenerational epic in the same vein as Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, full of births, deaths, marriages and betrayals. Written in light, fluid prose, it begins in the 1880s on the coast of Korea, where a boy with a cleft palate is born into a small fishing village. Shortly after Japan colonizes his homeland, he marries the daughter of a farmer with the help of a matchmaker. Their own daughter, Sunja, almost brings the family to ruin as a young adult, but a Protestant minister whisks her away to Japan in 1933, where she becomes the matriarch of an extended family.

In Osaka, Sunja and her children are subject to bigotry because of their Korean heritage. Through World War II and the fall of the Empire of Japan, Sunja raises two boys with the help of her sister-in-law. The firstborn studies European literature in college until he learns a shocking family secret. Heartbroken, he moves to Nagano and pretends to be Japanese, eventually joining his brother in the pachinko business, though not in the same parlor, or even the same city. Eventually, Sunja becomes the grandmother of a Tokyo banker who carries the story into the 1980s, a full century after the story began.

The novel was initially called Motherland, but Lee changed the title when she came to a realization: “Nearly every Korean-Japanese person I interviewed or researched was somehow related (either intimately or distantly) to the pachinko business, one of the very few businesses Koreans were allowed to work in or have an ownership interest.”

If you’ve ever watched “The Price Is Right,” you’re already familiar with pachinko. It’s essentially a vertical pinball machine, though it was stylized as “plinko” for the game show.

“The pachinko business—a multibillion-dollar industry with double the export revenues of the Japanese automobile industry—is often viewed with great suspicion and contempt by middle-class Japanese,” Lee says. “However, one out of every 11 Japanese adults plays pachinko regularly, and there is at least one pachinko parlor in every train station and shopping street in Japan. Pachinko is a game of chance and manipulation, and I was interested in this gambling business as a metaphor.”

Like a pachinko ball, Sunja careens through the 20th century as a daughter, a wife, a mother and finally a grandmother. “It took so much of my life to write this novel, and even though the work and the waiting was its own trial, I have to acknowledge that it was helpful to age along with the book because I had the opportunity to encounter and learn as many different perspectives as possible,” Lee says.

And while Pachinko takes place on the other side of the globe, it should be required reading for Americans in 2017. 

“The recent presidential election has demonstrated a deeply divided nation, but what is even more troubling to me is how all the different groups cannot seem to comprehend the views of the others,” Lee says. “In an increasingly polarized world with great economic, educational and socio-cultural disparities, I want to believe that we can turn to narratives to empathize with all the parties who participate in both inclusion and exclusion.”

If you want a book that challenges and expands your perspective, turn to Pachinko. And don’t be intimidated by the page count or the grand scale of the story—in Lee’s deft hands, the pages pass as effortlessly as time.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Grace Holland's life is spent in service to her children, her husband and her home, and any disatisfaction she feels is quickly pushed aside in the constant menial work that fills a housewife's time in 1947 Maine. But when wildfires sweep down the coast, Grace's home is completely destroyed and her husband is lost, most likely dead. 

Anita Shreve's The Stars Are Fire is the story of Grace's life after the fire, of her quest to secure housing and then financial security for herself and her children, and her discovery of the struggles and joys of independence. It is a book of small moments, a collection of seemingly simple themes that build to surprising and moving crescendoes. Shreve's spare, economic prose suits her character’s practicality and initial hesitance to determine the course of her own life. While Grace’s upbringing has not prepared her for any of the challenges she faces, she slowly begins to unfurl in the new space and freedom allotted to her, as naturally as a plant grows to fill unoccupied space. Shreve's crisp writing becomes more expansive in the moments when her protagonist consciously stretches beyond the boundaries of her previously narrow life.

A former journalist and creative writing teacher, Shreve became a literary sensation with the publication of her first novel, The Weight of Water, in 1997 and rose to further prominence when her next book, The Pilot's Wife, was selected for Oprah's book club. Shreve's books have fascinated audiences ever since and sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. We contacted the author at her home in Maine to ask about the historical inspiration for The Stars Are Fire and the ways in which the novel charts the evolving freedoms of American women. 

When did you first learn about the Maine fires of 1947? Did the idea for Grace’s story come along at the same time? 
I first heard about the fire about a decade ago when I picked up a pamphlet about the town of Cape Porpoise, Maine. I remember that there were harrowing descriptions of the Fire of ’47, as locals called it. And the pictures of the fire were just as terrifying. Later I read a book called The Week That Maine Burned. But it wasn’t until eight or nine years later that I thought about writing a novel based on the fire. One of the details that had most intrigued me was the notion of women and children having to flee into the sea to save themselves from the coastal fire. I began to imagine a woman named Grace with two children who has to do just that, and the novel was born.

Grace’s trajectory at times reminded me of a coming-of-age story. She is a married woman with children, but over the course of the novel she discovers and embraces her independence and sexuality. Where did the inspiration for her character development come from?
The development of Grace’s character came about because of the era and her marriage. It’s not a particularly good marriage even before the fire. But the era—post World War II—was a stultifying period for women. Most were housewives, stuck at home unless they had a car, which Grace didn’t. Laundry was done on a washboard and hung to dry. There’s a scene in the novel in which her husband, Gene, comes home with a wringer-washer in an attempt to save the marriage. The machine is so welcome, it does the trick. For a time.

"I’m interested in the reality of a woman pushed to the edge. How will she behave? I take it minute by minute."

The struggles of Grace and the other female characters in the novel to carve out lives for themselves despite the restrictions placed on their gender feel very realistic for the historical setting. Did you draw on family history to craft this aspect of the novel?
I did research to be true to the era. That was essential in shaping Grace’s character, especially in regards to what she can and cannot do. I used my mother and her chores and her approach to them to flesh out Grace—although I did not use my parents’ marriage. They were happily married for 56 years. But I remember the wringer-washer, the sheets and towels on the line, the one-night-a-week grocery-shopping trip, the playpens and bathinettes.

Grace’s relationship with her mother evolves significantly over the course of the book. How responsible do you think her mother is for Grace’s personality and situation, especially at the beginning of the novel?
Grace’s mother, too, is a woman of her era, but with prewar notions of how a woman should behave. When Grace tries to tell her that her marriage is troubled, the mother steers the conversation elsewhere. She doesn’t want to talk about such difficulties. But after the fire, as the necessity for Grace to make a life for them all evolves, Grace’s mother begins to soften her stance. Grace married at a young age. Her fiance fought in the war and appeared to be a gentleman. He was at school trying to better himself. That would have appealed to Grace’s mother at that time.

The balance between the bleak moments of Grace’s trials and the moments of triumph and grace is so delicate. How did you calibrate that during your writing process?
I kept it as real as I possibly could. I often do this in novels. I’m interested in the reality of a woman pushed to the edge. How will she behave? I take it minute by minute. Because Grace has endured so many hardships, the joys, when they come, while they may seem small to us, are momentous to her.

Music plays a key role in this novel. Are you a fan of classical music or did you have to research this element of the story?
I’m a fan of classical music but don’t know much about it. I do, however, love Brahms Second Piano Concerto very much and thus included it in the book

The coast of Maine has been a frequent setting for you, and Grace’s connection to the sea and the natural world is a touchstone of The Stars Are Fire. What is it about this place that continues to inspire you?
Every novel I think to myself: OK, I’m moving west in this novel. But I can’t seem to take a step away from the coast of Maine. It’s in my bones, I suppose. I know the area very well, and one of my favorite activities in life is to sit in a chair and look at the ocean.

The action of The Stars Are Fire felt very organic as it unfolded. Did any plot points surprise you in the midst of writing, or did the book follow your original plan for it?
I knew that Gene would be gone for a large part of the novel, and that the reader might be wondering if he would come back. I certainly knew the fire would be a large part of the book. And I knew that eventually Grace would either push a baby carriage or drive a car away from her home. I didn’t know where she was going or exactly why.

What’s next for you?
I’m afraid I can’t say. I’m superstitious about talking about a work in progress. I wrote my first novel, Eden Close, in complete secrecy, and that worked, so I’ve kept to that decision throughout the other seventeen.

Author photo by Elena Seibert

Inspired by a true story, Jamie Ford’s poignant new novel is framed by two world’s fairs held in Seattle—what the author calls the  “metaphorical rocks” of his powerful tale. At the first fair in 1909, a real-life raffle was held to give away an orphaned baby, an event that both haunted Ford and piqued his curiosity.

He imagines what might have happened to that child in Love and Other Consolation Prizes, a riveting story that moves from heartbreak and poverty in turn-of-the-century Southern China to Seattle’s glittering 1962 world’s fair, the Century 21 Expo. The fair's opening day triggers painful memories for one attendee—a man named Ernest Young, who recalls a time when he fell in love with two girls and muses, “The present is merely the past reassembled.”

We asked Ford, author of the 2009 bestseller Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, about fate, family secrets and the rewards of writing redemptive fiction.

Your novel was inspired by an incident in which a baby was raffled off at the 1909 Seattle world’s fair. How and when did you become aware of this event?
I remember watching a DVD in 2009 that was commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Seattle’s forgotten world’s fair. (I know, I have weird viewing pastimes). The program was narrated by the actor Tom Skerritt, who casually mentioned that a boy was raffled off and that his name was Ernest, and a newspaper clipping flashed onscreen that read “SOMEBODY WILL DRAW BABY AS PRIZE.” 

And just like that, I fell down the rabbit-hole. . . .

Even now, after reading the novel, it’s hard for me to believe that such a raffle happened in the U.S. just over a century ago. Were you similarly dumbstruck? What does this say about how much our culture has changed in the last century?
Ironically, at Seattle’s second world’s fair (in 1962), a vendor gave away poodles––which was criticized for being inhumane. So as the philosopher, Robert Zimmerman, sang, “The times they are a-changing.” 

And I wasn’t quite dumbstruck as much as consigned to the weirdness of history. Those early world’s fairs all had ethnographic exhibits, which were basically human zoos that featured “exotic” or indigenous people. The fact that a boy was raffled off seemed like an extension of that mindset.

Also, this didn’t just happen at world’s fairs. In the May 1920 issue of The Kiwanis Magazine there’s an article about the Asheville, North Carolina chapter: “One of their unique features was to auction off a real baby for adoption at a luncheon attended by the ladies.”

Strange days, indeed.

The description of 5-year-old Yung’s experiences aboard the ship to America are riveting and heartbreaking. Can you tell us a bit about how you researched this era and the activity of human smugglers?
While doing research at the Anacortes Maritime Museum near Seattle, I learned that smugglers Ben Ure and Lawrence “Pirate” Kelly made their fortunes transporting immigrants, tied in burlap bags so that if customs agents were to approach, their human cargo could easily be tossed overboard. The tidal currents would carry the bodies of these discarded immigrants to a place now known as Dead Man’s Bay. There are probably happy people having picnics on that beach as I write this, who have no idea how the place earned its name.

I also looked at oral histories of some of the first immigrants from Southern China (where my great-grandfather immigrated from). I was trying to figure out why someone would put themselves at such risk on the high seas. It turns out many of those men and women didn’t have a choice—they were sold.
 
You write of young Ernest and the raffle: “His fate had been decided by this simple piece of cardboard.” Where do you fall on the fate vs. random chance continuum? Do you think our individual destinies are fated or dependent on chance and luck?
The romantic in me desperately wants to believe in luck, or fate, or for lack of a better word—destiny. But the cynic in me worries that all of this is somewhat predetermined. You could argue that all human action is guided by external causality, which creates the narrow pathways in which we exist. When you’re bored and want to feel especially helpless, look up the philosophical idea of Determinism. Warning: It will break your brain.

“I’m not a bitter person in life. I don’t want to be a bitter author on the page. There’s no shame in happiness.”

Why did you choose to bookend your story with two world’s fairs, one in 1909 and the other in 1962? Do you see the fairs as turning points in Seattle’s history?
I love the symmetry of showcasing Seattle’s two world’s fairs. But also, the fairs were snapshots of how the city (and the U.S.) presented itself to the world at large. 

Both expositions focused on the latest technology, architecture, and what was happening in the arts. Both featured celebrities and politicians. But in looking at the fairgoers themselves, what amused them, what they celebrated, you get a marvelous anthropological glimpse at how we behaved. I guess you could say that both fairs were great for people-watching, even decades later.

You write of Ernest, “He suspected that everyone his age, of his vintage, had a backstory, a secret that they’d never shared.” Do you think such secrets are specific to his era and location? Or are they a broader part of the human experience?
Oh, no. We all have secrets. I certainly do. But we’re always followed by the next generation (often our own children) who are obsessed with the future, not the past. So these secrets stay hidden. 

I recently found out that my late mother had another child, who was given up for adoption. So I have a mystery sibling. I’ve heard that she’s a police officer in Vegas.

Go ask your parents their deepest, darkest secrets. Who knows what you’ll find.

How do you feel about Mrs. Irvine and how do you think readers will react to her character? Does she deserve any credit for trying to do what she thought was right?
I think she’s a product of her time. That is to say, she means well, but she’s lacking in empathy. Like many good, well-meaning people in life, their Achilles heel is an inability to embrace the complexity of others. People are qualitative, not quantitative. 

But, that’s just me. I’m a pretty emotive guy.

Your depiction of Gracie’s dementia is tender, even life-affirming. Do you have any family experience with this condition?
I saw this to some degree with my Yin Yin and Yeh Yeh—my Chinese grandparents. My grandfather took care of my grandmother for a decade as her health slowly declined. It takes special dedication, and tenderness, to be that kind of caregiver.

And then I experienced it first-hand as I cared for my mother in hospice. When you meet fear and dread with love, because that’s all you have left, it changes you.

Early Asian-American life is a poignant theme in your works, and you’ve been compared to other Asian-American authors such as Amy Tan. How do you see yourself fitting in (or not fitting in) to a growing canon of Asian-American authors?
I don’t know. Honestly, it’s not for me to decide, and I still have more books in me, so we’ll see what happens. I love historical fiction, but I’m open to all kinds of storytelling. Last year I published a few stories that were basically Asian-themed steampunk. And last week I had a crime noir tale published in an anthology. Oh, and I’m still working on a screenplay and a script for a graphic novel. Plus, there’s always a lot of really bad poetry leaking out of my brain.

Reviewers often remark that your books are hopeful or triumphant, an outlook that seems relatively rare in current fiction. Do you set out to write hopeful stories or do they develop organically as you write?
I love redemptive stories. Not necessarily ones with perfect happy endings, with rainbows and unicorns, but I like to at least have a jumping-off point where characters can continue their journeys—if only in the imagination of readers. 

It’s sad that stories of hope and redemption are sometimes seen as “less than literary,” as though every story needs to crush your soul to have creative merit.

I’ve never bought into that idea. I’m not a bitter person in life. I don’t want to be a bitter author on the page. There’s no shame in happiness.

Author photo by Alan Alabastro

Here’s something that may come as a surprise for fans of Paint It Black and the Oprah-approved White Oleander: Bestselling novelist Janet Fitch has a secret passion for Russia. It started back when the writer, 62, was attending junior high in Los Angeles and fell in love with Crime and Punishment, launching a deep dive into the waters of Russian literature.

“I’m a pretty intense person myself,” Fitch explains during a call to her home in Los Angeles, “and a lot of the literature we got as kids was pretty pallid—it didn’t suit me at all.” Opening Crime and Punishment, she says with a laugh, “was like, OK, here we are. This is my internal landscape.”

After decades of reading Russian literature and history and a few trips to the country, Fitch—who studied history at Reed College—has distilled that fascination into her first work of historical fiction, The Revolution of Marina M., an epic page-turner and part one of a two-volume tale set during the Russian Revolution. Ten years in the making, the novel snuck up on Fitch, who had originally planned to write about a Russian émigré living in 1920s Los Angeles. But it was impossible to tell the character’s story without flashing back to the past in Russia—interludes that, according to Fitch’s critique group, were the most interesting parts.

Soon, Fitch was making a full-on plunge into one of the most turbulent and confusing periods in Russian history, a place where few Western novelists have dared to tread, even after 100 years.

“The Revolution is a moving target,” Fitch says. “People can be good guys and bad guys, or they’re bad guys to start out with, then good guys. . . . It’s a far more sophisticated problem.”

Luckily for readers, Fitch has created a firecracker of a guide through the tangled years of revolution: the titular Marina. Born with the new century, Marina is just 16 when the first tremors of rebellion begin to penetrate her comfortable upper-class St. Petersburg home. As a passionate young poet, Marina finds her soul stirred by the calls for freedom and action.

“To be Marina, it was a joy,” Fitch says. “This is the first time I’ve written a character who wasn’t under the foot of events, but more equal to the events. She’s a far more fiery person than I’ve ever written before. A much braver person than I’ve ever written before. She’s much more of a real heroine than I’ve ever tried before.”

Like any real heroine, Marina must deal with some complicated relationships. She and her two best friends aren’t always on the same page when it comes to the idea of revolution: Mina, the daughter of Jewish academics, is more cautious, while Varvara, who lives in near poverty, is ready to burn it all down. Marina’s father is a government official, invested in keeping things as close to the status quo as possible; her mother is an aristocrat who refuses to even think about politics; and her sensitive younger brother is facing pressure to enlist. In the midst of all this, Marina is also dealing with a normal coming-of-age dilemma: her burgeoning sexuality. Should she wait for her childhood crush to come back from the front or throw in her lot with a passionate proletarian poet?

“She’s much more of a real heroine than I’ve ever tried before.”

Needless to say, this headstrong teenager doesn’t always handle these complexities well. “I’ve known fiery people,” Fitch says. “They’re glorious, they believe, they’re willing to stick their necks out, they’re willing to fall a long way, they make a mess—for themselves and others—but they live in a large way.” That spark makes Marina’s picaresque journey through this turbulent era a compelling one to follow, even if, at times, you might wish you could warn her about what’s to come.

“It’s the first book that I’ve written that has been very propulsive, as far as the events of the story,” Fitch says. “When you’re in the midst of a revolution, your life will be changed week by week by what happens in the external world. So it’s much more of an event-driven book.”

Fitch’s earlier novels, which she describes as “more interior,” were both bestsellers. Both have been adapted to film—White Oleander as a major feature and Paint It Black as an indie film, released in October via streaming services. But no matter how different The Revolution of Marina M. is to Fitch’s previous works, it has many of the hallmarks her readers have come to look for, including complex and dynamic female characters. Readers will come away with more understanding of the Revolution, but this is no history book.

“People living through history don’t know what’s going on at the top. We only see the effects on our lives. That’s what fiction does best. It’s showing us how it felt to be in those times, rather than what Lenin thought. The average person had no idea; they’re just trying to get some food, find work, decide between your two boyfriends,” she says with a laugh.

The events that sowed the seeds of the Russian Revolution—vast income inequality, a rise in populism, an unpopular leader, a lengthy and pointless war—might seem uncomfortably familiar to modern readers, and Fitch does see some parallels between world events in 1917 and 2017.

“We are living in a revolutionary period right now . . . not the cataclysm that the Russian Revolution was, but we’re living through a time of extreme change,” says Fitch. “Revolutions don’t stop, that’s the most important thing you can take away from The Revolution of Marina M. Once the wheel gets turning, it keeps turning. In Russia, it’s still turning.”

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

(Author photo by Cat Gwynn.)

With his much-anticipated fourth novel, Charles Frazier returns to the Civil War setting of his National Book Award-winning novel, Cold Mountain.

Varina centers on an unexpected and controversial figure: Varina Howell Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

You’ve said that after Cold Mountain, you didn’t think you’d ever want to write about the Civil War again. Why have you returned to this setting?
I don’t really think of Varina as a Civil War book. The present time is 1906, and the book covers most of her long life. But she calls the war—especially the chaotic weeks following the fall of Richmond—“the axle of her life.” Everything turns around it. In a sense, American history and culture do the same. That war and its cause—the ownership of human beings—live so deep in our nation’s history and identity that we still haven’t found a way to put it behind us for good. I think of historical fiction as a conversation between the present and the past, and Varina Davis’ life offered me a complex entry point into that dialogue.

Why did you want to tell Varina’s story?
I like writing about strong, complex women, but I hadn’t known much about Varina Davis until I ran across a fragment of fact—that shortly after her much-older husband Jefferson’s death, Varina moved from Mississippi to New York City, intending to be a writer at age 60. During those years she became friends with Julia Grant, Ulysses S. Grant’s widow. Along with personal affection for each other, they apparently saw their friendship as an emblem of national reconciliation. Eventually I became interested in a fictional version of Varina in old age, looking back, stitching together history and memory and invention, hoping to make sense of her long life filled with privilege, loss and persistence. Her dramatic, problematic life was a narrative situation begging for interpretation and interrogation.

What was the most daunting part about telling this story?
Varina looks back at seven or eight decades of American history from the perspective of the early 20th century, so one immediate problem was how to structure the story, how to order all that time. The book is partly about memory—both true and false—and I realized very quickly that I wasn’t interested in calendar time. I wanted to move fluidly through my character’s life, following a memory pattern, not in a straight line. I wanted quick shifts from scene to scene, place to place, time to time. As a writer, I always want to meet the reader at least halfway, so I enjoyed finding ways to create a variety of fixed points in the swirl of time and memory, an internal logic to the narrative shifts.

When writing historical fiction, how do you navigate memory, history and invention?
When I write about historical figures, I’m always in search of a fictional character, not a biographical sketch. My research process tends to be inefficient and intuitive, and a majority of the research I do never finds a place in the book. I read a great deal of primary sources—letters, journals, newspaper articles—and biographies, but eventually I have to step away from the foundational facts of history in order to find my fictional character. So, discovering which plants would be edible during April in upstate South Carolina or getting in the car and driving the route Varina took as she fled south trying to reach Florida becomes more useful to my writing than reading 50 more Jefferson Davis letters.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about Varina during your research?
It was less about Varina than about someone else whose path crossed Varina’s during the Civil War. Strange but true, a 4- or 5-year-old multiracial orphaned boy, nicknamed Jimmie Limber, lived in the Confederate White House in Richmond alongside the children of Jefferson Davis. He was photographed along with Varina’s children and is mentioned in several memoirs by her friends and acquaintances, and he was the subject of wild rumors. The story of their meeting is somewhat hazy—Varina may have seen him being beaten on the street and taken him home, or her own sons may have known him from the little boys’ street gang they belonged to called the Hill Cats. Either way, Jimmie Limber stayed with Varina and her children as they fled from Richmond at the end of the war until they were captured by Federal troops in south Georgia. He then came under the care of a teacher from Boston working with freed slaves on the Sea Islands, and soon after, at about age 6 or 7, he may have been sent to an orphanage. At this point he drops out of the historical record.

I became interested in imagining a life for that little boy, and in having him, as a middle-aged man, seek out Varina. This fictional character, now called James Blake, wants to fill blanks in his memory to better understand his life, and over the course of seven Sundays in the late summer and fall of 1906, he and V visit to talk and try to reconstruct and understand history—the nation’s and their own—to re-examine their lives.

We’re in an era of recasting the legacy of the South and the Confederacy, particularly with the tearing down of Confederate statues. What do you think Varina can contribute to these conversations?
It’s important to remember how those monuments came to be where they are (or were, in a few cases). They didn’t spring up right after 1865, but are largely a product of the Jim Crow South. The Stone Mountain monument wasn’t even finished until the early 1970s. There’s a very strong argument that the monuments have much more to do with suppressing equal rights than commemorating ancestors. With that in mind, part of what drew me to Varina Davis was that she left the South—with no intention of returning—before the rise of the Lost Cause and Jim Crow, and even in her 70s tried to look forward rather than backward. So, the events of the past few years—among them the violence of white supremacists in Charlottesville, the church shootings in Charleston, the national debate over Confederate flags and memorials—certainly shaped the book, especially as they emphasize the extent to which the history of our country is built around the armature of slavery and the Civil War, and how far we still are from putting those issues behind us.

After fleeing Richmond at the end of the war, Varina writes, “Head full of sorrow, heart full of dreams. How to maintain the latter as life progresses? How not to let the first cancel the second?” What’s your answer to her questions?
The Buddhist suggestion that we should avoid despair or hope offers the beginning of an answer. If I come up with anything more useful, I’ll let you know.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Varina.

Photo credit Mark Humphrey

Linnea Hartsuyker is the author of The Half-Drowned King, the first of a historical fiction trilogy that continues with The Sea Queen. Hartsuyker’s epic books follow Ragnvald, a Viking warrior who served and fought alongside Norway’s first king, and his sister Svanhild, whose fight for her own autonomy begins to drive a wedge between herself and her brother. We sat down with Hartsuyker to talk about how hating your first drafts can be a rite of passage and why you should be obsessed with your work. And of course, we asked about her favorite book.

You have a degree in Material Science and Engineering from Cornell, then later went and earned your Master of Fine Arts from NYU in Creative Writing—what was your deciding factor to pursue the path of creative writing?
I always loved books and writing, but I also wanted to make money when I graduated from college, and I saw writing books and getting published as something “other people did.” So even though I loved the idea and kind of wanted to do it, I didn’t really think of it as a career when I was thinking about college. I was thinking about having enough money to buy books when I graduated. I was pretty good at math and science as well, so that’s why I pursued an engineering degree.

But once I got out in the real world and started doing the jobs that I was able to get with my first degree, I realized how important it was to really enjoy what you’re doing and feel like what you’re doing is meaningful. And so, while I had a pretty boring job in my early 20s that didn’t really engage me, I started writing on the side, and for a long time I would write for a while—and as I’m sure you know, writing is hard—so I’d get frustrated and stop. But I couldn’t keep myself away, and I kept on picking it up again. Thinking about getting published, trying to write things, getting frustrated, putting them down again—there was a long period of time as a young writer I think where [your] taste is much better than your ability. Which is extremely frustrating, to write things you know don’t measure up to where you’d like them to be.

This also sounds like a cliché, but I’m not sure it was even a decision to pursue a creative writing path, just that I couldn’t stay away from it. I had a really important moment in my late 20s or early 30s when I was considering getting an MBA to try and see if I could get more interesting jobs with that, because I was still doing all kinds of jobs and trying out startups and web development, and things like that, which were fine but didn’t really hold my attention. A friend of mine said, “You shouldn’t get an MBA, you should get an MFA.” And it was the right thing to hear at the right time. And I realized, yes, yes I should. So I started taking classes in New York, various creative writing classes, to make sure I wanted to do a Masters, and very quickly I realized I did. Once I made that decision, that I was going to make writing the most important thing in my life, it felt like everything suddenly felt right. But it took a while to get there.

I totally understand the “your taste is better than your ability” concept. Also, when you said writing is something that you’ve always really loved, it reminds me of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Have you read that one?
That’s a wonderful book. I love that book. Whenever I read it, I feel so known and understood.

Do you wish you started your career as a writer earlier?
You know, even once I decided to sort of center my life around writing and take it really seriously, I never thought that I’d be able to quit my day job and be a full-time writer. I’ve always viewed it more as a sort of a calling rather than as a career. So it’s exciting to me now that it is my career, and that’s just beyond my wildest dreams. But in terms of starting earlier, I don’t know, because I wouldn’t be in the place I’m in now if I hadn’t had the life I had leading up to it. I’ve had a ton of frustration. I was a total perfectionist in my 20s, and because it’s really hard to be a writer and a perfectionist at the same time, you spend a lot of time beating yourself up.

I wish I was a little easier on myself, because when I was 25, I wanted to have a published book when I was 30. I think when I was 30, I’d calmed down and said, “I’ll publish a book when I publish a book,” but setting those deadlines didn’t make me feel good at the end of the day.

Does this still feel surreal to you then? Because it’s happening for you now—you’re on a book tour and everything.
It’s funny how quickly it became my life, and I have to remind myself every so often that it is a dream come true, because every day, yes, this is my life, I’m a writer. And it has its ups and downs like everything else. But the flexibility of having writing be my full-time job is fantastic. My husband had a conference in Thailand, and I got to tag along because I didn’t have to worry about leaving behind a 9-to-5 job. Or more like an 8-to-10 job, because a lot of my jobs had been that way, which left little time for writing.

Have you always wanted to write historical fiction?
I’ve always loved history and historical fiction. I also grew up in love with fantasy novels, and I would like to write a fantasy novel someday. But something I like about history is that obviously a historical novel is fictionalized, but it has the benefit of being somewhat based on truth. [When you’re] writing a fantasy novel, you’re creating so much from scratch that needs to all have a reason to be created, whereas when I’m writing historical fiction, I’m trying to create the world in my reader’s mind that is how I imagined that particular history.

How much extra work did you have to do for you to accurately portray not only the setting but also the characters themselves, since they were based on actual historical figures?
I think it is extra work to some degree, but it’s work I love. Sometimes I feel like I write so I have a good reason to learn about this stuff, and sometimes I feel like I learn about it so I can write about it. I had a novel writing teacher who said, “If you’re going to write a novel about something, you should be obsessed with it. Because you’re going to have to spend years of your life thinking about it.”

So, Viking history, ancient history, Norse mythology, Scandinavia are all things that I’ve always been obsessed with, so it’s really easy for me to spend time learning more about them. And having an excuse to visit Norway, Denmark and the Faroe Island, it’s . . . it’s just a pleasure.

I couldn’t help but notice in reading your acknowledgements at the end of the novel that every one of your first readers was female. Was that a coincidence, or were you looking for a specific perspective?
I wouldn’t call it a coincidence; it is just most of my writing friends are women. I did have a few men in my writing classes who read chapters of it, but the first people who I felt like I trusted enough to read it from beginning to end, and give me advice, were close friends, and they were women.

And I think it’s interesting, the book business. There are men in the book business, but it’s very women-dominated—publishing is something like 70 percent women. Also, the book-buying public is heavily skewed toward women as well. I felt like if it turned out to be a book that only women would like (which I’m happy to say that it isn’t), then at least I knew that it would do well in the market.

After your trilogy is complete, will you continue writing historical fiction? Is there any desire to create a world or characters of your own?
I think so—I have some ideas for historical fiction that I still want to work on. I have kind of more fairy-tale influenced ideas, and then I have been thinking for many years about how I would design a fantasy world, and how it would work, and I hope to write that at some point as well.

What I’m not sure I’ll ever write is kind of modern literary fiction. There are a lot of people writing that really well, and I’m not sure I’d have as much to say in that area. When you asked earlier about the characters being based on history, I would say with that, in the research I found the characters were almost barely mentioned. So a lot of the research was more about trying to figure out how people would or could have lived, than figuring out how these specific people lived. Which I really liked. One nice thing about writing [in a period] that was so ancient is I could create a lot of it. So, knowing certain events in their lives, I could sort of work backwards to put together the things that they did or would have done to get to where they ended up.

If you were sitting in front of a roomful of undergrad students, all with a desire to be writers, what would be your best piece of advice that you could give to them?
I think it’s really hard advice to hear, but I would counsel all of the people to be patient—it takes a really long time to get to be a writer, where your writing starts to catch up with your taste. I still feel like I write so many things that are awful, and I have to do a ton of editing, too, to make them into something I like, and they never quite achieve what I want them to achieve. But even being able to do that, I can be pretty happy with a lot of things. It takes a really, really long time just to get the skill. And some things do get easier over time. . . . I’m kind of glad it took as long as it did. For a long time, I wanted to write things that I felt would be easier to write—I tried writing a romance novel, even though I don’t like romance novels, and found out it’s hard to write something you yourself don’t want to read. I found what I needed to do was to find a project that I was obsessed with and to put my energy into that, no matter how long it took.

So, patience, and read widely, and the advice I was given about if you want to write a novel—be obsessed with it.

So why did you choose Ragnvald and not Harald to be your protagonist?
Some of the reasons for that may cause spoilers, but when I read the history that this was mostly based on, the section on Harald and the history of the kings of Norway, Harald was the one my family traced our ancestry back to. So, my original plan was to have Harald be the protagonist, but when I read Harald’s history, he was just wildly successful and basically wins every battle. And that’s really boring.

Whereas Ragnvald was flawed.
Yes, and there wasn’t much mentioned on him, but the details that were [mentioned] were tantalizing, and something that he does and that happens later in his life indicated to me someone who had a lot of power, but chose to be put at the service of a younger king, rather than try to become king of Norway himself. There’s also some sacrifice that he makes for Harald later in his life which struck me and made me wonder what kind of person he must be to do these things and remain loyal to Harald, so I started to focus on him as the main character because of that.

The power behind the throne, the sidekicks, things like that have always interested me more in fiction than the hero at the front of the battle.

Did you ever feel constricted, like something couldn’t go how you wanted it to, since your characters were based on real people?
A little bit, but not too much—it was kind of fun to come up with how these people got to all of the places that we know happened, and also to come up with their reasons for being there. So it’s constricting in one way, but I think sometimes the constraints can actually give you some freedom to work with, because there are some things that are already decided, so you don’t need to worry if those decisions are right or not.

Also, I’ve taken some liberties. Svanhild is only mentioned once in all of the sources, so I got to invent most of her story, which was actually quite freeing as a writer. And since it was so long ago, even if things may not have happened exactly as I have them written, everything is at least plausible.

Finally, what book has most influenced or inspired you as a writer?
The first book I ever read that made me think that I wanted to be a writer was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. At the time, it was really groundbreaking, the idea of retelling a historical myth from the point of view of different characters, especially from the point of view of women. I’ve read it since, and there are some ways in which it holds up, and some ways it doesn’t, and I certainly read it differently now than when I read it at age 12, but it’s definitely the book most responsible for me being a writer now. Part of me wants to say that my choice was something more highbrow, but that’s the truth.

Well that’s a better reason than mine—I had read a book once, and it was so . . . horrible. [Laughs.] And I told myself that I knew I could do better, and that’s why I started writing.
So I think your explanation is a little more uplifting than you may think. I think a lot of people have that idea as well. I remember complaining to a friend about something similar, and he was like, “But she finished a novel.” And that kind of made me keep quiet, because truthfully that person had indeed finished a novel, several actually. So that at the very least made me sit down and keep my mouth shut a little bit.

Ten years after the publication of her first novel, Frances de Pontes Peebles returns with The Air You Breathe. Set in 1920s Brazil, it’s a captivating tale of female friendship, music, love and ambition.

You were born in Brazil, grew up in Miami and now live in Chicago. Where are you most at home?
I’m most at home around the people I love, and who love me. I have this in all three places, so they are all my homes.

The Air You Breathe started as a fictional account of Carmen Miranda’s life, but then you decided to create your own Brazilian star, Sofia Salvador. Why?
Carmen Miranda’s story is compelling, but ultimately I felt hemmed in by having to faithfully follow the trajectory of her life. It felt like a story about a Hollywood star that has already been told many times, in many forms. I didn’t want to tell the same story over again. This was very early in my writing process, when the novel was more an idea than a fully formed manuscript. At the time, I was also reading a biography of Édith Piaf, written by Piaf’s former friend. I was fascinated by the tone of the book, how much love and jealousy was in her account of their friendship, how music bound them and also broke them apart. My instincts told me that my novel wasn’t about an actual Hollywood star but about music, friendship, loss and memory. I had to be true to my original impulse, so I re-envisioned the novel and started over.

Your research for this must have been extensive. Is that part of the reason it has been a decade since The Seamstress?
I did a lot of research, which I really enjoy. But research wasn’t the reason for the extended timeline between books. My husband and I moved back to Brazil and managed my family’s farm, building a business there. Farming is a 24/7 endeavor. While on the farm I gave birth to my daughter, which was wonderful, but I also went through postpartum depression, which wasn’t. After I had a child, my brain worked differently. I had less writing time and had to adjust to this new reality. I’d write while my daughter napped. When I had childcare, I’d write a few days a week. As she got older and went to preschool, I gained more time. Like many women who are mothers and do creative work, I felt like I had to fight for my time and my ideas. But the beautiful thing was that this book, this idea, also fought for me. It stayed with me all those years and through all those life changes. It was stubborn. It said, I’ll be here when you’re ready. It was my duty to learn how to be the writer that this particular book needed. I’m not sure I could have written Dores’ character—her wise, wry voice full of love and regrets—without having experienced my own decade of heartache and love and transformation. As Mary Oliver says, “Things take the time they take. Don’t worry.”

There’s a lot of detail regarding Graça’s family’s sugar plantation and the rituals and customs of the servants. Was this history something you’ve always been aware of, or was it part of the research?
In Pernambuco, where I was born, sugar still drives a big part of the agricultural economy. Ever since the 1600s, sugar was king. There are many working sugar plantations today, but the old mills, Great Houses, chapels and slave quarters are abandoned. They are relics. Driving through the countryside, I used to see them and wonder what life was like on those plantations, especially as Brazil began to modernize. I wanted my two main characters—Maria das Dores and Maria das Graças—to be from Pernambuco, and to have them migrate south to Rio, as so many Brazilians did and still do. I always wanted the young Graça to have a position of power over Dores. When I started writing Dores’ character, I imagined a little girl wandering through a Great House on a sugar plantation, not as part of the family but as a servant, born into this role that she desperately wants to escape. So it started there.

The novel chops back and forth in time. Did you originally write it linearly, or was it always your intention to give the reader snippets of what was going to happen? 
I always wanted the reader to see Dores as an old woman in the present day, as the last living member of the Blue Moon Band. I always wanted the reader to experience her regrets and to see the outcome of her life. I was inspired by Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin in terms of structure, and having a narrator who is alive in the present day but who focuses mostly on her past.

You based Dores on singer/songwriter Chavela Vargas, who was very open about the fact that she’s attracted to women, and is one of the few women in a male-dominated music scene. What were the challenges in writing the story from Dores’ perspective?
Whenever you have a first-person narrator with secrets and flaws, the challenge is how to be in their heads for the entire span of a book and not feel suffocated. Dores speaks to the reader as if addressing a long-lost friend. The challenge was how to build this relationship over the course of the book—how to have Dores slowly reveal her regrets and misdeeds, and how, in spite of these revelations, the reader (hopefully) grows to understand Dores and empathize with her.

Madam Lucifer is an interesting character: a killer and gangster who dresses in full drag during Carnival. He’s very empathetic toward Dores and never mocks her because of her sexuality. Where did he come from?
He’s inspired by a Brazilian man called Madame Satã. He died in the 1970s, but he’s a legend today. Satã basically ruled Rio’s bohemian Lapa neighborhood in the 1930s. By day he was a gangster, providing businesses protection from thieves and corrupt police. By night, in Lapa’s cabarets, he transformed into his famous drag persona, Madame Satã. He was openly gay and unashamed of his sexuality at a time in Brazilian history when gay men were sent to mental hospitals and administered electroshock conversion therapy. Satã was elegant, brutally violent and tenacious, surviving a 27-year stint in one of Brazil’s most notorious penitentiaries. In a country that still suffers from homophobia and racism, the fact that Satã became a legend—with several biographies and a popular 2002 feature film based on his life—is pretty amazing.

Did you have a sound or duo in mind when you created Dores and Vinicius’ band Sal e Pimenta?
I guess I was inspired by Ellis Regina’s and Tom Jobim’s Bossa Nova record from 1974. Although, in the book, Dor and Vinicius are antecedents to Bossa. They are Bossa’s fictionalized founders.

How did the Iowa Writers’ Workshop shape you as a writer?
My teachers and peers at Iowa were incredibly smart, intensely focused and very generous readers. They made me push myself to be a better writer and reader, and they still do. I read their work and feel this great mix of inspiration, jealousy (in the best sense) and awe. Iowa taught me to keep striving, keep working, keep reading. For me, the best thing about writing is being at my desk and feeling completely immersed and transported, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes are incredible! I live for those moments when I’m totally engrossed and in love with whatever I’m working on. Iowa taught me to fight for those moments, to never diminish them.

I read you’re already well into your next novel. How’s it going? Any clues?
I’m a slow writer. It takes me a long time to understand a book and to shape it. This new book feels very different from anything I’ve done before. It feels more like my short stories. I’m excited about this and terrified, too. I’m striving to be the writer this book deserves. I’m going to fight for it.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Air You Breathe.

Author photo by Elaine Melko.