'It's a scaffolding for the imagination'

 

“The thing that most attracts me tohistorical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, usingthat as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure thatfills in those things we can never find out for sure.” – GeraldineBrooks

 

Born in Australia on Sept. 14, 1955 Brooks started her writing career as a journalist, firsttrying her hand in creative writing in 2001 with the novel Year ofWonders.  Set in 1666, themultiple-award winning bestseller is the story of a young woman’s battle tosave fellow villagers when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes.   Immediatelydispelling any “one-hit wonder” talk, she followed it up with March,winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

  

March isinspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, whichher mother had given her as a child and leading Brooks to create a fictional chronicleof wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls.

 

In the process, she also developed anewfound respect for religion.  “You can't write about the past andignore religion,” she said.   “It was such a fundamental,mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested inwhat religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatredand violence.”

 

Her most recent books are Horse,out in 2022, and the just-released nonfiction work Memorial Days: A Memoir.

 
She encourages all who are interested in history not to fear writing historicalfiction. “There's just so many great stories in the past that you can knowa little bit about, but you can't know it all,” she said.  “Andthat's where your imagination can go to work.”