Top 10 Most-Viewed Q&As of 2024: #8

 

Counting down the top 10 most-viewed Q&As of 2024: here's #8, a Q&A with Joyce Maynard first posted on May 20, 2023.

 

Q&A with Joyce Maynard

 

 

 

Joyce Maynard is the author of the new novel The Bird Hotel. Her many other books include the novel Count the Ways. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and Vogue.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Bird Hotel, and how did you create your character Irene?

 

A: For over 20 years, I’ve had a house on the shores of a very beautiful lake in Guatemala called Lake Atitlan, where I go to write and host workshops for women in the art and craft of telling one’s story.

 

I was there at my house on the lake in March of 2020 to lead my annual workshop. The airport closed down. My writing students managed to get back to the United States, eventually, but I stayed on in Guatemala, knowing there could be no better place to be in a pandemic.

I invited two young women who’d attended my writing workshop to stay on with me at the lake. In the beginning, I figured we’d be there for a few weeks at most, but in the end we stayed in that small Mayan village on the lake for nearly six months. We could have returned home…but we were having a beautiful, productive time there—and a healthy one.

 

Every day I worked on my novel, Count the Ways. Every night, under the stars, I read to the girls from whatever chapter I’d written that day. We were having a happy time.

 

When I finished that novel, the girls were very sad that our nightly readings were over. So there was nothing for it but to start a new novel. That was The Bird Hotel. I read the chapters out loud to the two young women like a nightly bedtime story. They were always eager to hear what happened next. That kept me working hard.

 

The country depicted in The Bird Hotel is a fictional one. But of course it was inspired by my place in Guatemala. I spent my days looking out at a lake and a volcano. Naturally, I had to put them in my book.

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: As with most of my novels, my research is my life. I’ve been spending time in Central America for most of my life, and–for the last 22 years–have spent a significant time in a small indigenous community very close to my heart. This novel–though a work of imagination—was inspired by my time there.

 

Q: In your acknowledgments, you write that “the mere fact of my having chosen to locate my story in a country not of my birth was deemed by many as unacceptable.” What types of feedback did you get about the novel’s location, and why did you choose that location?

 

A: There is a school of thought, in the world of publishing, that puts forward the view writers should not go beyond their own ethnic heritage and background in their writing.

 

To me, this is a dangerous trend that limits an essential aspect of the creative process, which is imagination, and the freedom not simply to express what is known and familiar to us, but to explore worlds beyond the one of our birth.

 

In this novel, I do not write from the point of view of an indigenous person, or a Latina person. I write from the point of view of a woman who—like me—experiences a Latin/indigenous culture as a foreigner. That’s an experience I know well.

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I never know how my novels will end. I get up every morning exited to get to work so I can find out what my characters do next.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve just finished the sequel to my novel Count the Ways—titled How the Light Gets In. I’ll be revising this one over the summer. It should come out next spring. I can’t wait to share what happens next in that one.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Though this was not true at the time I wrote The Bird Hotel, like the central character of The Bird Hotel I actually DO now run a hotel/retreat center in Central America now. It’s called Casa Paloma Retreat.

 

We built it during the pandemic as a way of creating jobs when tourists disappeared from my village. (When I say “we” I am talking about a crew of over 30 men, and some women, who worked so hard to build the place.) You can see pictures here: casapalomaretreat.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Top 10 Most-Viewed Q&As of 2024: #9

 

Counting down the top 10 most-viewed Q&As of 2024: here's #9, a Q&A with Jocelyn Elise Crowley first posted on April 9, 2018.

 

Q&A with Jocelyn Elise Crowley

Jocelyn Elise Crowley is the author of the new book Gray Divorce: What We Lose and Gain from Mid-Life Splits. Her other books include The Politics of Child Support in America and Defiant Dads: Fathers' Rights Activists in America. She is a professor of public policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Q: What accounts for the increase in over-50 divorces? Is it simply the larger number of people in the Baby Boom generation, or are there other factors?

A: There are three primary factors. First, simply the aging of the baby boom generation. The number of people 50 and over has expanded over time. There were 100 million in 2010 and in 2050 the projections are for 161 million. We see a rising number of folks 50 and over, so we will see the divorce rate rise.

Second is the changing life expectancy. In 1950 the average man lived to 65 and the average woman to 71. Now, the average for a man is 76 and for a woman is 81. There’s a significant rise in life expectancy. As people live longer, the chance [increases] that they might be exposed [to divorce].

Third is the cultural shift in American society. I was a kid in the 1970s and when my parents divorced, it was a big stigma. Over time with the evolution of divorce laws, there’s been a gradual destigmatizing of divorce overall. People are finding it easier.

Q: Are the reasons for over-50 divorces similar to those for younger age groups?

A: When I started the project, that was one of the main questions I had. There was the traditional idea of marriage—people get married because of love, and then have a sense of mutual responsibility and obligation. When one partner engages in destructive behavior, that’s when you would see divorce, with adultery or emotional abuse.

Then in the 1960s there was a new idea—that marriages were places where you needed to be fulfilled and evolve, become a self-actualized person. If that wasn’t happening, you could get divorced.

Baby boomers were the first generation coming of age in the new generation of marriage. I expected reasons like that, that they grew apart. But the majority of reasons had to do with traditional ideas of mutual responsibility and obligation. Only when that was broken would they think about divorce. It was a surprise.

Q: What are some other things you found that surprised you in the course of your research?

A: The length of marriages, how long many of them stuck it out hoping things would get better. I spoke to 40 men and 40 women who had experienced gray divorce. Very few were married five years—the majority was married 20, 30, 40 years. The amount of dissatisfaction they lived through, and attempted to make it work—that was a little surprising.

Often they would have problems in the beginning of a marriage, and it kept happening. And they had kids, and eventually one person would pursue divorce. The length to which they stuck to it before calling it quits was surprising.

Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to divorce patterns?

A: The divorce rate for most of the population in the United States has leveled off, and dipped among some populations, but gray divorce rates have increased. From 1990 to 2010 they’ve doubled. If this continues, this is going to become a phenomenon that’s increasing.

There are a host of economic and social implications to think about. In the book I talk about women and men facing different penalties.

For women, there’s an economic gray divorce penalty. They often have taken time out of paid work and go back, and they’re frequently making less than men for a host of reasons. By the time men and women are in their 50s, women have saved less for retirement, and have less contribution to the Social Security system.

In the book I talk about some public policy implications, what we should do to address this: pre-retirement financial literacy, the importance of saving, why it’s important to save. All of these are really important. Making sure women have access to public policies, such as paid maternity leave.

For post-retirement policies, we have to look at the Social Security system. Women take home less than men. It’s important to look at the formula and reform it. Women can access an ex-spouse’s benefits if it’s greater than what they’d get on their own, but they have to have been married 10 years and the average marriage lasts eight years.

For men, I look at social gray divorce penalties. While married, women are the primary social directors of the family. When there’s a gray divorce, suddenly men lose that. Friends, even adult children tend to side with the woman. He has a much smaller network.

We need to do a better job encouraging men to seek out therapy and pursue support groups so they can talk about their feelings after a gray divorce.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I would say that in my research I found people going through serious pain as a result of gray divorces. Men and women face different consequences, but when I asked them, most were very optimistic about their future. That’s what I wanted to communicate.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Top 10 Most-Viewed Q&As of 2024: #10

As 2024 concludes, I'm counting down the top 10 most-viewed Q&As of the year. Here's #10, a Q&A from April 22, 2018, with Natasha Boyd about her novel The Indigo Girl.

Q&A with Natasha Boyd

Natasha Boyd is the author of the historical novel The Indigo Girl. Her other books include the novel Accidental Tryst.  She was born in Denmark and lives in the United States.

Q: Your novel The Indigo Girl is based on the life of an actual historical figure, Eliza Lucas Pinckney. What did you see as the right blend of fiction and history as you wrote this book?

A: I set out to follow history as closely as possible while still allowing Eliza’s remarkable story to shine through; her fortitude, her resilience, her perseverance in the face of adversity and pitfalls. I was lucky that her struggle to bring indigo as a commodity to bear is a remarkable story, complete with allies and villains, setbacks and resolutions.

She spent most of her time on the plantations, especially during the indigo years, which is the scope of this novel, so it was natural that the people she would interact with most would be on the plantation, and not in the drawing rooms of Charleston society.

While I’ve been lucky to come across records of actual slaves and personnel attached to the plantations, there were also lots of blanks I had to fill in.

Those added characters and also the fleshed-out personalities of people who before now were simply a name on a bill of sale or lading, really allowed me to explore some of the issues of colonial South Carolina and the issues facing an idealistic young girl bound by societal expectation.

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I researched the novel by reading the meticulously recorded letters that she wrote, anecdotes written down by her descendants, as well as visiting the archives of the South Carolina Historical Society and reading surrounding historical documents of the time. I also visited places I knew she’d been, visited and lived. 

I was also fortunate that scholars and historians who studied the time period, Eliza and/or indigo as a commodity have been able to find references that were otherwise missing from the main body of history.  For example, I’m especially thankful for the work that was done to trace the names and records of the slaves that worked on her plantation. 

There were so many things that surprised me. Firstly, while I knew she must have been a spirited and determined young person in order to accomplish what she did, it was only by reading through her letters and prayers she wrote throughout her whole life that I got a real glimpse into her personality. She was passionate and had a wonderful sense of humor.

I especially loved learning about the slave, Quash, and learning what became of him. Eliza freed him in the 1750s and he ended up becoming an architect, building the home that Eliza and future husband Charles Pinckney lived in on East Bay Street. He bought his daughters out of slavery and became a landowner himself. Which in those times meant he probably also became a slave owner himself.

Q: What do you think Eliza's experiences say about the role of women in 18th century South Carolina?

A: As much as we like to imagine a TV world where women were but expensive decorations corseted up in silk and feathered finery in the 18th century, Eliza’s story reminds us that women were very much involved in the menial running of houses and plantations, and worked hard despite having little agency of their own.

Of course, Charleston society was genteel and there was indeed silk and feathered finery worn by both men and women, but in the end 18th century South Carolina was a place of pioneering spirit, but also many sociological tragedies.

Many women who were capable farmers’ wives would be left homeless and destitute when their husbands died. Their only hope would be to remarry. I was surprised to learn that Eliza taught herself rudimentary law and will writing, in order to help local women in case their husbands died. 

To put an 18th century women’s worth in perspective though: a male slave might be freed and could therefore go and buy land if he had the means. A woman like Eliza, a planter’s daughter, might be technically “free” but could work tirelessly and never be able to own even the vegetable patch over which she toiled.  That made female slaves, of course, the worst off. 

Being a woman in 18th century South Carolina was not for the faint-hearted. In my view, Eliza’s station, pioneering spirit, education, and empathetic humanitarian nature was exactly why she was able to garner so much respect and accomplish so much.

Q: The novel also focuses on the issue of slavery. What do you hope readers take away from your depiction of the plantation in your book?

A: You can’t write a book in 18th century South Carolina and not deal with slavery. And it just so happens that Eliza’s story is one of a planter’s daughter. Planters owned slaves. There’s no getting around it. Slavery wasn’t a focus of the book as much as the story cannot be told without it.

Slavery needs to be talked about, not skirted around. The slaves who helped her should be named and appreciated as part of the story, not be faceless allies. Eliza was a product of the world in which she lived, with no agency or means to take on a crusade to end slavery.

Nor should we assume, just because she was a kind and empathetic slave owner (which in modern terms feels like an oxymoron but is based on the writings of her life and her recorded actions) that she would have taken on such a cause.

Many of the planters who owned land were unable to pay for labor, it would have bankrupted them, and they were taught that this was just the way things were done. They truly believed it was economically necessary and unavoidable. When the colonists tried to begin issuing their own notes from their banks to ease up their economy, the British Crown was swift with punishment. 

I hope readers take away from my book how integrated into the fabric of colonial existence it was and that it can’t be wished away. I hope it makes visitors visiting old plantations just as interested in the decrepit slave cabins and the people who lived in them, as in the grand ballrooms. I hope it makes them think of the often faceless and nameless people who were so much a part of the building of America.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am currently working on a romantic comedy called Inconvenient Wife, which is a follow up to my recent romantic comedy Accidental Tryst. I have two other writing projects planned for this year that I’m not able to share anything about yet. 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: My goal in writing The Indigo Girl was to reintroduce readers to a real-life historical figure who shouldn’t have been forgotten. It was an absolute honor to write her story, and my hope is that Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s determined spirit and her important accomplishment are what people remember most when they finish the book.   

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Janice Cohn

 

Photo by Steven Hockstein

 

 

 

Janice Cohn is the author of the children's book The Christmas Menorahs, which is now available in an expanded 30th anniversary edition. It looks at efforts to fight antisemitism in Billings, Montana, in 1993. Cohn's other books include Freedom Pancakes for Ukraine. She is also a psychotherapist.

 

Q: Why was The Christmas Menorahs reissued on its 30th anniversary, and how is this version different from the original?

 

A: The book was reprinted on the 30th anniversary of the extraordinary events in Billings which took place during the 1993 holiday season. Because of the alarming rise in antisemitism, there had been many requests to have the book reprinted.

 

First published in 1995, it had been continuously in print until 2016, when the original publishing house came under new ownership.

 

The picture book was targeted for 3rd and 4th graders, but turned out to resonate with people of all ages, perhaps because the message of the power of courage and goodness hit a strong chord with readers.

 

I knew that if the book was to be republished, I wanted to expand it to include the background information of this true story, interviews with the real-life characters I wrote about, and the full story of how Denmark rescued its Jewish citizens in 1943, during the country’s Nazi occupation, which in turn inspired the residents of Billings, Montana, almost exactly 50 years later.

 

Mostly, I wanted readers to understand how this story exemplifies the importance of the “Upstander”—a person who views bigotry, injustice, and cruelty directed towards others and who decides to take a principled stand against it, sometimes at great risk, as was the case in Billings.

 

Loving our neighbors as ourselves is, to me, the true meaning of the holiday season as well as a model of how we should live our lives year-round. During the times we’re now living in, this message is particularly important.

 

Q: What do you think Bill Farnsworth’s illustrations add to the book? 

 

A: Virtually every reviewer of the original version of The Christmas Menorahs mentioned Bill Farnsworth’s beautiful and compelling artwork, which helped make the message of the story come alive.

 

He created a new cover for the updated edition that beautifully shows the juxtaposition of lights illuminating the darkness, which is what the story of Billings is all about.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story, especially with the current rise in antisemitism?

 

A: On the cover of the new edition of The Christmas Menorahs is a quote from Gary Svee, who was one of the editors of The Billings Gazette in 1993, and helped create the paper’s now iconic appeal to the community to put up pictures of menorahs.

 

He said, “Just a tiny candle we lit. It wasn’t much. But it was something.” It’s my hope that readers will try to imagine what our country and world would be like if we each lit “a tiny candle.”

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My new book, Freedom Pancakes For Ukraine, is being published next month.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The address of the website for The Christmas Menorahs is www.thechristmasmenorahs.com

The address for Freedom Pancakes For Ukraine is www.freedompancakesforukraine.com

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Carol Plum-Ucci

 

 

 

Carol Plum-Ucci is the author of the new young adult novel Insane Possibilities. Her other books include The Body of Christopher Creed. She lives in New Jersey.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Insane Possibilities, and how did you create your character Toby?

 

A: I had a friend who had to be in a rotating Stryker bed once, and it's always stuck with me as being particularly scary!

 

When I visited her, I kept my questions to myself, though my writer's imagination was going wild. “What if there’s a fire?” and “What if an immobilized person started seeing drawers open and close by themselves and things skirting across the floor?”

 

It took me some years but I finally used the immobilization creepy factor. That was the inspiration for the concept.

 

For the plot, the inspiration was political. Those looking can see it pretty clearly in the subplot.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I'm not sure how I pick titles. Some I have to work at; some just come to me while walking from one room to the other. But oftentimes, I get a feeling like this is the perfect title.

 

I had that feeling this time. Toby has to figure out who pushed him down a well and put him in immobilization for seven weeks in the height of summer. All the possible suspects look like insane choices in one way or another.

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: This time, I did know how the story would end, but often, I don't know until around chapter 10. I'm not bothered by my not-knowing because I feel like if I don't know, the reader definitely can't know. Some quick minds could guess ahead of time, I suppose, but it's still a page-turner.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: Two things. First, I love to weave the natural and the supernatural together as seamlessly as possible. To me, they share the same reality and I like to get others thinking like that, too. It's cathartic.

 

Second, in the subplot, Toby's father keeps warning, thanks to his social media involvement, that we have turned into a nation of liars and how this has happened.

 

I'd like to influence people to be very careful today, in this age of deception, what they believe and why. We all need to remember that we don't know the complete argument until we've faced down the counterargument.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: While not writing fiction, I write Biblical studies for a company on the West Coast, and I'm busy with that.

 

Per fiction, I've been working on a book for the read-aloud age group about a K9 dog who protected the White House. If I get a green light (I haven't yet!) I'd like to write about many police dogs for young readers.

 

I got interested while feeling a bit unsafe in our ever-changing nation and wanted to view things that made me feel safe. It was a joy to find many videos of police dogs! I feel it will be of interest to very young children that we are being helped and protected by animals who have talents that we don't.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: One of the reasons I chose suspense writing in fiction is that I was raised in a funeral home on a barrier island. It was windy! Our house was very musical and sunny during the day, but I have ADHD and was constantly waking up in the middle of the night as a child.

 

So, when people say "how did you become a writer?" I answer, "In the middle of nights between third and sixth grades." If I could determine that there was a "guest" down in the funeral home, I would stare at my doorframe, afraid to blink.

 

It set me on a spiritual journey to discover where these people go after death, what with their families being so sad and all. That positive note probably affected my fiction writing as much as anything.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Dec. 21

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 21, 1892: Rebecca West born.

Q&A with Gail Jarrow

 

 

 

Gail Jarrow is the author of the new young adult book Spirit Sleuths: How Magicians and Detectives Exposed the Ghost Hoaxes. Her other books include American Murderer. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Spirit Sleuths?

 

A: My research for two other books brought me to ghost hoaxes and psychic frauds. 

 

An earlier book, Spooked!: How a Radio Broadcastand The War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America (Calkins Creek, 2018), highlighted what can happen when people are not sufficiently skeptical.

 

In that case, radio listeners jumped to the conclusion that Martians were invading New Jersey.  I wanted to find another example from American history that illustrated the dangers of being gullible.

 

I discovered the subject in my research notes for The Amazing Harry Kellar, Great American Magician (Calkins Creek, 2012). Nineteenth-century magicians like Kellar incorporated séance tricks into their stage performances.

 

Part of their motivation was to take advantage of the public’s interest in spiritualism and communication with the dead. The other part was to educate their audiences so that people realized how mediums, who claimed to have supernatural power, used conjuror’s tricks to deceive séance visitors. 

 

This fascinating tension between magicians  and mediums was the story I’d been looking for.

 

Q: The Shelf Awareness review of the book said, “Jarrow’s remarkable ability to transform meticulous research into a gripping narrative once again results in a nonfiction work that will transfix readers of all ages...” What do you think of that description, and how did you research this book?

 

A: Of course, I was quite pleased by that review. My goal was to grab and entertain readers while basing the story on a solid foundation of accurate information. 

 

To get a broad picture of spiritualism, I used primary documents to find out what believers and critics said about it.

 

Those sources included the writings of mediums, magicians, and investigators as well as first-person accounts of séances from the mid-19th century to the present. I even visited a famous spiritualism community to see mediums at work.

 

Through interviews with practicing magicians, I learned more about the séance tricks and supposedly supernatural phenomena performed by fraudsters who are active in today’s $2 billion U.S. psychic services industry. I shared some of these methods with my readers in sections called “How did they do it?” 

 

Q: What do you see as Harry Houdini’s role in the story?

 

A: Houdini was part of the generation of magicians that came after the Great Harry Kellar. Like his friend Kellar, Houdini used séance tricks in his act.

 

In the years following World War I and the influenza pandemic, spiritualism enjoyed renewed popularity because so many people had died.  

 

Houdini thought that mediums were cruelly deceiving and swindling the grieving survivors who were desperate to communicate with dead loved ones. He set out to expose these dishonest mediums by revealing how they produced ghostly appearances at their séances. 

 

Houdini’s campaign included publishing books and articles, giving public lectures, testifying before Congress, working with the police to identify and arrest scam artists, and incorporating medium exposures into his stage show.

 

He hired a young female detective named Rose Mackenberg to help him in this work. After Houdini’s sudden death in 1926, she carried on his mission and spent nearly 40 years uncovering ghost hoaxes.

 

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?

 

A: I hope they’re entertained by the magic and engaged by the conflict between conjurors and mediums.

 

Besides that, I hope this true story shows them the importance of questioning and  analyzing what they hear and see. If young people develop critical thinking skills, they will be less likely to be swayed by anyone who tries to manipulate their beliefs and behavior.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My next nonfiction book will be released in Fall 2025. Called White House Secrets: Medical Lies and Cover-Ups (Calkins Creek/Astra), this book examines nine presidents whose serious illnesses were intentionally hidden from the public.  

 

Many of these medical conditions had negative consequences for the country, yet they remained secret, sometimes for decades. 

 

This will be the fourth book in my Medical Fiascoes series. The others are Blood and Germs (about Civil War medicine); Ambushed! (about the assassination and slow death of President James Garfield), and American Murderer (about the South’s hookworm epidemic and how it ended). 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Gail Jarrow.