Q&A with Terri Lewis

 

Photo by Ayesha Ahmad Photography

 

 

 

Terri Lewis is the author of the new novel Behold the Bird in Flight. She also worked as a ballet dancer in Germany and ran a dance company in Arkansas. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Behold the Bird in Flight?

 

A: While traveling through England, I visited Windsor Castle, and in the gift shop, I bought a book about kings.

 

Two sentences completely captured my attention: King John abducted Isabelle d’Angoulême from her fiancé, Hugh de Lusignan, married her, and made her queen. When he died, she went back to her fiancé. Even though this took place in 1200, it seemed like a great story waiting to be told.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I don’t remember specifically making the choice, but it was influenced by the power of the Catholic Church, arbitrator of medieval lives. The local cathedral, and there were many, rang out the hours, organized the calendar, accepted confessions, baptized, and buried.

 

To emphasize this prominence, I’d given each chapter a Biblical heading— For Dust Thou Art, or Suffer the Little Children—and the novel’s title needed to resonate with those.

 

It also needed to underline the story of Isabelle, a young girl growing into womanhood. At first she longed to escape the strictures set by her mother and the Church, then she longed for love, and finally she longed to remain alive and return to France.

 

Many birds accompanied her journey—the chickens she cared for when young; the falcons on the nobles’ arms, carried into court, groomed and cared for by special servants; a flock of geese flying free when she was incarcerated.

 

Those images coalesced in my subconscious, and the title appeared. I added “a novel of an abducted queen” to let the reader know the story wasn’t about birds.

 

Q: The writer Carrie Callaghan said of the book, “This beautiful novel transports the reader back in time to a remote yet deeply human moment, when war echoes through the stone corridors of medieval castles and love still finds a way.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Of course I loved “beautiful” and “transports the reader” but she got so many other things right. The wars, for instance.

 

King John’s reign was a mass of war: he fought the French to retain his Empire on the continent (and mostly lost). He fought the Pope for the right to name his own bishops—both men claimed that right was God-given.

 

He fought his barons endlessly for monies to wage his wars, and in the end, he was fighting for his country because the French had invaded and were established in London.

 

Those wars simmer under Isabelle’s story. In 1199 when the novel begins, she’d have had little agency, but she came alive to me as she made mistakes in love and sought to remedy them.

 

With every misstep and correction, she gained strength, coming of age like any young woman. Carrie, with her “deeply human moment,” got that.

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

 

A: I have loved medieval history since a university professor introduced me to writs and notices, letters and charters, documents that underlie received history.

 

So I already had several shelves of books on medieval life and I ordered a couple more—a bio about William Marshall, a knight loyal to King John, and an art catalog, “The Year 1200” (the year Isabelle married) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

I tried to inhabit Isabelle’s life, looking up period dances, studying paintings and illuminations, reading lais (lyric poems) to get a feel for what she’d have seen or heard.

 

Two things surprised me. First, the two sentences that initially intrigued me contained an error. I later found various, conflicting sources, and although the error has now mostly been clarified by historians, I chose to go with the original because it made a better story.

 

Second, events I had learned about in school suddenly became real as I wrote through Isabelle’s eyes. To read that the Pope excommunicated John is a fact, but for her to meet people who suffer because of that excommunication—their loved ones dying without confession and so denied heaven—that deepens knowing into understanding and feeling.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have two books coming out in ’26!

 

I recently won the Miami University Press 2025 Novella Prize and that book comes out in May ‘26. An astonishing win because the deadline to submit arrived before I’d finished the piece so I tacked on a hail-Mary ending and sent it off. In a miracle, they chose me with the caveat I fix the ending. I am excited to work on it.

 

A second book will follow in the spring of ‘27. Also historical, it revolves around ballet dancers (my first career) and their decisions about pregnancy around the time Roe v. Wade was passed.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I have been writing since I was very young. After I quit ballet, I did all the things—classes, critique groups, conferences, master workshops, queries, litmag submissions. My success was marginal. Now suddenly, three books accepted.

 

The advice, never give up, worked for me, but if it hadn’t, I’d not regret the time spent writing or the hours with my writer friends. My current success is validating, but unexpected. I believe you must love writing; the result is more up to the universe than you.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb