Patricia Ward is the author of the young adult novel The Cherished. Her other books include the novel The Bullet Collection. She lives in Vermont.
Q: What inspired you to write The Cherished, and how did you create your character Jo?
A: The idea for The Cherished started germinating when we moved to Vermont. I’ve lived most of my life in cities and towns, and I found myself captivated by the fields and flowers, mountain horizons, dirt roads winding through thick forests.
As I explored this new landscape, I imagined other worlds beneath the fields and hidden inside the old, falling-down barns . . .
At the same time, I was feeling uprooted and anxious, once again fighting to feel at home in a new place, and struggling to understand what “home” means at all.
Being half-American, half-Lebanese, I’ve never fully belonged anywhere, and I’ve moved so many times in my life that I’ve never had a chance to put down roots, as they say.
All this gave rise to the central idea of The Cherished, in which a girl who feels she doesn’t fit anywhere—in her family, her house, her town, her skin—inherits a mysterious old farm in Vermont.
She senses this might be where she truly belongs, but the place holds a terrifying secret that’s linked to her recurring nightmares about events that took place at this very same farm when she was little . . . the source of Jo’s trauma is magical, but in terms of creating her character, I can draw a direct line to my own history of war and displacement.
So all those elements—the move, the landscape, my perennial quest for home, and my childhood experiences—served as inspiration for the story and the main character.
Q: The writer Robin Roe said of the novel, “For fans of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Lebanese-American author Ward draws from her experience to create a frightening story exploring identity, grief, and what it means to be family.” What do you think of that description?
A: I appreciated it very much, because she got to the heart of what The Cherished is about, for me. While the books I’ve written over the years are very different from one another, they all share the same themes of nostalgia, loss, trauma, and fractured identity, and I’ve always used fantasy or elements of fantasy to explore those themes.
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 did envision that violent end early on in the writing process, and I knew the general arc of the story.
The most changes actually happened around Jo’s character. First she was a woman in her 30s, then she was a mother with a teenager, and then, at last, she became the teenager.
The story is fundamentally about discovering where you fit in the world, and it made more sense to explore this through a character on the verge of adulthood. Once I’d understood this, the story really took shape.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: That where you are born and the family you are born into do not define you. You can heal from your trauma, and you can make your own place in the world.
As I was writing The Cherished, I realized that both the human and the magical beings suffer from many-layered hurts of loss, displacement, and broken identity. I understood that this book was about finding a way to heal, and that healing isn’t always tidy or clear.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m in the final editing stages of a new YA supernatural novel with a teen narrator who is living under a curse. I am super excited about this one. I think of it as my Scooby Doo book, with a mystery to be solved and a mask to be ripped off at the end.
I’m not sure where I’ll go next—back to some unfinished projects, or onward to another YA. I’ll figure that out in September, once the edit process is finished.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I still don’t know where I belong, or if knowing that even matters . . .!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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