Amasa’s journals and letters were privately bound and published by his father after Amasa’s early death in 1920 from influenza. Amasa was a family star and favorite, and they were all bereft when he died so young. After reading the journals, I was a little in love with him myself. I attended a lecture by a Mather family scholar who confessed that she, too, fell a little in love with Amasa as she did her research. He was such a compelling person that I had the idea for my hero, and I never really considered writing the book from May’s perspective.
The Ambrose of the book is an intimate creation in comparison to the real Amasa. In writing Ambrose I could make up his internal life and motivations and create his actions in service to my plot in ways that I could never know or do with the real Amasa.
You practiced law until 2003; how did your own experiences as a lawyer shape and/or inform Nell’s character? Why did you decide to immerse your heroine in this profession?
Nell needed a sturdy leg to stand on when facing the Quincys. She was starting out at a disadvantage by being the black sheep, so I wanted something to balance that. Making her a lawyer bolstered her and helped drive a few of the plot points in the book. I practiced complex corporate litigation for six years and that gave me a hazy enough knowledge of both estate law and provenance law to know how much I didn’t know when writing this book. I researched and tracked down experts about certain legal plot points in the book, including interviewing an internationally recognized provenance lawyer as well as the head curator of a major museum.
You cite or make reference to several literary giants in the early pages of your novel, from Virginia Woolf to Ralph Waldo Emerson. From which literary classics (if any) did you draw influence for this novel?
A Room of One’s Own is a huge solace to me and continually bucks me up and gives me permission to be a woman writing. Of course I have to mention The Great Gatsby, one of my very favorite books and the quintessential Jazz Age novel. I also drew inspiration from Ian McEwan’s modern masterpiece Atonement, which helped me think about the way stories in a family can be distorted by individual perspective and differing agendas. And I greatly admire Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for the way she illuminates how objects become important to an individual and how they gain and change in meaning as they travel along with a life.
Who is your favorite writer?
May I name a few? Daphne Du Maurier, Roxane Gay, Andrea Lee, Zadie Smith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Meg Wolitzer, (the other) Elizabeth Taylor, E. M. Forster, William Maxwell, and of course Edith Wharton, whose The House of Mirth inspired my first book, Gilded Age. There are many more. My sister once said that going to a bookstore with me is like going to a grocery store with anyone else. I always leave with a haul, and I need books for different moods—for breakfast and for lunch and for dinner. Books provide a different but no less essential kind of sustenance.
Your “works cited” page points to substantial academic research. Describe your research process, and how you came upon so many rich primary sources. How much time do you dedicate to research for your novels?
As you can maybe tell from the above answers, I didn’t set out specifically to research this novel. The book grew out of my organic interests and experiences. I was doing the research in the years leading up to the writing, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
That said, news stories about jewel heists or missing works of art always catch my eye. It’s revelatory to think that in this world of global connectedness, priceless art and antiquities can go totally missing. Additionally, as a former lawyer, whenever I see a story about an object being repatriated I want to understand the exact legal and diplomatic mechanics of how that works. When I started writing the book, I delved more deeply into the legal arguments surrounding repatriation.
From there, I began writing. To move a story along, whether set in the present or the past, character is the driver. “Character is plot and plot is character,” wrote E. M. Forster. It’s a tautology, but true, in that it expresses how closely the two are joined. I was writing trying to bring my characters to life. When I was done with the initial draft, I went back and researched to verify things and to make the context realistic. Actual research in the traditional sense didn’t drag as I was looking for specific answers. The long part was the years leading up to the writing.
Can you give us a sneak preview of your next book?
I’m currently working on another novel, part of which will be set in France during the reign of Louis XVI before the revolution. Again, this topic is the product of long fascination with this time in history both in the US and in France, with Paris in general and Versailles specifically, and with many of the famous women at court such as Marie Antoinette, Madame du Barry, Vigée Le Brun, and Rose Bertin, to name a few.
Turn the page for an excerpt from
Gilded Age
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The Orchestra
I’m a native Clevelander. I went east to school, as we do. And I married the loveliest man from Charleston, South Carolina, and convinced him to move back to Cleveland and start a family with me, as Clevelanders do. Nothing is more usual than Clevelanders of a certain ilk leaving, seeing the world, and then dragging a spouse back to settle down. My husband, Jim, calls himself in jest an import—used to vary the breeding stock.
And variety is needed here. I’ve known most of my Cleveland friends since we were infants, since crawling around together on faded Oriental carpets and cartwheeling in the grass at country club picnics. My parents knew their parents, and my parents’ parents knew their grandparents, and so it goes back to the very beginnings when Cleveland was considered the West, and nice families had to stick together. So imports are needed, as few things are less exciting than kissing someone you’ve known since kindergarten.
I tell you all this so that when I tell you that Eleanor Hart moved back to Cleveland without an import, you have a sense of the problem this presented.
I’ve known Eleanor since those days when we played while our mothers gossiped over coffee. I call her mother Aunt Hart, though technically we are no relation. Her father died when she was a girl.