Interview with the Author

[Jess]

Amy, thank you for hosting this week! To start, can you please tell us a little about yourself and your novel?

A wife and mother of four grown children (and two grandchildren), I live in rural Vermont, having returned to my roots after many years of living in other northeastern states. I love the landscape here—the hills, and stone walls and sugar maples, the old cemeteries and the ever-changing weather. I’ve been writing all my life and working on historical novels for the past 25 years. I’m never happier than when I’m reading stacks of 19th century letters or exploring old church records. New England history in particular has always fascinated me, as have the lives of my ancestors and others who lived before me.

FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW is set in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay in the year 1676, at the beginning of King Philip’s War. When the frontier town of Lancaster is attacked by a confederation of indigenous tribes resisting British colonization, the minister’s wife, Mary Rowlandson, is captured and sold to a powerful woman tribal leader. Wounded, hungry, and suffering the loss of her home and children, Mary is forced to accompany her captors as they flee the English forces and along the way she witnesses harrowing brutality, but also experiences unexpected kindness and generosity. Over time she’s drawn to the indigineous way of life and their respect for women. She’s surprised to find herself attracted to an English-speaking Nipmuc man named James Printer and begins to question the Puritan edicts that have shaped her past. Torn between the life she knew and the wisdom her captors have shown her, she faces yet more challenges when she’s ransomed back to her rigid Puritan community.

How were you inspired to write FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW? What sparked your interest in MARY ROWLANDSON?

FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW grew out of my curiosity about the English Puritans who came to New England in the 17th century. I also wanted to explore the colonists’ relationships with the indigenous people who already occupied and managed the land. Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her experiences offered the perfect story in which to explore the complexities of that time. I think Mary’s trials and transformation mirrors our own changing times in many ways.

In my previous novel, MR. EMERSON’S WIFE, I had explored the lives and thinking of the New England Transcendentalists. My realization that they were, in many ways, trying to cast off the Puritanism of their ancestors, sparked my interest in better understanding the Puritans and their lives. When I read a copy of Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity, it struck me as providing a unique window on the Puritan mindset.

Can you give us insight into your writing process?

I start with curiosity. I bump into something that intrigues me—usually a person, but sometimes a place or a situation. I’m especially drawn to women who aren’t well-known but have made a difference in the lives of the people around them. The main criteria is that it has to be someone I want to know more about. Then I start to research. I find out everything I can about the person, including their personal history, their families and friends, the places they lived, their ancestors and children, and then I move to what was going on in their neighborhoods, communities, regions, and even nationally, at the time they lived. I take notes and make connections and try to reconcile discrepancies in the record—one discovery often leads to another. And then there comes a sort of tipping point—I never know exactly when ahead of time—and I begin to write. I start with scenes in which the character does something or talks to someone else, or even just explains where they are to the reader. These early scenes are explorations that rarely make it into the novel itself, but their purpose is primarily to discover who the character is—how they relate and react—and over time to find their voice. From that point on I use a recursive process of writing and researching, writing and researching, back and forth. As I gradually uncover my character and her story, questions arise and finding the answers leads me to new insights and possibilities. I consult old maps and make extensive timelines. Since I write about real people, I try to keep inside the boundaries of what actually happened in their lives. That can sometimes present problems—for instance, I can’t kill off a character or keep one alive just to suit my story arc. And teasing a satisfactory arc out of a real life is one of my biggest challenges, because people’s lives rarely unfold like stories. So it all requires a lot of experimenting and exploring and revising. It usually takes me years. It’s a pretty messy process, overall, and over the years I’ve tried other approaches but have learned that this is the only one that works for me. I’m convinced every writer has to find her own way through this thicket. And, ultimately, that’s part of the fun.

What research did you do for FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW? Travel? Go to historical societies? Read memoirs?

I spent years doing the research for FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW. I always gather a lot more information than ever appears in the book. That’s partly because, in my writing process, I don’t know at the beginning exactly what information is going to be relevant to the story, and partly because I just plain enjoy doing the research. It usually starts narrowly, on a particular element, and gradually broadens in scope to cover the general context of the time and place. As I gather more and more information I begin to “inhabit” the story as a real-life person would—aware of both the immediate and distant surroundings and activities. When writing FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW I started by reading everything I could get my hands on about King Philip’s War, Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans, and the Nipmuc and Wampanoag peoples. I spent hours combing through early church and town records and referencing material in the library located in the town James Printer came from. I consulted many, many books and online sources, and was especially interested in primary sources like Judge Samuel Sewall’s diary and notes of Congregational ministers. I visited the site of the Rowlandson garrison in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and Redemption Rock in Princeton, where Mary Rowlandson was ransomed back to the English colonists. The more I dug, the more I found. One of the fascinating things about doing research in this way is that I find one thing leads to another and what initially seem like tangent may end up playing an important role in the novel. This was the case for the opening scenes of FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW, in which Mary serves as an impromptu midwife in the birth of a mixed-race child.

Did you find anything in your research that was particularly fascinating or that helped shape the novel?

As I mentioned above, I discovered (fairly late in the process) the story of Elizabeth Parker, the indentured servant who bore an illegitimate, mixed-raced child that was taken from her and her father and sold into slavery. It struck me as something so crucial to an honest telling of the Massachusetts’ Puritan story that I had to include it. Also, the more I researched James Printer, the Nipmuc man who helped arrange for the ransom of Mary Rowlandson, the more impressed I became. This singular man managed to successfully navigate the difficult terrain between two very different cultures while they were at war with each other. The very fact that he was able to stay alive in a time when so many of his people were slaughtered or enslaved speaks to his remarkable brilliance.

What is your favorite time period to write about? To read about?
Instead of than having a favorite time period, I have a favorite region—New England. All my historical novels are set in New England but during different eras. MR. EMERSON’S WIFE focuses on the group of New England Transcendentalists that had such a profound impact on American thought and philosophy. It takes place during the years before, during, and after the American Civil War. FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW, set in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, begins in 1676, with the onset of King Philip’s War, the first organized conflict between the indigenous people and the English settlers in the northern British colonies. And my new novel, EMILY’S HOUSE, explores the second half of the 19th century in western Massachusetts. My reading tastes in historical fiction are eclectic, though I generally prefer settings prior to World War II.

What has been your greatest challenge as a writer? How have you been able to overcome that?

The greatest general challenge to my writing has been carving out—and protecting—writing time. This has become less of a problem since my husband retired and my children became adults. However, I still need to discipline myself to make sure I devote some time to writing every day Over the years I’ve learned that patience and persistence are a writer’s two biggest assets. It takes years to hone the necessary skills to write fiction—it’s not a process that can be rushed.

When it comes to the actual process of writing an historical novel, my greatest challenge is fitting the experiences of real-life characters into the shape of a story. Life doesn’t always lend itself well to a compelling story arc.

Who are your writing inspirations?

I don’t know where to begin. Though I love setting my fiction in history, I find myself turning to an eclectic mix of excellent writers for inspiration in my work, including Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, Jane Smiley, Ron Hanson, Annie Proulx, Lily King, Wallace Stegner, Hillary Mantel, Colum McCann, and Joan Silber. And I’m always interested in reading emerging writers who explore interesting characters in unusual situations.

What are you reading at the moment?
I’ve just started reading Chris Bohjalian’s HOUR OF THE WITCH, which is set during the same general time period as FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW. Though it’s a very different novel than mine, it explores some of the same territory, especially the role of women in Puritan New England, so I’m curious to see his approach.

What are three things people may not know about you?

I suspect there are a lot of things that people don’t know about me, but here are three:

(1) My father was the principal of the public high school I attended.
(2) When my children were young I made (and sometimes sold) hand-quilted wall hangings and bed quilts.
(3) I love to spend hours exploring 18th and 19th-century cemeteries.

Care to share what you are working on now?

I’m in the very early stages of researching a novel set in my home state of Vermont during the Revolutionary War era. I can’t say much more than that, since the story has yet to reveal its shape, but I’m already fascinated by the nuanced complexities of the period.