- To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
- What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
- What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
- What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
- Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?
- Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
- Can you talk about your own feelings of connection to Maine, a place you use often in your work?
- You grew up in Bangor. When did your family make the transition to Mount Desert?
- Was your prediction right, do all the daughters come visit?
- Are you a survivor?
- If given a time machine, what would you do in regards to the Orphan Trains?
- Do either of your boys want to become writers? How old are they?
- Do you have any childhood experiences that enhanced your sensitivity to the plight of orphans?
- To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in Cambridge, England. My father was a country boy from the red clay hills of Georgia, the first person in his entire family tree to go to college; improbably, he earned a PhD at Cambridge and became a British labor historian. My mother came from a long line of educators in North Carolina. Despite their different backgrounds, my parents shared a love of literature and travel and music and social justice. We spent years going back and forth from England to the American South before finally settling in Maine, where I mostly grew up. My own post-secondary education I now see as a funhouse mirror of my childhood: I went to Yale, returned to Cambridge to do a master’s in lit, and then back to the South, to UVA, for a MFA in fiction writing.
- What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
I suppose I always wanted to be a writer. I am terrible at many things, but I do have one skill: I’m quite a good editor, and I enjoy it. So though at twelve I imagined myself as a writer, by eighteen I more realistically (and quite happily) dreamed of becoming a book or magazine editor. Luck and happenstance led me to publish my first novel in my mid-twenties to some acclaim, thereby perpetuating the dangerous impression that writing novels was a viable profession.
- What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
I thought that my mother – thin, healthy, brimming with life — would far outlive my father, who had scarlet fever as a child that weakened his heart. The doctor told him he wouldn’t live to be forty. Well, my mother died in 2013 at 73 of complications from an unexpected stroke, and my lovable (potbellied, whiskey-drinking, red-meat-eating) father is still going strong. With a girlfriend, to boot. There’s a lesson in this, but I’m not sure what it is.
- What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
This is cheating a bit, but the three plays that make up Aeschylus’s Oresteia – Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies – rocked my world when I read them at Cambridge. They deeply influenced the structure and tenor of my first novel, Sweet Water. “The house itself, could it take voice, might speak aloud and plain” – these words, spoken by a watchman at the beginning of the trilogy, encapsulate the themes and preoccupations of my novels: family history, secret-keeping, the search for home.
- Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?
I’m a terrible singer, and despite years of piano lessons I never developed the slightest flair for music. I’m a mediocre painter, a pathetically bad actor, a ho-hum poet, a slapdash journalist. Really, what’s left?
- Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
Several years ago – when my fourth novel had just come out – I was at a party with a Very Famous Writer, and while I was standing in a small group with her I realized she was thinking, “Who the hell is this person and why is she speaking to me?” I had a Scarlett O’Hara fist-shaking moment (inside; in reality I slunk away): As God is my witness, I’ll never be anonymous again! If I’m going to spend my life at my desk, goddamn it, WRITING, I want at least to be known and respected by – and in conversation with – other writers. Tragically unambitious, I know, but it’s the truth. I’d like to be part of the cultural conversation, or at least a cultural conversation at a cocktail party.
- Can you talk about your own feelings of connection to Maine, a place you use often in your work?
Though both of my parents are Southern, we moved to Maine when I was six years old and never looked back. I’m not naïve enough to consider myself a Mainer – though two of my younger sisters might be able to, having been born in state (Mainers tend to be inconsistent on this subject) – but I did spend my formative years in Bangor, a mid-Maine town of 35,000 on the Penobscot River. About a decade ago my parents retired to Bass Harbor, a tiny coastal village on Mount Desert Island. My three sisters have houses within two miles of my parents’, and one lives there with her family year-round. I am lucky enough to spend summers and other vacations on MDI; my three boys consider it their homeland. For me, it’s as simple as this: Maine is part of who I am.
- You grew up in Bangor. When did your family make the transition to Mount Desert?
My parents were professors at the University of Maine, and they retired to Southwest Harbor — because of me. When I wrote my first novel, Sweet Water (in 1994), I visited Oz Books, which no longer exists, in Southwest Harbor. We’re a Southern family originally, and my parents had always thought they would probably retire to Asheville, North Carolina. But I got to this town, and I told them, this is where you should come. I said, “You have four daughters, and if you buy a house here we would all always come to see you here. They found this white elephant of a house, with seven bedrooms, that had been lived in by squatters. There was actually a burned hole in the kitchen floor where the squatters built a fire every night. It was a complete wreck but on this gorgeous piece of land, so they bought it. My dad had been a carpenter in his youth, and he fixed it up over the years.
- Was your prediction right, do all the daughters come visit?
Well, then my other three sisters all bought houses in Southwest Harbor. One of them lives there full time; she’s the town librarian. She married a carpenter, and has four kids aged zero to seven. She does the whole Maine fantasy! And now I am the last one to the party, having recently bought a place there too. We’re all no more than five minutes away from each other.
- Are you a survivor?
I actually prefer the term “veteran.” I am a veteran of trauma and many other things.
- If given a time machine, what would you do in regards to the Orphan Trains?
An impossible question, given that the orphan trains started when slavery was still legal. The world was completely different then, and required a complete overhaul.
- Do either of your boys want to become writers? How old are they?
I have three boys, and all are good writers. Two are in college; one is almost there. So far, they haven’t expressed much interest in writing novels.
- Do you have any childhood experiences that enhanced your sensitivity to the plight of orphans?
Many people, for many reasons, feel rootless — but orphans and abandoned or abused children have particular cause. I think I was drawn to the orphan train story in part because two of my own grandparents were orphans who spoke little about their early lives. My own background is partly Irish, and so I decided that I wanted to write about an Irish girl who has kept silent about the circumstances that led her to the orphan train.