Welcome to Writing for Christ, Susan Meissner! So glad to have you here to chat about your next release and share it with my readers!
1.
Susan, tell us where the idea for A Fall of Marigolds came from.
I’ve long been a history junkie, especially with regard to historical events
that involve ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. A couple years
ago I viewed a documentary by author and filmmaker Lorie Conway called
Forgotten Ellis Island; a hauntingly
poignant exposé on the section of
Ellis Island
that no one really has heard much about; its hospital. The two man-made islands
that make up the hospital buildings haven’t been used in decades and are
falling into ruins, a sad predicament the documentary aptly addresses. The images
of the rooms where the sick of a hundred nations waited to be made well stayed
with me. I knew there were a thousand stories pressed into those walls, stories
of immigrants who were just a stone’s throw from a new life. But unless they could
be cured of whatever disease they’d arrived with, they would never set foot on
America’s
shores.
Ellis Island hospital was the ultimate
in-between place – it lay between what was and what could be. A great place to
set a story
2.
What is the story about, in a nutshell?
The book is about two women who never meet as they are separated by a
century. One woman, Taryn, is a 9/11 widow and single mother who is about to
mark the tenth anniversary of her husband’s passing. The other is a nurse,
Clara, who witnessed the death of the man she loved in the Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire in
Manhattan in 1911.In her sorrow, Clara
imposes on herself an exile of sorts; she takes a post at the hospital on
Ellis Island so that she can hover in an in-between place
while she wrestles with her grief. She meets an immigrant who wears the scarf
of the wife he lost crossing the
Atlantic, a
scarf patterned in marigolds. The scarf becomes emblematic of the beauty and
risk inherent in loving people, and it eventually finds it way to Taryn one
hundred years later on the morning a plane crashes into the
North Tower
of the
World Trade Center.
The story is about the resiliency of love, and the notion that the weight of
the world is made more bearable because of it, even though it exposes us to the
risk of loss.
3. Why a scarf of marigolds? What is their significance?
Marigolds aren’t like most other flowers. They aren’t beautiful and fragrant.
You don’t see them in bridal bouquets or prom corsages or funeral sprays. They
don’t come in gentle colors like pink and lavender and baby blue. Marigolds are
hearty, pungent and brassy. They are able to bloom in the autumn months, well past
the point when many other flowers can’t. In that respect, I see marigolds as
being symbolic of the strength of the human spirit to risk loving again after
loss. Because, face it. We live in a messy world. Yet it’s the only one we’ve
got. We either love here or we don’t. The title of the book has a sort of
double-meaning. Both the historical and contemporary story take place primarily
in the autumn. Secondarily, when Clara sees the scarf for the first time,
dangling from an immigrant’s shoulders as he enters the hospital building, she
sees the floral pattern in the threads, notes how similar they are to the
flames she saw in the fire that changed everything for her, and she describes
the cascading blooms woven into the scarf as “a fall of marigolds.”
4. What led you to dovetail the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 with
9/11?
When I first began pulling at story threads, my first instinct was to tell a
story about an immigrant struggling to remain hopeful as an unwilling patient
at
Ellis Island hospital. But the more I toyed
with whose story this was, the more I saw instead a young nurse, posting
herself to a place where every disease known and unknown showed up. It was a
place like no other; a waiting place – a place where the dozens of languages spoken
added to the unnatural homelessness of it. Why was she here? Why did she choose
this post? Why did she refuse to get on the ferry on Saturday nights to
reconnect with the real world? What kind of person would send herself to Ellis
not just to work, but to live? Someone who needed a place to hover suspended. I
knew something catastrophic had to happen to her to make her run to Ellis for
cover. As I began researching possible scenarios, I came across the Triangle
Shirtwaist Fire, which up until 9/11 was arguably the worst urban disaster to
befall
Manhattan.
There were similarities between that fire and 9/11, including the tragic fact
that many trapped workers jumped to their deaths rather than perish in the
flames. For every person lost in
disasters such as these, there is always his or her individual story, and the
stories of those who loved them. I wanted to imagine two of those stories.
5.
Are you working on anything new at the moment?
My next book is set entirely in England, mostly
during The London Blitz. My main character starts out as a young, aspiring
bridal gown designer evacuated to the countryside with her seven-year-old
sister in the summer of 1940. Though only fifteen, Emmy is on the eve of being made
an apprentice to a renowned costumer and she resents her single mother’s
decision to send her away. She sneaks back to London
– with her sister in tow – several months later but the two become separated
when the Luftwaffe begins its terrible and deadly attack on the East End on the first night of the Blitz. War has a way
of separating from us what we most value, and often shows how little we
realized that value. I have always found the evacuation of London’s children to the countryside – some
for the entire duration of the war – utterly compelling. How hard it must have
been for those parents and their children. I went on a research trip to the
U.K. in the fall of 2013 and I spoke with many individuals who were children
during the war; some were separated from their parents, some were bombed out of
their homes, some slept night after night in underground Tube stations, some
watched in fascination as children from the city came to their towns and
villages to live with them. This book explores issues of loss and longing, but
also the bonds of sisters, and always, the power of love.
6.
Where can readers connect with you?
You can find me at
www.susanmeissner.com and on Facebook
at my Author page, Susan .Meissner, and on Twitter at SusanMeissner. I blog at
susanmeissner.com. I also send out a newsletter via email four times a year.
You can sign up for it on my website. I love connecting with readers! You are
the reason I write.
Readers, enter to win Susan's book here!
Please leave an email address! If I draw your name and there is no email, you will not win.
For extra entries:
~Be a follower
~Be a subscriber
Contest is only open in the U.S. and void where prohibited. Chances of winning are based on the number of entries and winner is draw from a non-biased third party- Random.org. I am not responsible for any lost or damaged items for said prize.
Thanks for coming by to enter! Contest ends on February 28th
Attn Readers! If you're struggling to leave a comment on my blog, please email your comment entries (in ONE email) and I will submit it for you. But PLEASE only do this after you've failed to leave a comment. My email is: caseym.writer(@)gmail.com
As part of the release of
A Fall of Marigolds and this blog tour, Susan is giving to one lucky winner a
gift basket that includes a $100 Visa gift card, a copy of the book, the DVD
Forgotten Ellis Island, and a beautiful re-purposed infinity scarf patterned in
marigolds and made from a vintage Indian sari. To be eligible, just leave a
comment here between today and midnight Eastern on Friday, February 21. If you
would like to see a list of the other participating blogs on this tour, just click
here. Feel free to visit those
blogs and increase your chances of winning by posting one comment on those
blogs as well. One comment per blog will be eligible.
Additionally, there will
be one winner of a signed copy of A Fall of Marigolds from among those who
comment on this blog. Just leave a comment by midnight Eastern on Friday, Feb.
28 and you’re in the running for the grand prize as well as a signed copy of
the book. Good luck!
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