“The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.” – Geraldine Brooks
Brooks is an Australian American journalist and author whose 2005 novel March
won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Sydney, Australian on this date in 1955, she first established her writing credentials as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Her first book, Nine Parts
of Desire, based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East,
was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages.
She switched to writing historical fiction with her novel Year of
Wonders.
That book, set in 1666, depicts the story of a young woman’s battle to
save fellow villagers when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes. That book also became a massive international
bestseller and moved her over from her journalistic career into one as a
full-time novelist.
March was her next bestseller inspired by her fondness
for Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which her mother had given her as
a child. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002
as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little
Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the
"absent father" of the March girls.
In the process, she also developed a
newfound respect for religion. “You
can't write about the past and ignore religion,” she said. “It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping,
driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion
does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.”
Meanwhile, she encourages all who are interested in history not to fear writing historical fiction. “There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all,” she said. “And that's where your imagination can go to work.”
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