BRAVELY is “historical.”
Note the quotes, if you will. “Historical,” not historical. Don’t get me wrong. Real historical fact leaps through DunBroch like a wolfhound, chewing spoons, breaking furniture, and curling up before the fire. Within these pages you’ll find real historical figures (albeit somewhat displaced from their true time lines), real historical snacks (pulled from cookbooks with very old-timey spelling), and real historical struggles (sung in ballads, written in poems, found in graves).
I was a medieval history major, and I wanted to do my best to put as much history in here as I could. I am also a bagpiper and harpist who was raised in the peculiar pan-Celtic mixing bowl that is American Scottish-Irish diaspora, and I wanted to put as much of that culture in as I could, too. And finally, I am one of five children, and I wanted to also put in as much of the truthful chaos and frustration and joy of a large family as I could.
But at the end of the day, Bravely is a fairy tale, and it is true in the way dialogue in a novel is true. It would be dull to transcribe a real conversation. Better for the story to make the dialogue on the page feel like the real conversation.
My hope is not to trick readers into believing or doubting everything within these pages but rather to be curious enough to go hunting for the rest of the truth. Attentive readers will find the Dásachtach, the shielings, and, if they are very watchful (or perhaps very unlucky), a cunning goddess named the Cailleach.
THANK you to my editor Elana for her intense enthusiasm, Lauren for early midwifing, Steve for letting me play in the sandbox, my agent Richard for his endless patience, Liz for allowing me to steal her dog, Sarah for the first read, Victoria for the middle read, Mom for the last, and Ed, always Ed, for the knock upon the door.
MAGGIE STIEFVATER is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Raven Cycle, the Shiver trilogy, and other novels for young and adult readers. She is also an artist, an auto enthusiast, and a bagpiper. She lives on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, two children, and an assortment of fainting goats.