Kate Alcott is the author of the new novel The Daring Ladies of Lowell, and also of the novel The Dressmaker. Kate Alcott is the pseudonym of journalist and author Patricia O'Brien. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Q: The story you tell in The
Daring Ladies of Lowell is based in part on a trial that took place in 1833.
How did you blend the real figures from the trial with your own fictional
characters, and what did you find to be the right balance?
A: Inviting back to the
witness stand some of the real people who testified at that trial – and putting
their testimony into my story – made that long-ago event come alive for
me.
In fiction, of course, the
story rules. It can be tempting to stay too long with real figures, and it was
important not to do that.
But there was no way to
improve on some of the actual words of, for example, the poor farmer who found
the mill girl’s body. Or the prosecuting attorney who fought for justice. You
just have to know when your fictional characters start tugging at you, saying,
hey, get back here into our story.
Q: What type of research did
you do to write this novel, and was there anything you found especially
surprising or interesting as you conducted your research?
A: I ran across a book called
The Lowell Offering in a bookstore
one day, and became fascinated with the writing – the poetry, stories, essays –
that these young women poured forth – especially when I learned they worked 13
hours a day in the early cotton mills of this country. The stories they told!
Next I went up to the
national park in Lowell, Massachusetts, to visit the place where they lived and
worked. Walking through one of the boarding houses and visiting a still-working
weaving room, I found myself imagining their routines as they ran up the stairs
to operate their looms. I thought of the independence they gloried in, and the
price many of them paid for that independence in broken health.
I went home and read all I
could. I stared at the pictures of these women – some smiling, arms around
their friends; others with their fists in the air, vainly crying for better
working conditions.
And then I read about the
tragic death of one of them, a girl named Sarah Cornell. Although many of the
facts are different for the character I created – Lovey Cornell – this death
became the core of my story.
Q: You've said that the main
character in your novel The Dressmaker was inspired by your mother. Did anyone
in particular inspire you to create Alice, the protagonist in The Daring Ladies
of Lowell?
A: Actually, I did think
again of my mother, who worked as a factory girl in a lumber mill in Canada
when she first came from Ireland. I went back there with her once and it was so
cool to be there to hear her memories of that time pour out.
But there is no single model
for Alice. I tried to imagine a determined young woman with plans for a larger
life than living and working on a farm – how she might reach out for it, what
might happen.
Q: Religion plays a big part
in the story. What was the dynamic between the mill owners and local religious
leaders at the time of the trial?
A: The reputations of the
early industrialists – and their ability to draw cheap female labor from the
farms of New England – depended in large part on offering a safe, respectable
environment for the young women to live and work.
They had to protect that
reputation, and they wanted a guilty verdict against the man put on trial for
Cornell’s death – who happened to be a Methodist minister.
The Methodists – themselves
somewhat doubtful of their more evangelical fringe, fought to exonerate the
accused man. They paid a price, both during and after the trial. Local hostility was strong.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I’m writing a book on Old
Hollywood, built around the making of the movie Gone With the Wind. I’m
having a great deal of fun with this, especially since my husband, Frank
Mankiewicz, (whose father wrote Citizen
Kane) has told me some wonderful stories which are quite likely to end up
in this novel.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: Hmmm…I think these
questions about cover it. I hope your
readers enjoy my Daring Ladies!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. An earlier Q&A with Kate Alcott can be found here.
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