Dee Garretson is the author of the new young adult historical novel All is Fair, which takes place during World War I. Her other books include Wolf Storm and Wildfire Run. She lives in Cincinnati.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for All is Fair,
and for your character Mina?
A: I love history and had self-published a historical
mystery set in 1878, The Gargoyle in the Seine, which I always intended to
continue as a series but have not yet gotten around to that. Then I fell in
love with Downton Abbey and started to ponder a story with a similar setting.
One of the characters in the 1878 book was a spy for
the British government and though he’d be far too old in 1918 to be a main
character in a YA book, I came up with a life that could have happened to him
after 1878. That’s how his youngest daughter, Mina, becomes the main character
of this book, and why there are spying and code elements in it. It was so much
fun to write and so much fun to imagine their whole family’s history in those
intervening years.
Mina’s personality developed as I wrote the story-it’s
always hard for me to figure out a character completely until I’m actually
writing.
Q: What kind of research did you do to write the novel,
and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: When I’m writing historicals, I first immerse
myself in the general history of the time period so I can get a better feel of
how to focus. As I’m reading, I always find references to events that intrigue
me, and I note those down and then delve into more specific research.
When I first started researching All is Fair, I only
knew the very broad outlines of the history. Stumbling on books about how the
Belgian underground operated and the raid on Zeebrugge were like finding hidden
treasures. I knew I had to incorporate both of those.
After the structure of the story comes together, I
focus on memoirs and autobiographies to get a sense of the smaller details of
daily life. I do tend to get so interested in the research, I have to cut
myself off at some point so I’ll actually write the story!
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you
started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: The basic plot didn’t change but there were many,
many other changes along the way. In the original story, the first part of the
book, the spy element, had more characters and more twists and turns. At one
point I almost turned the story into two books, but then we decided to edit it
down. I cut three characters and really pared it back.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: I think it’s so important that we all know
something of history and how the major events affect ordinary people. I’m a
firm believer in the statement that those who don’t know history are doomed to
repeat it. While this is a story which has a happier ending for the main
characters than many would have at the time, I hope readers come away with a
bit of understanding of that time and how it changed the lives of everyone who
lived then.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished the majority of the work on another
YA historical fiction story, this one set during the Russian revolution, called
Gone by Nightfall. It’s inspired a bit by The Sound of Music. An American girl
lives with her Russian stepfather and a whole unruly assortment of younger
siblings and stepsiblings in Petrograd.
She’s hoping a new young Russian tutor, who just
happens to be rather handsome and dashing, will stick out the job of wrangling
the children so she can go back to the United States, but then the revolution
happens and everything gets turned upside down.
The book will be out in January 2020. I’m not sure
what my next book will be after that, but I’m exploring lots of ideas.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just that I hope readers walk away with a sense
that the characters are going to go on and have interesting lives. That’s what
I want with all my books. I also hope readers find many more historical fiction
stories to embrace. Historical fiction a bit of an underdog in genre term and
it’s hard to reach readers, so thank you very much for reading the book!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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