Geraldine Brooks

I have been pretty lucky the past few weeks to do some amazing things. Two nights ago I had the chance to meet my favorite modern female author, Geraldine Brooks. She is a former Wall Street Journal corespondent who now write historical fiction.

I picked up her first book, Year of Wonders, at the Borders on Michigan Avenue (back when we still lived in Chicago) in the budget bin based entirely on its cover. It was a new release that they had overstocked so I got it for $3. It has since become one of my top 5 favorite books of all time. I am constantly evangelizing her works because they are all amazing.

Her next book, March, was written from the perspective of the father of the March girls in Little Women and tell the story of what was going on with him while he was away at war.

The People of the Book is a completely amazing book about a 500 year old Jewish text that is being analyzed by a rare books specialist during the time of the war in Sarajevo .

And now she has released a new book call Caleb's Crossing. I bought it at the book signing because it sounded fascinating. It is the story of the 1st Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665. Yes, 1665. It is told from the point of view of a Puritan minister's daughter and set on Martha's Vineyard. I am only 70 pages in so far but every sentence has been beautiful. Her book March won a Pulitzer Prize and I wouldn't at all be surprised if this book wins her many more awards. It is stunning.

I was never much into historical fiction before I started reading Geraldine Brooks, but it has turned out to be a genre that I find, when well written, can be very eye opening and help make historical events seem more dimensional than just flat facts. The thing I like best about who she presents her stories is in the choosing of the narrator. She discussed her process a little bit when she spoke, she called it listening to the dead. When she is writing a book and searching for a narrator's voice she researches just enough to find the right person's perspective from which to tell the story and then wait for them to speak to her so that she can have a voice authentic to the time and place and life station of the narrator so that she is not writing a historical work in a modern voice. She said when she tried to explain it to her son he looked at her like she was crazy and asked if she was sitting round trying to talk to ghosts. I think the way she does it is a lot like doing genealogy; even though the dead aren't literally speaking to you, the more you learn about their time and life and situation the more you know them and the realer they become. It is that authentic voice that really sets her writing apart from much other historical fiction and make me a huge fan.