When I’m not clicking away at the keyboard working on my next novel, I teach, and the highlight of my year came in those weeks in the spring when I’d drag my sophomore students through my personal favorite novel, A Tale of Two Cities. And unlike any of my other heroines, they are spun from my imagination after plucking them from the imagination of the inimitable Charles Dickens. The Seamstress, however, brings to life two orphaned cousins-Renée and Laurette. I’ve always seen writing as a sort of play with word-crafted paper dolls, walking them through history, working in cameo appearances by true-life church leaders (even my Luther played a secondary role to his Kate), business moguls, baseball players, and politicians. My women have been pastors’ wives and pastors’ daughters and a pastor’s worst nightmare. I’ve crafted flappers and prostitutes and housewives. I’ve always loved crafting stories around “real” women-not necessarily real in the way that Katharina Luther was real, but real in the beauty of their ordinariness. Or whittling the Reformation down to the singular revelation of a headstrong nun. I’ve followed big ideas too, like having a brave mother stare down the aggression of the Mormon church. A stray thought, a random glimpse at an old photograph or newspaper clipping. Most of my novels come from small places. I just wanted the honor of telling her story.īy Allison Pittman, author of The Seamstress I couldn’t change her fate, but then I didn’t want to.
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