AMERICAN HISTORICAL NOVELS discussion
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Courting Anna
Cate Simon - Courting Anna
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John Barry just did a Book Break for Gilder Lehrman. It was, of course, timely, but I learned a lot especially about his research methods. You are right, it is important to know about these things.
Interesting! Anna sounds like an amazing character. I’ll be especially interested in the NYC book as well. My heroine in The Engineer’s Wife, Emily Warren Roebling, also had dreams of becoming a lawyer. She was awarded a “certificate” in law, because it was just before women were admitted to the bar. I’m sure Emily was a trailblazer there!
Tracey wrote: "Interesting! Anna sounds like an amazing character. I’ll be especially interested in the NYC book as well. My heroine in The Engineer’s Wife, Emily Warren Roebling, also had dreams of becoming a la..."The first woman to be admitted in New York State was in 1886. It's funny that we lagged behind some other parts of the country -- Iowa in 1869, California in 1878, Illinois in 1873. I think the east coast establishment was just a bit less flexible than some other places. I'm definitely going to check out your book!
Amanda wrote: "John Barry just did a Book Break for Gilder Lehrman. It was, of course, timely, but I learned a lot especially about his research methods. You are right, it is important to know about these things."For me, research is half the fun! Especially because I trained in Victorian literature, and now teach first year writing and science fiction to STEM students. I love my job, but historical fiction allows me to get back to my first love.
Catherine wrote: "Amanda wrote: "John Barry just did a Book Break for Gilder Lehrman. It was, of course, timely, but I learned a lot especially about his research methods. You are right, it is important to know abou..."Yes! Research was the best part of my doctoral program. History is my field so the opportunities to research are endless.
Hi everyone! I'd like to introduce you to Cate Simon, who is hosting this week on American Historical novels. Her book, Courting Anna, is based around the adventures of a female lawyer in the 19th century. She's also working on a series based in New York. So, without further ado, let's meet her and find out more about her.
Cate, thank you for hosting this week! To start, can you please tell us a little about yourself and your novel?
Courting Anna is the story of a woman lawyer in 1880s Montana who defends a former outlaw determined to turn his life around. Of course, they fall in love. One of my readers described it as “alternately legal drama, a romance, a rollicking good western, and a whodunit – often all four at once.”
How were you inspired to write Courting Anna?
I came up with the characters and situation when I was writing my dissertation on representations of the legal system in the Victorian novel. I was thinking a lot about the role of women at that time. And I happened to watch a couple of Westerns, and thought about how different that world was, taking place at the same time. It occurred to me how entertaining a clash between the two worlds might be. Some years later, those initial ideas turned into Courting Anna. My heroine, Anna, is a late 19thcentury New Woman, very independent, but also still really grounded in late Victorian culture. The hero, on the other hand, is from that freer, wilder, but also more survival-driven world. They deal with the world in very different ways, but they find themselves continually drawn together.
Can you give us insight into your writing process?
I sit and I type. I’ve always been a classic “pantser” – I have an idea where I want the story to go, but I let the characters tell me. Sometimes I jump ahead and write scenes I see really vividly, but when I get there, the story’s evolved so much that scene has to go. However, my current project is a mystery, and I’m learning that I need to plan my structure out much more!
What research did you do for the novel? Travel? Go to historical societies? Read memoirs?
Oddly enough, I haven’t yet been to Montana, but both some distant cousins and an old friend have lived there at different times, so I felt an affinity for it. There are scenes that take place in the wilderness in Colorado which are inspired by a wilderness camping trip I took in the San Juans with friends some years ago. Otherwise, a lot of it frankly came from the reading I was doing in grad school, really immersing myself in the period, though I also did some more specific reading on the West for the book.
Did you find anything in your research that was particularly fascinating or that helped shape the novel?
I discovered that the first woman lawyer in the United States was Arabella Mansfield, in Iowa in 1869. And that a number of other women followed, although various states and territories allowed or didn’t allow it at different times. The concurrence in Bradwell v. Illinois, a Supreme Court case from 1873, gives all the “separate spheres” arguments of why a woman’s purer and more domestic nature fitted her only for hearth and home. The woman in question, Myra Bradwell, was already a powerhouse, as the editor of a major legal periodical. And her sponsor for admission to the bar? Was her husband, who clearly had no expectations that Myra should confine herself to the domestic sphere. A few years later, Illinois changed its law, and began to admit women to legal practice.
What is your favorite time period to write about? To read about?
My particular catnip is the mid-late 1800s, in particular. I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes’s Victorian London when I was a child, and that affinity has continued, for both sides of the Atlantic and all over the world.
What has been your greatest challenge as a writer? How have you been able to overcome that?
Lack of time (I’m a busy college professor) and lack of confidence. With the first, it helps that I’m happiest when I’m in the middle of a writing project. That’s a big motivator! With the second, getting Courting Anna published, and the responses I’ve gotten to it, have helped a lot.
Who are your writing inspirations?
Caleb Carr is definitely one – I fell in love with The Alienist when it first came out, and I’ve been wanting to write a historical mystery ever since. It’s just taken some time to get there! Another is Dorothy Sayers. I read the Lord Peter Wimsey books when I was quite young – my mother was checking them out of the library, and I’d get bored with my Nancy Drews and pick her books up instead. Specifically Gaudy Night, which has such a sense of place and the life of the mind, as well as being the culmination of one of the great love stories, between Peter and Harriet.
What are you reading at the moment?
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, which is a history of the Pandemic of 1918. I think it’s important to know about such things. And also, naturally, C. A. Asbrey’s Innocent to the Last, which I’m sad to say, is the final book in the series!
What are three things people may not know about you?
-I used to be a lawyer, myself. It turns out I did not have an affinity for it.
-In the 1890s, my great grandfather had a grocery store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Although I grew up in the suburbs, I now live a few blocks from where the store was.
-Cate Simon isn’t my real name, but if you go to my webpage (www.catesimon.com) and look around, you can find it in a couple of places.
Care to share what you are working on now?
I’m working on a mystery set on more familiar ground – New York City in 1887. I enjoyed writing Anna so much, but of course, she gets her happily ever after ending. So I started playing around with the idea of a similar character, another lady lawyer from the West, but one who heads east and finds herself in a world with rules and dangers she never imagined. 1887 because Kate Stoneman was the first woman admitted in New York State in 1886, so it’s all brand new. She’s teaching civics at a settlement house on the Lower East Side while studying for the bar and reluctantly hobnobbing with the society friends of the aunt and uncle she’s living with. But a building collapse in the immigrant neighborhood where she teaches, and the unexpectedly connected murder of a wealthy family friend, sets her on a new path – uncovering the truth, in places she never expected to go.