Q&A
with
TRACY
CHEVALIER
Your previous
novels were all set in Europe. What made
you decide to choose America, and more specifically, Ohio, as the setting of The Last Runaway?
I moved
to England right after I graduated from college, and have spent 28 years
getting used to living in Europe. During all that time I’ve felt a bit of an
outsider, even though I now have a British passport and an English husband and
son, and have lived in England longer than anywhere else. That outsider status
helped me when it came to writing: when you’re standing on the sideline rather
than playing in the game, you perhaps have more perspective. Now it seems I’ve
been away from America long enough to feel less attached, and more objective,
so I am ready to write about it.
I chose
Ohio specifically because it was the state where the Underground Railroad was
the most active. It was also a crossroads state, with lots of movement from
south to north and from east to west. Ohio served as a gateway for easterners
heading west. It’s still an interesting state, with a curious identity
different from the rest of the country. A mix of east and Midwest, it is often
presented as the boring place everyone wants to leave, yet it has the power to
elect a President. In fact, seven Presidents have come from Ohio, as well as
Neil Armstrong, Orville Wright, Steven Spielberg, Toni Morrison, Gloria
Steinem. I think it’s a fascinating state.
Of
course it helps that I went to Oberlin College, so I know the setting a little.
Since its founding Oberlin has been a radical place, admitting African
Americans and women among its first students, flying the flag for progressive
thought. It was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. In fact, there
is one of Toni Morrison’s Benches by the Road in Oberlin, marking it as a place
of historical significance for African Americans. I happened to be at Oberlin
when she unveiled the bench in April 2009, and that was what first gave me the
idea to write The Last Runaway.
Why did you choose to feature a young Quaker
woman as your protagonist?
A couple
days after I saw Toni Morrison unveil the Bench, I went to a Quaker meeting,
where people sit together in silence. I went to a Quaker camp as a kid, and I
still go to Meeting sometimes. There I kept thinking about the Bench by the
Road, about the incredible journeys African Americans had to make to escape
slavery and find freedom, and how Quakers helped them along the way. It made me wonder if I could make my main
character a Quaker, and what it would be like to write a heroine who is very
quiet and who always tells the truth (Quakers are not meant to lie).
Many readers might
be unfamiliar with the role Quakers played in the Underground Railroad. Did women like Honor Bright really
exist?
Honor
herself is made up, but lots of Quakers worked on the Underground Railroad. The
“President” of the Underground Railroad was a Quaker called Levi Coffin, who
lived in Cincinnati and then Indiana.
Indeed,
the abolitionist movement was largely begun by Quakers. Slavery went against
their belief in the equality of all people, and in the 1820s they began
organized protests that grew into abolitionism.
What do you think are the most common
misconceptions about the Quaker religion/Quaker society?
People
often mistake Quakers for the Amish. Both are Protestant sects, but the Amish
are much different from Quakers, eschewing modern technology (electricity,
cars, etc.) and keeping separate from society. When you think of a man with a
beard and flat hat and a woman with a white cap, riding in a horse-drawn buggy:
that’s Amish.
Quakers
were and are much more worldly: they used to dress plainly but not radically
(the Amish, on the other hand, prohibit buttons, using pins instead), they used
new inventions, they often lived and worked among non-Quakers. Quakers were
known to run honest businesses, and some English Quaker families (Cadbury,
Sainsbury) became very wealthy, which is also not how most people would
characterize them.
I expect
people also think of Quakers as not being much fun, as they didn’t drink,
dance, play games. (That has since changed!) It’s true they were rather more
sober than other communities, but they had their moments.
What did
you find most surprising during your research for this novel?
I spent a bit of time in Ohio, of course, and one of my favorite
moments was visiting an Amish farm. As I mentioned above, the Amish and Quakers
are very different, but I needed to look around a farm that was still run in a
19th-century way, and an Amish farm was perfect for that. A farmer
woman named Maddie took me around all the farm buildings and to see the
animals, and patiently answered my 21st-century city-girl questions.
Bare feet, a huge family, bare rooms, hundreds of chickens, jars and jars of
vegetables, mud, animal stench, the biggest damn barn full of hay, a massive
corn crib: I was in heaven in terms of research. I couldn’t take photos, so I
just stared.
The most surprising and upsetting part of my research was discovering
that, as principled as they were, Quakers were as fallible as others. Early
Quakers kept slaves: who knows how they justified that with their beliefs.
Moreover, though there were some black Quakers, for a time they were expected
to sit on the “Negro pew,” separate from white Quakers. I was stunned by the
unquestioned prejudice. On the other hand, it made for a much more textured
novel, since the book is really about principles compromised by reality.
Quakers may have wanted everyone to be treated equally, but they did not want
their daughters sitting next to black men, and didn’t consider this a
contradiction. Curious. That sort of thing has made The Last Runaway more complicated, and more subtle, I hope.
Why does quilting play such an important role
in the story?
I always look for things that characters can do in my books. People made stuff much more than we do now, and
those activities can be quite revealing of character. Quilting is one of those
skills that most women possessed, and it seemed the perfect activity to focus
on, as English and American women both did it and yet came up with such
different styles. English patchwork is sober and precise, American appliqué
more garish and quicker to make. Then there are the African American-style
quilts arising out of hardship and a make-do, improvised attitude that have
found their apogee in the Gee’s Bend quilts now so celebrated. They couldn’t be
more different from English patchwork, and it was a handy way of pointing up
differences in the characters in The Last Runaway.
I worked hard to avoid making quilts into a metaphor – life as a
patchwork, blah blah blah. Instead I tried to focus on the making itself, the
planning and stitching, the social side of it, and the practical warmth. Also
quilts as commerce: how many a bride needed, what they are worth in terms of
time. I loved all that stuff, it’s gritty rather than sentimental.
Of course in order to write about quilts, I had to learn to make them
myself. I do that with every book: fossil hunting for Remarkable Creatures, button-making for Burning Bright, painting for Girl
with a Pearl Earring. It makes it easier to write about when you do it
yourself.
What do you hope readers take away from The Last Runaway?
Though I try to avoid being prescriptive in my books, with this one I
hope readers will have a better sense of how hard it is to live a principled
life in the face of practical realities. We all like to think we will do the
right thing when faced with injustice, but it can be hard to take a stand.
Someone usually pays for it.
Also, people are not really “goodies” or “baddies.” Villains usually
have a balanced side to them, and good people can be irritating and
hypocritical. It’s not all black and white.
Any plans to return to
America for the setting of your next novel?
I loved writing about America, but I am not yet
sure where my next book will be set. I’m not entirely sure it will all be set
in the past, either. All I know is that it will feature trees. I’m toying with
the idea of following trees that were transported back and forth between the
USA and Europe, but it’s still early days.
