Q&A with Jean P. Moore

 

Photo by Win Vitkowsky

 

 

Jean P. Moore is the author of the new novel Crossing from Shore to Shore. Her other books include the novel Tilda's Promise. She lives in Massachusetts.

 

Q: Your novel Crossing from Shore to Shore was inspired by family history--can you say more about that?

 

A: I never knew about my great-uncles when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I was an adult about to move to Connecticut that my father told me I shouldn’t go. When I asked why, he was reluctant to answer, finally saying something terrible had happened there once.

 

He told me the story of the two brothers, his uncles, but he left out most of the details, just telling me a fight had broken out, a man had been killed, and his uncles had been arrested, tried, convicted, and ultimately hanged for murder.

 

I was shocked and had many questions, but he wouldn’t answer them. One comment, though, stuck with me: “They were Italian, and that was enough,” he had said.

 

He made it clear that even though many years had passed, it would be dangerous for me to go to a place where such a thing had happened, that I would be found “guilty by association,” I suppose; I don’t know. But he never explained his reasoning. The subject was closed.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: When my father died years later, I found myself drawn to the story. I began to think of it as a family mystery that I wanted solved. My mother only added that the whole family thought the brothers had been framed. That was what my aunt told me, too. But why would they be framed and by whom? These were the questioned that lingered.

 

I was living in Greenwich at the time. (I did move to Connecticut, in spite of my father’s misgivings.) There was very little available on the internet at the time, and newspapers had not yet been digitized. I began with microfilm at the town library, but I didn’t know the date or the place of the events.

It wasn’t until I ventured up the road to Bridgeport that I found my first clue, a folder of old Connecticut newspaper clippings on capital crimes, one saying that two brothers from New Britain had been hanged in the state. From there, through prison records, I found that the Perretta brothers, Erasmo and Joseph, had been hanged in the Wethersfield prison in 1919.

 

I continued my research in New Britain and at the State Library in Hartford, mostly old newspapers, microfilm and microfiche. It was harrowing. I soon learned about the depth of the political climate at the time, very anti-immigrant. And I found articles calling the brothers anarchists.

 

That led me to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. There I found Erasmo’s name in the Old German Files, which meant he had been under surveillance at the time. It was shocking to me to learn how the government was deeply embroiled in a covert war against those suspected of anarchism.

Q: The actor John Turturro called the novel a “literary journey that captures the dichotomy of immigrants feeling like ‘others’ in a new society while yearning to belong...” What do you think of that description, and what do you hope readers take away from the novel, especially given the current focus on immigration?

 

A: The brothers in my novel come to America with hopes of making it in a country where success is based on hard work and not class.

 

Erasmo is seen in the opening pages beginning to realize his dreams. He has his own business. He wants to marry and have a family. It’s the uber story of America. But he begins to see the injustice around him and the prejudice against immigrants. So I think John Turturro is correct.

 

Erasmo finds that he is not accepted. No matter how he strives to earn his success, he is the “other.” Through Amalia, who is involved with an anarchist group or “gruppo,” he learns that America has its own class system, based on money and ethnic heritage.

 

At first he thinks those in the gruppo are idealists, but he begins to identify with their “Beautiful Idea,” one where all are equal and not beholden to any hierarchy, government or church. This will prove his and his brother’s undoing.

 

Ultimately, I did not write this book to confront our current national hostility toward immigrants. Rather, I wrote it to try to understand my father’s fears about my going to a state where such terrible things had happened to our family.

 

In the process I learned that a powerful government working against a perceived “enemy within” can make life within its border very dangerous for many who sought a better life there.

 

Q: What did you see as the right balance between fiction and history as you wrote the book?

 

A: This question gets to the heart of the challenges facing writers of historical fiction. And it is made more daunting when the history involves family.

 

The first potential obstacle is research, and there will be an abundance of it. The details of time and place, tone, characterization, all of these, have to be plausible and more, accurate.

 

The trap is set when the writer, proud of all the assembled data, can’t part with research that doesn’t serve the story. Some of that wondrous discovery may have to be left behind. It’s painful.

 

The other obstacle is when the subject involves family. Learning about one’s ancestors can be rewarding but also difficult, especially when the revelations are tragic or disquieting.

 

But bringing a family’s history to light through fiction can reveal a powerful truth, especially when the novelist has created characters whose hopes, dreams, whose loves and losses, could be our own.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I guess I’m still under the influence of historical fiction, especially when it shuttles between present and the past. To me it’s the fictional equivalent of looking at old photographs that stir our curiosity and imagination.

 

Briefly, I’m working on a novel about an American literature professor who becomes embroiled in a scandal at her university and seeks refuge in a rural New England town. There she learns of an old local scandal involving the leader of the long-abandoned Shaker community up the hill from the home she is renting. Plot complications ensue, with current-day implications.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Thank you for asking. At the moment my focus in on events taking shape for readings and book club appearances in Florida in the winter and for similar events in New England in the spring and early summer. All very exciting! These events will be posted on my website for those who may be interested.

 

This has been a pleasure. Many thanks.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb