Toni Buzzeo is the author of the new middle grade novel Light Comes to Shadow Mountain. Her many other books include One Cool Friend. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Q: What inspired you to write Light Comes to Shadow Mountain, and how did you create your character Cora?
A: Cora was a gift from the universe. She came to me as a well-developed character around whom I fashioned a story. Her voice, her passion, her determination were all there from the start, but the story itself developed in stages.
Many years ago, I became interested in Mary Breckinridge, founder of the Frontier Nursing Service in Eastern Kentucky, who delivered medical care to a region that was entirely without medical professionals.
I encountered her first in a children’s book by Rosemary Wells, entitled Mary on Horseback. As I learned more about her, I became convinced I wanted to write about her and/or the FNS.
As writers sometimes do, I waited for the story to magically arise in my mind from that germ of an idea. But then, a few years later, I also learned about the Pack Horse Library Project in the middle grade nonfiction book, Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt and Cannella Schmitzer.
These lay librarians were dedicated to delivering books in that same region of Kentucky and in the same time-period as the FNS. Finally, I felt the story begin to take shape.
It appeared on the page first as a picture book. Luckily, my wise editor Kelly Loughman at Holiday House saw that the potential scope of the story was much broader than a picture book could hold and encouraged me to write it as a middle grade novel. It took me some years to come to agree with her, though!
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: As a librarian, research is always a delight for me. I did a great deal of simultaneous research using a variety of sources. Both of the children’s books I mentioned above launched my research but I went far beyond.
First, I read Mary Breckinridge’s memoir, Wide Neighborhoods, and an important adult book about the electrification of rural Kentucky, Let There Be Light: The Story of Rural Electrification in Kentucky by David Dick.
Then, I read published historical studies dating back to the period, academic articles, and many, many books, including both fiction and nonfiction books about the region.
What was most surprising and delightful to me was the ready access to many, many videos online that transported me to the period and the region itself as Covid-19 was raging and keeping me home-bound.
Original videos from the period, professional documentaries, and so many videotaped interviews of Eastern Kentuckians filled my days in lockdown.
Q: The writer Lauren Wolk said of the book, “I love books that blend darkness and light—both literally and figuratively—to tell the truth, ignite my empathy, and show me the world from a fresh perspective. This is such a book.” What do you think of that description?
A: I am an enormous admirer of Lauren Wolk’s work, and I was so pleased with this quote from her. She points to three elements that I strove to encapsulate in my book.
It was essential to me that I capture the truth of the hardscrabble but worthy life of the isolated mountain people of Eastern Kentucky, both their challenges and their blessings in living where they did in the first half of the 20th century.
I wanted to share with readers the startling fact that in 1937 those mountains were still dark at a time when America, as a whole, existed in a very modern brightly lit age, thus offering a fresh perspective on the history of the period.
And always, as an author who writes from the deep recesses of my heart, I wanted to bring my readers into the lives of these amazing people in all of their complexity of feeling and experience.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: Of course, I hope that readers, young and old alike, fall in love with Cora, her family, and her best friend Ceilly. And as they do, I hope they come to see the beauty of the Eastern Kentucky mountains and its time-honored way of life. Beyond that, I hope to convey the wisdom of seeing both sides of divisive topics and the role of balanced journalism and media in that pursuit.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: In keeping with the last sentence above, I’m working on a picture book for very young children about the way stories change depending on who is telling them, that is perspective and point of view. I’m also simultaneously working on a young adult memoir in verse.
So, as you see, I’m an author who just can’t manage to stay in a single lane. For me, the whole world of genres and audience ages is fair game!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I started my career as a teacher in both college and high school classrooms, earned a second master’s degree in Library and Information Science, then continued as an educator in school libraries.
For the past 20 years I’ve been writing and publishing full time for kids of all ages. My career has always been about writing, about readers, about stories, and the intersection of all three!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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