So, I found right from the get-go, that it's better if you don't do all the research up front. Because if you do, you're going to end up with a great big indigestible mass of facts. And they might be so interesting. That you decide they have to be crammed in there. But the story might not want those facts. So you have to let the story tell you what you need to know. So I just start writing, and I realize very quickly that I don't really know, much about, you know, she's in the rectory and I am. Wondering, if she goes out to the [SOUND] stable, what kind of tack would they have for the horse? What kind of tools would they use to cut the grass? And then, you know, within a couple of pages, I need to know something, so then I go and find it out. And I approach it that way just to digress. Because I got a great piece of advice, just as I was starting out on this novel I had an opportunity to meet Charles Frazier, who wrote one of my favorite historical novels, Cold Mountain. And that book, I think it took him something like 14 years. And after seven years had passed. His wife, who is an accountant [LAUGH] got anxious about him and, and said you know what, this is taking you too long because you spend too much time in the library. And he did, he loved the research part and he would go running down. alleyways of intriguing research about, you know, Civil War deserters, and people from that area of the mountains that he was interested in writing about. And none of it was going to wind up in the book, so his wife made a rule for him that he couldn't go to the library until he could show her a list of three things that he needed to know. [LAUGH] And then he was allowed to go and find those three things. But once he had them, he had to come back and write and that's how the book got finished. So, I wasn't quite that strict with [LAUGH] myself, but I tried, I tried to keep the thing of, let the story tell you, let the story tell you what you need to research. And so, I guess, you know, the best way to describe my process is the writing and the research are like that. And doing both of them at once, except for the voice. The voice you have to be able to hear, and you hear it best by reading everything that you can lay your hands on that was written in that time and place. And often that's journals or letters, but in this case, as I said before, there was very little that was written by the people. and how would you hear a voice like Anna Frith's voice who didn't get a chance to write down her thoughts. So how do you hear the voices of the unheard? Well, interestingly and particularly in the case of women in the 17th century, you can find their voices best in court. In the courts where they took verbatim transcripts, and women were always being hauled into court. In England it was the assizers or the traveling magistrates courts. in New England at the same time it was the church courts. And they were meticulous record keepers, so you can, you can hear women speaking for themselves, and that's invaluable really. And often they're being called in for. terrible crimes such as being a scold. And being a scold meant that you'd have been overheard criticizing a man in public. That was a big crime in England, and it was a big crime here in Massachusetts too in the 17th century. And I'm really glad it's not still on the books, or I wouldn't be able to be with you today. [LAUGH] but my favorite, my favorite case actually is in the Massachusetts courts, around this same time where a woman is they accused of being a scold because she was overheard berating her building contractor for being overdue on the work and shoddy on the work and over budget. And I thought that's very familiar. [LAUGH] So when people, when people say oh, your 17th century women. Their sensibility is too feminist, I urge those people to go and read some court transcripts, because hello, you know, we're not the first generation of women to realize that we were getting a bum deal, Women have realized that for a very long time, and. In many cases we're very outspoken about it, so that's why Anna sounds the way she does. I also was thinking about what would be, the case for a woman who was very intelligent but hadn't had the opportunity to be educated. Where would she learn? And it turns out that she would learn a lot in church because you're in church a tremendous amount in those days. The services were extraordinarily long. The sermons went on forever. I read a lot of sermons to do this book both to create the voice of the rector, and to create the sermon that he might have given. But also just to hear what Anna would have heard. When she was sitting in church. And, you know, the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible. There's a kind of beautiful cadence to that language. And so I thought somebody who wants to better herself, who is interested in the life of the mind. I think that's what she would take up like a sponge. And so that's why Anna sounds the way she does. And so, I think I'll open it up now to questions. >> Who would like to begin, start us off? >> Hi let's see, where would I like to start? so, we've been studying historical fiction throughout the course of this semester and. We've heard a lot of authors' different takes on how they approach writing their, their works, and you just described in-depth how, how you did so. And I'm wondering if you found all the information you found, did that constrain you, or help you form, form your story? >> I would say it mostly helped me. because I think because I was working with the story primarily. So I would go and try and find things that would buttress this story. But there's this wonderful wealth of anecdote and because all of these things were written down up to a 100 years after the events. We don't know if these anecdotes have a basis in fact or not. But they were so wonderful, I decided to go with them about the grave digger who's so greedy, he buries the man alive. the, the cockerel, who has the instinct that it's safe to come back to the village. the burning of household effects when the idea was that these things were contaminated with plague seeds and so forth. So and then, you know, I read a lot about, because there was more on the record about what it was like being in London and the contrast was quite remarkable between the situation in London and what happened in Eyam. You know, whether in London you would be locked up in your house and a big red mark put on the door, and you'd just be left there to die. Nobody would help you, nobody would bring you water, and Pepys' Diary is fantastic on this. It says a wealth of detail about how horrible it was in London at that time. And he says we have become cruel as dogs, one to another. And so the contrast with the situation in Eyam was something that I wanted to work with. some of the stories were so outlandish that I decided not use them even if they did happen to be true. there was this story of the, of the The two people who got married by accident at the pub. And then, you know, the, the bridegroom had been engaged to somebody else, so he was guilty of breech of promise, and he had to take sanctuary in the church. So all during the plague time, there's this one guy. Living in the church, but I just decided that was a bridge too far. [LAUGH] And I, I, I thought I'll just I'll just, you know, skirt around that one. But mostly if there was anything on the record from the year and the village itself I tried to use it, because the, the rations of fact were so short that I wanted to eek out whatever I had. >> Okay, and just a quick followup question to that one. There's a strong religious presence and conscience [NOISE] among your characters in the book. Did you find that through your research as well? >> Oh, yeah. That's the, that's really the, the real mental adjustment, I think, that you have to make. when your writing about the past in general, religion is such a dominant influence in peoples' lives. And you really have to come to grips with that. And in this village, you know, there'd been huge turmoil over religion. They've kicked out their old minister who was a Puritan, and they've got this new guy, and they're not, you know, there's a real rift about what's the proper way to worship. And so you've gotta have that background. You have to understand Calvinism and, you know, what it meant to these people, what they were rebelling against. And, I think even more so in my more recent novel, Caleb's Crossing, which is set, set in Massachusetts in exactly the same year, coincidentally. The, the factual basis of the novel is about the first Native American who attended Harvard, and he was a. Martha's Vineyard Wampanoag Indian who graduated in 1665, so the time period is exactly the same as Year of Wonders. But the religious influence here, of course, is just amplified by the fact that the English settlers who came here were driven entirely by religion. So then you're really, really in the Calvinist mindset, and you have to put yourself in the mind of somebody whose entire life is shaped by this concern about, am I damned, or am I saved? And, you know, to, to as a modern secular person, to get there is, is one of the most challenging aspects. >> Speaking of religious voice and imagery, I'd actually like to look at a specific passage, It's on page 204 in our copy, >> So, Geraldine that is in the middle of chapter. >> The body of the mind. >> The body of the mind, right. She has a different. >> Oh, I'll read the part I'm going to talk about, >> So you can read it while she. Yes, I will never know exactly how it was that death claimed him. But I think of his body, needled by the lashing rain until his soaked flesh puckered. I see his mouth open like a cup, filling and filling until the water brimmed and spilled. and this is, of course, talking about when her father dies. Sort of abandoned after he's been convicted of stealing and you do a lot of incredible things in this passage. But one of the things I was most struck by was the really, subtle religious imagery that you sort of invoke and then first with the cup. filling and filling, till the water brimmed and spilled. It just reminded me a lot of the, my cup runneth over, except it's, this really awful perversion of that, because the phrase it's alluding to is supposed to be talking about having so much that it's almost too much, and you're so grateful for it. And he has, he's completely bereft of everything. And you also. I'm not sure if you did this [LAUGH] intentionally, so maybe you can enlighten us on that. But I also thought there was some sort of a Christ-like allusion going on with his body needled by the lashing rain, like flagellation, and. he's, his hands are being pierced, and he's left alone. Nobody finds him for three days. which is, again, just the sort of incredible perversion of what is happening. And I think that speaks really well to how this period was a sort of gray area, where they'd been used to black and white. And now suddenly, the things that they thought that they knew. Are getting confused and muddled and they don't really understand what's happening. and another thing that I was hoping you could enlighten us on was I think this was, it really bothered me reading this passage and I think it's supposed to, but there's so much death in this book. I mean every chapter there are like, 20 people that die. And, I was just wondering how you dealt with the sort of desensitization of death that would've happened back then, so. I know that's a lot of things, but. [LAUGH] >> [NOISE] Yeah, no, it's very interesting what you say about this passage, and I, it, you know, I went to Catholic school. And I went to Catholic school in a, you know, extremely. It, Catholic way, where we had Irish Catholic nuns, and I remember what my 6th grade teacher was obsessed with the Passion of Christ. Like she was Mel Gibson. [LAUGH] She went over, and over, and over it and, you know, in excruciating detail. Almost like a sadomasochistic fascination with it. When I look back at it now, it was kind of creepy. but I think that what happened there was that was subconsciously coming through, because I wasn't conscious of doing that. But, what happened with this passage was I was at that museum, and as I said they have a lot about mining history and they had this detail about how if you're a thief, you would be punished by being impaled through the hands to the stones of the mine and I think, once I had that, you know, metal through the hand, all that other stuff. Just came out so, you know, thank you for elucidating that for me, that's. [LAUGH] I, I, it's very clear when you point it out that, that was what I was drawing on. But it wasn't a conscious choice to do it, because this guy is no Christ figure. [LAUGH] That's for sure, you know, he had it coming, big time. I'm sorry, what was the second thing? [LAUGH] >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Oh, the part about the desensitization to death and how. >> Oh, desensitization. Absolutely, this was really tough because the hard thing is I knew that Anna's kids have to die. because she has to be free to move as the protagonist in this novel, and if she's looking after her kids obviously she cannot then take on this role that I imagined for her stepping out and becoming a leader. Of the village, because her first concern will be with them. So I've got two kids that I have to kill off right away, and both those little boys are my boy. At that point, I just had the one son, and every description of everything about her children is description from me looking at him. And so I, you know, it's, it was very tough to do that, and I'm you know, about halfway through writing it and he gets the chicken pox. So I'm writing this book and I'm carrying around my poxy baby as he projectile vomits all over the house. [LAUGH] And it was, you know, was very Visceral, and tough. But the toughest thing of all was killing Eleanor, and I left that til last. I finished the entire book and I still hadn't killed Eleanor, so I had to go back and do that, and I think that there's always one thing in the book that you're reluctant to tackle. And so I always leave that til last, and then of course, you're not fit to be seen during that time because you left it because it was so difficult and then you're under deadline pressure and you're doing the worst part of the book. [LAUGH] So you can't go out. You're not, you know, you can barely, you know, grab dinner with your family, nobody can talk to you, so [LAUGH]. You don't want to see a novelist in the last couple of weeks of their book. [LAUGH]