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Culture January 17, 2017
Photo by Jacques du ToitSusanna Kearsley isn’t your typical writer. With her signature blend of history, the paranormal and romance, Kearsley has astounded audiences since her first book, “Undertow,” was published in 1993.
Her novels – which entwine the stories of modern women with those from hundreds of years ago – are testament to historical fiction’s steadfast popularity. Told from the perspectives of voiceless women in history, these award-winning novels can be found on the shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world.
This New York Times bestselling author has won a host of awards for her work, including the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Historical Fiction for “The Winter Sea,” Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance for “The Firebird” and the OKRWA National Readers Choice Award for Novel with Romantic Elements for “The Rose Garden.”
ENTITY spoke with Susanna to learn more about the appeal of historical fiction and the role of women in history.
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ENTITY: Your protagonists are predominantly female. What has been your motivation to write history from a woman’s perspective?
Women Have Always Been Largely Left Out Of History Books, And I Find It An Especially Rewarding Challenge To Hunt Down Their Voices.
KEARSLEY: Women have always been largely left out of history books, and I find it an especially rewarding challenge to hunt down their voices. There’s this pervasive myth that strong women in history were somehow remarkable or unusual, but when I actually get back into the letters and journals my male characters were writing in, for example, the early 18th century, I find the women in their lives emerging just as strong and influential as the women of today – taking part in political intrigue, traveling and being viewed as the equals and friends of their husbands. They were important then to those who knew and loved them, and I think it’s vital they be put back on the page.
ENTITY: What is your favorite part about writing historical fiction?
KEARSLEY: I honestly love the entire process, from the research – where I get to dive into original letters and papers, and travel to the settings where the story will be set – to the year and a half or more I get to spend with the characters, watching their story unfold on the page. Every book is a unique journey for me, and I wouldn’t want to miss a single step of it.
ENTITY: What do you believe is the appeal of reading historical fiction, or fiction in general?
KEARSLEY: One of the first books I fell in love with as a child was “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” When Lucy pushed aside the coats and stepped past them and found herself in an entirely different world, I thought that was the most wonderful thing. And I think reading fiction is just like that. Each book’s a miniature wardrobe – you open the cover and step into another world. You lose yourself there for the whole time you’re reading, and when you come out you’re a little bit different from when you went in.
Historical fiction appeals to readers because it humanizes history …
I don’t think it matters whether you’re stepping sideways or into the future or into the past, but I do think historical fiction appeals to readers because it humanizes history, brings the dates and facts we learned in school to life and lets us feel, if only for that moment, that we’ve reached back in time and touched the people there.
ENTITY: What inspired you to combine fantasy with history?
KEARSLEY: Well, that in a way might go back to “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” too, because I’ve always liked stories that blend history, mystery and fantasy. My second novel, “Mariana,” grew from a scene that just came to me out of the blue one night, and when I’d written that scene down I realized the modern-day heroine was living through an event that had happened three centuries earlier.
So then I needed to figure out how I should tell that particular story through a moment from the distant past. Then I had to figure out how best to tell that story, and the practical solution was to use reincarnation as a plot device. Since then, when I have novels with twin-stranded storylines – modern-day characters dealing with problems that come from the past – I’ve found often the best way to bridge the two stories is something like lucid dreams, ancestral memory or ghosts.
But not all of my novels have fantasy elements. Sometimes the bridge to the past is an everyday thing like a diary. It just depends on the story itself.
ENTITY: Historical fiction allows for different interpretations of the same event or person. Do you believe that is a flaw or advantage of the genre?
KEARSLEY: I personally think all history, even academic history, is subjective. When I worked as a museum curator I learned firsthand how much of history is curated – how each generation chooses what we ought to value, what to save and what to throw away. Societies are constantly in motion, and historians reflect this, too, revising how they view the past depending on the current values of the world around them.
History books written at the height of the British Empire have a very different perspective than those written in the social history-oriented 1970s, even though historians of both periods probably used the same primary sources. So the perspective and choices of somebody writing historical fiction can be just as valid as those of a “proper” historian. We weren’t there at the time the events occurred. All we can do is rely on those primary sources and fill the gaps with educated guesses and imagination.
ENTITY: Historical fiction can be termed a “quest for meaning.” Why do you think this search for meaning in the past is important?
KEARSLEY: I think it’s human nature to continually search for those connections that can tell us where we come from, where we’re going and why we’re here at all. To study history is to realize that, just as the Bible says, there’s nothing new under the sun. There are repeating patterns all through human history, and if we can learn them, we can better understand what’s going on around us now.
What We Care About, What Makes Us Cry, What Gives Us Joy – They Felt These, Too. And That’s What We Discover When We Read Their Stories.
The past may be the past, but people really haven’t changed much. What we care about, what makes us cry, what gives us joy – those people felt these, too. And that’s what we discover when we read their stories.
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