The Compromise: An American Novel
Author's log of writing The Compromise
If a scene in the Compromise ends with dialogue, the line probably belongs to Hester Brown, the indomitable cook and reluctant friend. Mariah and Hester bicker and chide while they work. The coworkers have nicknames for one another, Hester Pester and Mariah Milk-Thistle or Miss Prickly. They call each other out and deliver news without embellishment. Their dialogue has been a joy to write, and I’ve watched their devotion grow.
Bildungsroman, the coming-of-age story, is a powerful cultural idea. How does The Compromise deliver on the cultural expectation of this genre?
My Gamble Library is an improvement on history. The fictional library has books to the ceiling, now-famous paintings, a globe, maps, architectural drawings, ancient manuscripts, the classics, new literary fiction, philosophical essays, unpublished work copied by hand, the New-York Daily Tribune, and contraband abolitionist newspapers. Almost exclusively, women were not allowed into university libraries and public libraries came many years later after the Civil War. Even so, a benefactor could have donated her treasures to the education of all women.
According to the website Examined Existence, Americans as readers do not rank well on the World Culture Score Index. Yet 2 million books are published every year. Even I can follow the logic of these numbers. Is it possible to be lost in a crowd of writers with unread books to sell? Women’s authorship, despite…