NYT Bestselling Author Patti Callahan On Writing Historical Fiction

Today’s guest is Patti Callahan, the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels, including the incredibly popular historical novel Becoming Mrs. Lewis (2018),  brings to life this little-known true story in her first hardcover published by Berkley. SURVIVING SAVANNAH explores the tragic explosion of the steamship Pulaski in 1838. The accident killed many passengers, including a number of Savannah’s most elite, who were journeying up north for the summer months.

Alternating between modern day and 1838 when the ship sank, Callahan weaves an intricate and evocative tale that follows Savannah residents past and present and how their lives were shaped by this shipwreck and ultimately, how survivors endure after facing such a tragedy.

As luck would have it, just a few weeks into Callahan’s research, the actual steamship Pulaski was found thirty miles off the coast of Wilmington, NC, a hundred feet deep. Callahan was given rare access to the recovery mission and the artifacts retrieved. The author used this special insight to shape details about the ship and its passengers in her novel. The characters are drawn from actual shipwreck victims and survivors, particularly the Lamar family of Savannah, who were used as the real-life inspiration for Callahan’s main characters. 

Tell us about Surviving Savannah.

Discovering untold stories is like having a great secret whispered in your ear.  And this was one of those secrets!

Surviving Savannah is inspired by the true and forgotten-to-time saga of a luxury steamship with the nickname, “The Titanic of the South”. But her real name was The Steamship Pulaski. One June night in 1838, she exploded off the coast of North Carolina while carrying the elite of Savannah and Charleston who were headed north for the summer. 

The story is told in a dual timeline with a modern-day woman named Everly Winthrop, who curates a museum exhibit for the ship’s artifacts. With her own survival of a great tragedy haunting her, she desperately wants to solve some of the mysteries, and unravel some of the myths surrounding the sinking.  

Eventually Everly’s research leads her to the family of eleven who boarded together, and the extraordinary stories of two women: a known survivor, Augusta Winthrop and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found along with her child.

I set out to not only tell you the story of the Pulaski, its passengers, and its tales of survival, but to also bestow honor on the courageous tales of women and what they did to endure in the face of tragedy. I explored the role of fate, family histories, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.

What inspired you to write this story?

Originally I was inspired by the Pulaski tales of survival, how the city of Savannah was part of this story, and how the Lowcountry was affected by this tragedy. I was also inspired and curious about the transformation of each passenger and the ways that each survivor not only lived through the explosion, but also how they chose to live their lives after the sinking.

How, I wondered, do some come to live better lives and others turn toward bitterness and cruelty? Who do we become after such great loss?

AND then!, everything shifted because after a hundred and eighty years, along came a shipwreck hunting crew who found the remains of the Pulaski a hundred feet beneath the waves, thirty miles off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. While the team went deep to bring up the artifacts and treasure of this beautiful ship, I dug deep to bring up the stories.   

My exhilarating hunt for the forgotten story began. 

Surviving Savannah is based on the sinking of the ship Pulaski, which departed Savannah in 1838. How did you learn about the shipwreck?

A local friend in Bluffton, South Carolina told me about this story years ago. But I wasn’t ready to write it. And then one day I read a newspaper article about two passengers who had become myths, and realized how many untold and hidden stories lived inside this single tragedy.

The lesson here? Do not ignore the locals. And you never know where a story idea will originate so always keep the ears and eyes wide open.

What kind of research was required to write the novel? Did anything surprise you?

The research was as fascinating as it was extensive – from the archives at the Georgia Historical Center in Savannah and the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum to books, newspaper archives, personal accounts and letters, I read everything that I could get my hands on. I devoured books on steamships and Savannah in the 1800’s. I read about the rich history of the colonization of Savannah with General Oglethorpe. I walked the streets of Savannah and visited museums and artifact collections. I interviewed shipwreck experts and became enchanted with the world of wreck salvaging and treasure hunting.

During this journey, I was surprised over and over, but one surprise that opens the novel is the true narrative about a fifteen-year-old passenger named Charles who survived the sinking to become a slave trader with a horrific reputation. As he grew into a man, he earned the nickname “the Red Devil”. How had this young boy survived to become so cruel? I wanted to know.  

Finally, after years of research, I put together a complete story of that calamitous night, and one family in particular.

Your story follows three women – Lily and Augusta on the ship in 1838, and Everly in present day. What do these three women have in common?

They are each trying to find out who they really are in the face of great loss and hardship. What do they believe? Who will they become? Set in two different centuries they all still face the same bigger questions— questions that will change their lives.

Which of the three women did you relate to the most and why?

While I was writing each section I always felt the most connected to the woman I was writing about at the moment. I don’t think I felt more for one woman than another but of course our modern-day character, Everly felt more relatable only because I know today’s Savannah and I know today’s southern norms and ideas. The historical narratives were almost two hundred years old, and yet I still felt as close to Lilly and Augusta because their plight and their desires and their inner lives feel familiar. As far as women have come in their roles in society, there is still the struggle for independence and agency. There remains the need to burst through familial and collective norms to build a life of one’s own.

All three women had their own tragedies, hardships and losses to navigate. All three needed to discover how they would make meaning and purpose out of their situation. All three found out what they were truly made of and if they wanted to merely survive or if they wanted to thrive and build new lives.

What do you hope readers will take away from this story?

I want readers to take away what matters most to them in this story. I always hope that the transformational journeys of my characters give my reader’s their own aha moments. For each reader this is different, and I only hope it touches them where it most needs to touch them.

I believe that there’s a story in everything. I know that once we understand history as a story and a journey and not mere facts, we are then changed and our views of the past shift.

I want us to see ourselves as part of a larger story. I hope my stories bring my readers home to themselves.

Greg Fields On The Impact of A Mentor

Haunted by lost loves and limping through a lifeless career, Conor Finnegan's discontent mirrors the restlessness of his grandfather Liam, caught as a young man in the crossfire of the Irish Civil War. Drawing from Liam's wisdom and courage, Conor seeks to reinvent his character and reclaim passions made numb by neglect and loss.

Congratulations on your new novel, Through the Waters and the Wild! Tell us what the book is about.

Coursing through several decades, Through the Waters and the Wild spans the farmlands of Ireland, the Irish Civil War, the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and the interior landscapes against which we all seek to craft identity and meaning. With well-drawn, complex characters, a strong narrative arc, and a poetic sense of place, Through the Waters and the Wild not only takes readers on an epic journey, but addresses the timeless questions, “Where shall I go now? What shall I do?”

Through the Waters and the Wild picks up where your last book, Arc of the Comet, left off but can also work as a stand-alone. Why did you decide to return to Conor’s story and what will fans of your first novel be most excited by?

Conor’s story was nowhere near closure at the end of Arc of the Comet.  That was, in fact, the point of it, that there are no final, neat, tidy resolutions and that we all need to continue defining who and what we are.  It made sense to carry Conor’s journey forward and to explore how he reacted to the losses he experienced.  He’s a different person now – bruised, more cautious, less given to the passions and spontaneity that marked his earlier years.  He’s become more like the rest of us.

 What made you decide to feature the Irish culture and Ireland prominently in your books?

I believe that there’s no such thing as complete fiction. Much of Conor Finnegan’s career as described in the book reflects my own experiences, especially his experiences overseas in international development. My grandfather emigrated from Ireland, as did Liam Finnegan, but Liam’s story is not my grandfather’s. Still, I was inspired by the courage of leaving everything behind, the conscious choice to abandon the only world one has ever known. 

Exile and redemption are some of the recurring themes in the novel. But what do you hope readers take away most from your writing?

Most of my writing revolves around the central questions that I believe each of us must constantly ask ourselves. I would hope readers would come away with at least a recognition of those questions in their own context. But what matters, and what’s subtly stressed throughout both novels, is that the answers to these questions are not nearly as important as the asking of them. When we fail to ask ourselves those questions, we cease to be truly alive. 

You once had a memorable and fateful encounter with a big literary inspiration of yours, Pat Conroy, who quickly became a fan of your words after you recited a few lines for him. What was it about the meeting that inspired you to become a writer yourself? 

I had written fiction for years, but the demands of a career always pushed that pursuit to the corner. A chance meeting with Pat Conroy as I was developing Arc of the Comet changed all that. Pat saw something in my writing that I did not know was there, and from that point I committed myself to giving every chance to prove the possibility that I might actually be a writer.  

My wife, knowing how I loved Conroy’s work, surprised me with tickets to one of his talks and the VIP reception afterward. Knowing absolutely no one at the reception, I headed to the hors d’oeuvres table. Pat approached me from behind, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “We’ve not met.  I’m Pat Conroy.” Something intuitive there, and we ended up talking one-on-one for nearly 20 minutes while the other guests circled around and glared at me. Pat was gracious, and we learned that we shared the same birthday, the same literary influences, and the same jump shot on the basketball court. He asked me to recite some of my work, and I was able to do so, after which he got quite serious and said that he wanted to read what I had. We corresponded, and Pat Conroy made me a writer. I’ve told this story many times, in greater detail, as an homage to my generation’s brightest literary life, and a man I came to love.

What’s next for you? Will you be writing another book around Conor’s story?

I’m working on the next novel.  I can’t completely abandon Finnegan, but I think his story has run his course.  He’ll make a few cameo appearances in a narrative centering on fresh characters.  But the questions, the themes, will be similar to what’s come before, even though they’ll be pursued through different eyes.

Greg Fields is the author of Arc of the Comet, a lyrical, evocative examination of promise, potential and loss, published by Koehler Books in October 2017. Arc of the Comet explores universal themes in a precise, lyrical style inspired by the work of Niall Williams, Colm Toibin and the best of Pat Conroy, who had offered a jacket quote for the book shortly before his death. The book has been nominated for the Cabell First Novelist Award, the Sue Kaufman First Fiction Prize and the Kindle Book of the Year in Literary Fiction.He is also the co-author with Maya Ajmera of Invisible Children: Reimagining International Development from the Grassroots.

He has won recognition for his written work in presenting the plight of marginalized young people through his tenure at the Global Fund for Children, and has had articles published in the Harvard International Review, as well as numerous periodicals, including The Washington Post and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. His short nonfiction has appeared in The Door Is A Jar and Gettysburg Review literary reviews.Greg holds degrees from Rutgers College and the University of Notre Dame. He lives with his wife Lynn and their son Michael in Manassas, Virginia.For more information, please visit www.gregfields.net or connect with him on Instagram and Facebook

Memoirist Margaret Dulaney On Writing About the Struggle Between Hope & Despair

Parables of Sunlight is a gorgeous memoir about leaving Manhattan after 18 years and buying an abandoned farm in Pennsylvania. Taking on one hundred acres of neglected farmland, she and her husband discovered a rich community of both animals, and people. Especially now, after months of difficult times for us all, it is hard to have hope. But Margaret is the perfect voice to encourage us all to keep fighting for it.

Your book, The Parables of Sunlight, is a memoir that revolves around a farm, and an injured horse. Why did you choose to write about this?

I chose this story because I wanted to explore the theme of the battle between hope and despair. The story is from a period in my middle years when my husband and I took ownership of a neglected farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The central figure in the book is an abandoned and injured horse whose life hangs in the balance for many months. At the time this mirrored other battles of a similar intensity in other facets of my life, my mother for instance, who was in a battle with late stage Alzheimer’s disease. I hope the book touches on a universal theme, one to which many can relate.

 Have you drawn any conclusions from your exploration of this subject?

I think we go wrong when we say of any situation, “This shouldn’t be happening.” It is happening, and we must find our way through. I suspect that our greatest work is in our willingness to walk alongside one another through difficult passages. The metaphor of my walking alongside my horse through months and months of rehabilitation had a formative and lasting effect on me.

What would you say it was that you learned?

I think it was a lesson in the great arts of hope and perseverance. I am in the business of hope. This is what I try and offer my listeners who visit Listen Well every month. Hope isn’t a luxury; it is a necessity. Like water, we cannot live without hope. Perseverance, however, is something that we can take up or toss away at any time. The choice is ours. The issue is, so little is accomplished without some sort of stick-to-it-ness. Most good things, most goals, most efforts to change require a measure of perseverance. Before this period in my life I didn’t see the true value of this quality, I was too willing to give up.

But how can you tell if you are persevering in the right direction? Might you be fighting for something that is not worth your fighting for?

I understand this dilemma. Maybe the best way to distinguish whether a choice is right for you or not is if it brings you life. We’re given choices every day to either embrace life or turn from life. Some choices bring us more passion for our lives and others block our life force. Do not confuse this with right and wrong, yes or no. Sometimes a “no” can be life-affirming, a “yes” can be life-denying. No, I don’t want that third Scotch, yes, I do need to leave this corrosive relationship. Sometimes the choices take a good deal of study before they can be decided upon, but most of us have an intuitive understanding of what will bring us life and what will not.

 You use the metaphor of a good teacher to illustrate this guidance. Why did you choose this?

I hoped to focus and solidify the idea of divine aid. Everyone will experience this a little differently. The ways in which others experience the divine are intriguing to me. I love people’s stories of transcendence and guidance.

 Your book is filled with stories involving animals. What is your connection to animals?

I have always felt that the animal kingdom has much to teach us. A flock of birds for instance, with its ability to fly in unison, as if they shared one mind, is a beautiful metaphor, never satisfactorily explained by science. If we have guidance from above, which I heartily believe we do, then an animal is a perfect tool of manipulation. My dogs have introduced me to some of my closest friends. My horse has the ability to deliver a sense of peace to me unlike any other. There is much that is mystical about our connection to the animals.

Is there anything that you learned by your exploration of the battle between hope and despair that surprised you.

I suspect that most of us, if we could see our past as the heavenly beings do, would be astonished at the measure of hope we carry through life. We would be amazed at our courage, the perseverance we have shown. I know that before I wrote this book, I believed that I was far too ready to throw in the towel and give up, but looking at my history I can see the thread of hope woven through my story. I encourage everyone to try and look for this thread. It is always there.

MARGARET DULANEY a playwright and essayist, and founder of the spoken word website Listenwell.org. Culled from a lifetime’s study of the ancients and mystics of all traditions, Margaret’s writings employ the ideas of Emerson, Lao Tzu, Hafiz, George MacDonald, Richard Rohr, Emanuel Swedenborg, Lorna Byrne, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, Rudolph Steiner and many others.  

In 2010 Margaret founded the open faith, spoken word website ListenWell.Org. Each month Listen Well posts one ten-minute, professionally recorded essay designed to puzzle out a spiritual theme through story and metaphor. Listeners vary from practicing Buddhists to open-minded Christians, from those struggling to find a working tradition to those who are happy with their practice. Margaret records her writings at Maggie’s Farm recording studios in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. 

Learn more about Margaret Dulaney at  www.listenwell.org and connect with her on Facebook.