Karen Cushman

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked a number of authors, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. A number of gracious authors thoughtfully answered these questions. If you haven’t read them yet, please do. Now it’s Karen’s turn to share some insights into place in her own story, War and Millie McGonigle.“

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Cushman: The setting—South Mission Beach, San Diego—inspired the book. For nearly fifty years I’ve heard Phil’s stories about growing up there. It seemed a peaceful and comforting sort of place, so its juxtaposition with the coming war was intriguing.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Cushman: A lot of research is how. The publications of the San Diego History Center were invaluable. eBay provided specialty items like an old history of the San Diego Zoo, a 1940(ish) Zoo tour guide, photos of polio patients in iron lungs, and a plane-spotting manual. The internet offered memoirs of the war years by San Diegans, photos of wartime downtown San Diego, and a wonderful, colorful, 1940s map of the area. While I was writing, Philip and I visited San Diego and walked along the bay with its soft waves and gentle splashing.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Cushman: The place was the heart of the story, and, yes, it did create limitations. It’s a real place with a real history. I couldn’t create a bridge where there wasn’t a bridge in 1941 or sail warships into Mission Bay. I had to change some things about 2020 Mission Bay to make them more accurate or realistic for 1941.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Cushman: The Mission Beach and Mission Bay where Phil grew up don’t exist any more. Since his time, Mission Bay was dredged, redesigned, and developed into a splendid resort with hotels and restaurants and multi-million-dollar houses. And countless tourists. Milly would not recognize it, but the tides still come and go, seagulls still shriek, and the breeze off the ocean can still soften the air and the spirit.

You’ll find a slideshow with photos from Phil’s childhood on South Mission Beach here.

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Deborah Ellis

May 31, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Deborah Ellis, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, The Breadwinner?”

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Ellis: The story of The Breadwinner very much grew from the place as I wanted to write about what was happening to children under the Taliban. Afghanistan and its history are major players in the story, and although Parvana and her family are dealing with universal themes, they are responding to events particular to Afghanistan.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Ellis: I spent a lot of time in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and in Russia, meeting with people and learning about what they had been through. Later, I was also able to travel into Afghanistan to meet with more people there.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Ellis: I think it enriched the story, in part because many of the readers would never have lived through circumstances like Parvana lived through, so it would all be new to them. The things that shine through most in the book is not the Afghan setting but the kindness and the generosity of the Afghan people, and I think young readers take that away from the story as well.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Ellis: I would like them to know that the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan, that the Afghan people are facing a terrible famine, and that there are organizations on the ground there providing help, and they could use our support. Groups like Islamic Relief, The Red Crescent, the World Food Program, UNHCR and UNICEF—and others—will welcome donations.

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Thank you to Deborah Ellis for her reflections about this important book.

Learn more about Deborah Ellis.

Ann E. Burg

May 26, 2022May 26, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Ann E. Burg, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Flooded, Requiem for Johnstown?”

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Burg: In most of my books, place is a character as well as a setting. In my most recent book Flooded, Requiem for Johnstown, the industrial town of Johnstown PA sets the entire story in motion. If there had been no Johnstown PA in 1889, there would have been no story.

In 1889, the South Fork Dam, 14 miles above Johnstown collapsed. 2,209 people died including 99 families and 396 children. This was a major historical catastrophe and yet I had never heard anything about it. How could that be? I ventured to learn more!

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Burg: My research included two visits to the Johnstown museum in the town of Johnstown as well as visiting the grounds of both the South Fork Dam Memorial and Grandview Cemetery. However, what was most meaningful was the pitifully brief entries accessible online as Dr. Beale’s Book of the Dead, a listing of those who had died in the flood. Many of the entries had been recorded from scraps of paper and in Dr. Beale’s book, there is entry upon entry, of hastily scribbled lines, describing the dead, many of whom were never identified: female, 8 years, gingham apron, grey dress, light hair. Ring on right finger; male, 10 years, brown hair. Black clothes with patch on trouser knee. New shoes…

Who were these people, I wondered? What were their dreams?

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Burg: The place absolutely enriched my story. The river was so real that it became a character with her own voice!

I didn’t feel the need to change any details, only to learn as much as I could about life in an industrial town in 1889. We study the titans of the Gilded Age, but not those working in the foundries and factories.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Burg: I am a firm believer that each of us is more alike than different, but I also recognize that the place we call home helps to shape us. History has much to tell us about our lives in the here and now.

Johnstown was an industrial town with hard working immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves and for their families. Unfortunately, the negligence of those who were wealthier and more powerful led to a great tragedy. I wanted to remember and honor Johnstown and its residents, those who survived as well as those buried beneath the nameless white tombstones in Grandview Cemetery.

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Thank you to Ann Burg for her insights into her new book. Can’t wait to read it.

Learn more about Ann E. Burg.

Avi

May 24, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Karen Cushman asked Avi “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your stories?”

Avi: The truth is, I’m not particularly good at inventing places. But I love to fill real places with people that come out of my own imaginings. So it is that in recent years I have written three quite different books, all of which share one aspect: all are written about true places. None of the stories are true.

School of the Dead takes place in a private school in San Francisco. A number of years ago, I was visiting just such a school. It is located in a rather elegant part of the city, Pacific Heights, and had at one time been the mansion of a very wealthy 19th Century woman. The woman was particularly interested in education for girls. So, when she died, she left her home to be used as a school. Over the years it has been enlarged, but the old building still remains as its structural core.

It was while I was being given a tour of the school by a couple of students, moving about, up and down, and around its maze-like structure, some parts old, some parts new, that it struck me that it was a perfect setting for a ghost story. And so it was, and became, School of the Dead.

In utter contrast City of Magic takes place in the Italian city of Venice. I don’t think there is any other city like it, consisting as it does of some one-hundred and forty islands, more or less. It is more than a thousand years old, and is ribboned by canals, some wide, some narrow. No cars allowed. To get around you walk or take a boat.

I had the good fortune to live there for most of one year and came to know it fairly well. That said, I don’t think you can know it very well unless you grow up there. In any case, there is much that is medieval and renaissance still there, and with its often foggy weather, it can seem to be a mysterious place. What better setting for a novel of adventure and intrigue? But, of course, I had to go back for a visit to refresh my memory. Writers can live hard lives.

The third book, The Secret Sisters tells the tale of Ida Bidson, age fourteen, who, in the fall of 1925, goes off to board in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, so she can attend high school. She will be leaving her very rural home and family high in the mountains. The book is a sequel to The Secret School, about a one- room schoolhouse whose students, principally Ida, keep running so they can finish out the term.

I spend most of my year living near Steamboat Springs. It is now a ski resort town, but only recently has it changed. The high school, for example, to which Ida goes, is still standing, and functions today as an alternate school. And many of the buildings along Lincoln Avenue—its main street—are still standing just as they did in the nineteen twenties.

A book I am currently working on takes place in New York City. 1910. I am having some trouble with it.

Why? Covid restrictions have kept me from visiting. But I’ll get there, and I’ll finish the book.

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Thank you to Avi for this look at the real settings in three of his books.

Learn more about Avi.

Padma Venkatraman

May 19, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Padma Venkatraman “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Born Behind Bars?”

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Venkatraman: Unlike my other novels, the idea for Born Behind Bars came from a news report, so the story and place came to me inextricably intertwined.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Venkatraman: I read detailed accounts of prison life, interviewed people who worked in prison systems, watched documentaries and fictional films, visited a prison, and also had the gift of being able to send a draft of my novel to a fellow-author, Dede Fox, who was kind enough to circulate it among incarcerated women with whom she worked, so that I could receive feedback from people who lived in circumstances similar to those in Born Behind Bars.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Venkatraman: The place absolutely enriched the story. It forced me, and I think perhaps it forces readers, to consider what it means to be locked up, as opposed to experiencing a lock down. Amazing characters came alive to populate the place : like Grandma Knife, who is one of the coolest characters I’ve ever met—although there’s absolutely nothing “cool” about incarceration. Bringing the place to life makes, I hope, readers ask questions about why we lock people up, how we treat people when they make mistakes, and whether we might use our creative minds and compassionate hearts to consider other societal solutions. Most of all, I hope it makes us intensely uncomfortable with the fact that innocent people, even today, in our nation—way too many innocent Blacks are forced to live behind bars; and, yes, babies are born behind bars in our nation, too.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Venkatraman: I would like to emphasize that prison reform is happening in India, where the book is set—and that in many jails, such as Tihar Jail, conditions have been vastly improved. That said, degrading jails and prisons still exist, all over the world. And, unfortunately, there still are people in India who, like Kabir’s mother in Born Behind Bars, are stuck in prison awaiting trial—not just for hours or days, which is cruel enough, but for years.

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Thank you to Padma Venkatraman for explaining how she researched a book set in a prison.

Learn more about Padma Venkatraman.

Kirby Larson

May 17, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Kirby Larson, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Hattie Big Sky?”

Eastern Montana (photo: Carol Highsmith, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Larson: The setting grew out of an event that captured my imagination, which was my great-grandmother homesteading by herself in eastern Montana shortly before WWI. The homestead was near Vida, Montana which is where the story takes place.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Larson: I began researching the story in 2000, and it was not as easy to access digitized information at that time. I relied on sites like USGenWeb, and any other place I could scrounge up old photos or maps. I am completely indebted to the many historical societies which published early homesteaders’ journals. These diaries provided rich details, including two in particular that ended up in the novel: the incident where Hattie “baptizes” her chicken, and the incident where a hungry wolf chomps off Violet’s tail (she’s Hattie’s “contemptible” cow). At some point in the research project, I bought a $99 Amtrak ticket to Wolf Point, Montana so I could see/smell/experience the place for myself. I was able to locate the site of my great-grandmother’s homestead, as well as unearthing other fabulous details while spending three days in the smoky “morgue” of the Wolf Point Herald newspaper office.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Larson: The place completely enriched and informed the story, along with setting boundaries I was required to work within. One small example: the first draft of the cover showed a charming split rail fence, something that was non-existent in eastern (treeless) Montana. Hattie’s claim was a good distance from town so I had to figure out feasible ways to get her to and fro, without slowing the story down. I did not change any details about the place. Thankfully, my research uncovered maps and photos of the town and of some of the homesteads so I had those to help build the stage for Hattie’s story.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Larson: Put Yellowstone out of your mind! Eastern Montana is flat, flat, flat, with tiny little cacti snuggled in with the prairie grasses — imagine walking on those barefoot as many homesteaders did all summer.

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Thank you to Kirby Larson for this look at Eastern Montana and Hattie’s homestead.

Learn more about Kirby Larson.

Angela Ahn

May 12, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Angela Ahn, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Peter Lee’s Notes from the Field?”

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Ahn: Because the first nugget of Peter Lee’s Notes from the Field was based on a real road trip that my family had done, the setting (starting in Vancouver and then traveling to Drumheller, Alberta) and the plot are tightly woven together. They sort of came as a package in my mind. There are really three main settings: Vancouver, Drumheller, and in the car during the space between driving to the two physical locations. The story definitely grows from the place. Peter cannot experience his ultimate low without the setting and the road trip that brings him to Alberta.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Ahn: For Vancouver, that was easy. It’s been my home for more than forty years! I did make up a few details (like the name of a park) but for the most part, the places in Vancouver that I name are real and familiar to me. For the details about Drumheller, I scrolled through my old photos because I’ve been there twice. It was a matter of refreshing my memory. I did double-check everything on the Internet too, of course. One place that I remember from our last trip had closed down, so I made up a name for a place like the one I remembered. The road trip to Drumheller was something that we’ve done as a family, so getting the details right was pretty easy, but my editor made sure that when the family stopped, that the travel time was realistic for a family road trip.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Ahn: I think in some ways choosing Vancouver for the hometown of the Lee family doesn’t really add anything truly essential to the story. It’s about a Korean-Canadian family and that family could have lived anywhere, but it was and always will be important for me to write stories set on the west coast of Canada because not that many middle grade books are set here (even by Canadian authors!) and I would like to show readers that universally relatable experiences can happen anywhere. Why not in my hometown? I also think I might be a tiny bit lazy and to write stories in other cities would require me to do a lot of research. I’m always able to skip the research and head straight to the details when writing about a place I know intimately.

In terms of the Drumheller setting, if you haven’t been to any of the Badlands (in the US or Canada) the landscape is really something else. I hope I captured some of the details accurately and vividly. I hope the reader gets to travel with the Lee family and experience just a taste what the family experiences. I didn’t want to change too much about Drumheller because it is a truly marvelous gem of a town and if you are even a tiny bit interested in dinosaurs, it is an excellent place to visit.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Ahn: When I chose Vancouver for the main setting, you could say that I was being either obstinate or foolish. Canadians have long read countless stories about American and European cities and though we may not have ever been to those places, the settings don’t give us a reason not to read those books. But I think for US publishing gatekeepers, settings like Canada do give them pause. Maybe there’s no panache or anything particularly alluring about Canada to US readers such as a city like Paris or Tokyo, but I didn’t cave into the potential pressure of making the location more accessible to US readers. It’s my home and it’s a lovely city that deserves to be the setting for at least some stories! I knew I was possibly slamming the door shut on ever getting picked up by a US publishing house, but I landed with Tundra and, happily, didn’t have to change anything!

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Thank you to Angela Ahn for sharing Vancouver and Drumheller with us in Peter Lee’s story.

Learn more about Angela Ahn.

Bill Harley

May 10, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Bill Harley, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Night of the Spadefoot Toads“

Harley: I’ve come to believe that the geography of a story is one of the characters; where someone lives affects how they act. My most recent novel, Now You Say Yes, tells of a road trip across the country by Mari, a fifteen-year old girl and her nine-year-old brother. For that book, I drove across the country, charting the route I thought they would follow, taking notes and pictures along the way to try and capture the geography. But of all my books, the one that most trades on a sense of place is Night of the Spadefoot Toads. I know a lot about where it takes place because it’s my home—southeastern Massachusetts. The book, because of the story and its careful description of the habitats in southeastern New England, has ended up in curriculums across the country.

The genesis of the book was a late-night excursion I took with a naturalist/teacher friend of mine to ponds and vernal pools in my town, Seekonk, and the neighboring town, Rehoboth. On a rainy April night, we waded through muck and wetlands, listening to and catching American toads, spring peepers, wood frogs, and finally, in the middle of a thunderous rainstorm late in the night, the eastern spadefoot toads, an endangered species in our area. Standing in the middle of the shallow vernal pool, the wind whipping the trees, the rain pouring down, and all of nature singing in wild abandon, I decided I need to share what I was feeling and experiencing. I spent the next couple of years traipsing through areas most people would avoid (sometimes illegally) and talking to naturalists, state officials, lawyers, and realtors, trying to understand all the forces that would prevent these little critters from surviving. When the main character, Ben, wanders down a path in the woods behind his house and eventually finds the house of his science teacher, I was writing about walking through the woods from my house to my neighbor’s a mile and a half away.

I hear from people all the time about how the book has affected them, but the biggest beneficiary of the book has been me. Because of writing it, I know where I live much better than before. I track the coming of spring by the appearance of buds and flowers on one tree after another in succession, and the sounds that spring brings—the phoebes and Carolina wrens singing, the reappearance of the red-breasted grosbeak and oriole, and the calls of our amphibians—first the wood frogs, then the peepers, then my little spadefoot toads on one rainy night each year.

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Thank you to Bill Harley for his look at nearby locations; setting a book there taught him more about where he lives.

Learn more about Bill Harley.

Linda Sue Park

May 5, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Linda Sue Park, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, A Long Walk to Water?”

Q: Did you choose the setting first, before characters and plot? Did the story grow from the place or did the place grow from the story?

Park: This book was unusual in that I collaborated with the subject of the story, Salva Dut. So I would have to say that character definitely came first here.

Q: How/where did you find the details that brought your place to life?

Park: The initial details came from Salva himself, of course. He had written down some of his memories; I read those pieces and interviewed him for many hours. I also did the usual research on the internet, viewing endless photos and videos of South Sudan. Hurrah for Googlemaps!

But the most important resource was the trip my husband made in 2007, traveling with Salva to the places in the book. My husband brought home hundreds of photos and hours of video, and I made extensive use of those materials while writing the book. Then Salva read the manuscript and double-checked it for accuracy.

Q: Did the place enrich the story, or did it create limitations? Did you have to change details about the place?

Park: In so many ways, the setting in Long Walk is the story. As a young boy, Salva had to escape from a war and walk for months through hostile lands to reach safety. Because I have not visited South Sudan myself, Salva’s perspective was crucial. We worked together to choose the setting details that would deepen the experience of the story. Whether an island in the Nile besieged by millions of mosquitoes or a stretch of desert inhabited by lions, the exotic settings provide a contrast to the universality of Salva’s emotions, which young readers can easily relate to.

And Nya’s life is circumscribed both literally and figuratively by the place where she lives. She spends her days fetching water for her family’s survival, which means that she has little time for anything else, including education.

Q: What would you like us to know about the place you chose for your book?

Park: Our world is so interconnected. We’ve been shown beyond any doubt that when people in remote parts of the world are suffering from ill health, those misfortunes can eventually march right into our own homes. I’m hoping that young people will grow up learning that nothing is more important than caring for one another and for the planet.

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Thank you to Linda Sue Park for a closer look at this book which has made a difference for so many readers.

Learn more about Linda Sue Park.

Sharon M. Draper

April 28, 2022 by Karen Cushman

Writing a Book with a Strong Sense of Location or Place

Karen Cushman asked Sharon M. Draper, “My newest book, War and Millie McGonigle, started with a place: South Mission Beach, San Diego, where my husband grew up. You, too, have written books set in a place alive and rich. Will you share some insights into place in your story, Out of My Heart?”

Draper: When I decide to write a story, the characters probably emerge first, then the location in which the characters reside, then the story, which is, of course, influenced by a strong sense of place.

I like describing sunsets and starlight and other weather events. Every good book I’ve ever read had a powerful thunderstorm or a cleansing rain or a golden sunset at some point. Good writing has to include lots of sensory imagery so the reader can feel the place as much as the characters.

Sooo, to answer your questions…

Yes, place is vital, because without making sure the reader can feel or smell that location, it’s flat. The reader must become emerged into the setting along with the characters.

I sent Melody to summer camp in Out of my Heart, partly to remove her from the “ordinary” of her daily life to the “extraordinary” world of freedom and possibility in a summer forest, far away from the security and restraints of doting parents. And yes, it was planned—transformation needs fresh sights and smells and experiences. I truly enjoyed experiencing camp with Melody.

How did I find the details? I went outside and looked up at the bright sun, and spent a lot of time talking to the moon at night as well. I live near a wooded area, so the various shades of green, and the changes in weather, and the sights and sounds of a forest under moonlight was not just imagined. And yes, I burned a fire in my back yard. My grandkids thought is was the “best night ever!” I have also spent a lot of winter evenings observing the millions of colors in our home fireplace, as well as other sensory input like the smell of burning wood, the sound of crackling flames, the feel of a chilly wind in the darkness.

The place, Camp Green Glades, although 100 % fiction, became real to me as I described it so it became real to the readers as well. We were there together. I’ve been to many summer camps as a child, and even worked at a camp for kids with special needs one summer when I was about sixteen. The best fiction comes decorated with reality. I have no limitations when I’m writing, except to create fiction that seems like reality. I use whatever I need—like the crackling of a fire or the song of a bird—to make that magic happen.

In the thousands of books I’ve read over my lifetime, the ones that stand out have had powerful characters, a strong sense of place and time, and a plot I could not put down. The descriptions, when done correctly, were seamless, invisible, and unforgettable, which reminds me how good those stories were.

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Thank you to Sharon M. Draper for sharing the way details make the locations in her books so unforgettable.

Learn more about Sharon M. Draper.

Learn more about Out of My Heart, as well as the book where we first meet Melody, Out of My Mind.