Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick, author of going on nine.
16.95 – print
16.99 – ebook
Releases May 20, 2014
Familius
From
the Publisher:
A child swipes her mother's ring,
snatches her sister's nightgown, and runs outside to play "bride."
She soon loses the ring, rips the gown, correctly assumes it's about to rain
daggers, and runs away from home to find a better; family. What happens
next is a summer-long journey in which Grace Townsend rides shotgun in a
Plymouth Belvedere, and hunkers in the back of a rattletrap vegetable truck,
crawls into a crumbling tunnel, dresses up with a prom queen, and keeps vigil
in the bedroom of a molestation victim. There are reasons why Grace remembers the
summer of 1956 for the rest of her life. Those are just a few.
Through
the eyes of a child and the mature woman she becomes, we make the journey with
Grace and discover important truths about life, equality, family, and the
soul-searching quest for belonging.
Can you share a couple of your favorite experiences as a
journalist in the fabled Hannibal, MO?
My first job after graduating from journalism school was
as a cub reporter at the Hannibal Courier Post. I loved it! There were no
“young singles” apartment complexes in Hannibal back then, so I rented the
front rooms of a beautiful Queen Anne mansion that had once been the home of a
Mississippi River lumber baron. It came with a huge bay window, red velvet
drapes, tasseled tie-backs, and a genuine claw-foot bath tub. Five days a week,
I covered the Hannibal police department, fire department, county sheriff’s
department and city government. That was in the mornings. After lunch, I wrote
feature stories. All that, for $95 a week.
How did your 9/11 experiences color your writing world?
I happened to be in a hotel in midtown
Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was sent to New York to cover
Fashion Week runway shows. That day, I woke up intending to do just that.
Eighteen
hours later, I lay back down in the same hotel room, forever changed. I had watched
in horror as the first tower sank upon itself. I had interviewed fire fighters
who, a few minutes after we parted, lost their lives in the heroic line of duty.
I had heard the terrible thudding sound of bodies hitting the earth from a
height of 1,000 feet. And when the second tower collapsed in an enormous cloud
of debris, I was close to Ground Zero, in harm’s way. I filed real-time stories
all that day, filed stories all that week, stories that took awards.
When I returned home to Wisconsin,
shattered, I carried with me the idea that at any moment something could come
flying out of the blue and change things forever. That experience informed the
theme of my first novel, A Matter of
Happenstance:
Inevitably, things come zinging at us out of the blue,
things capable of changing ourselves, our families, our cities, and our world.
But character trumps coincidence, and in fact our lives are what we make of
them.
What are some of the different aspects of the writing craft you
needed to learn to apply to fiction vs. non-fiction?
I come from a family of natural-born storytellers and I
was trained in the art and craft of journalism at the University of Missouri’s
renowned School of Journalism, so I have a background in both fiction and
non-fiction.
What took me a while to conquer, though,
when I began writing a book-length work of fiction was to maintain a
consistent point of view, and to create
dialogue that was pin-dot perfect. With newspaper writing, you don’t have those
issues. The point of view is what you have observed first-hand or learned
through interviews, and the dialogue is exactly as your subjects spoke it.
What do you love about Going On Nine?
Oh, my
little heroine, of course. What’s not to love about a kid who swipes her
mother’s diamond ring and her sister’s new white nightgown, goes outside to
play bride, loses the ring, rips the nightgown, correctly assumes it’s about to
rain daggers, and runs away from home rather than face the music?
What do you hope readers will tell other readers about the book?
I hope, if they’re “of a certain age,”
that they’ll say Going on Nine took
them right back to the unstructured, carefree summers that children experienced
sixty years ago, when the only thing calling them home from kickball games in
the street, fort-building out by the fence lines, or catching tadpoles in the
creek, was the sound of a bell, a whistle, or their mother’s particular calling
that meant the Jell-O salad was set and a meat loaf was nicely browned or as
tuna noodle casserole was bubbling under a topping of crumbled chips.
Personally:
The best of Milwaukee:
If I had
to pick just one thing, it would be the foresight of the city fathers who, long
ago, dedicated a series of urban parks along the shoreline of Lake Michigan,
green spaces threaded with bicycle paths, dotted with trees and decorated with public
statues and picturesque foot-bridges, greenswards bordered in summer with boats
bobbing at moorings in the harbor and equally lovely in winter under blankets
of ever-fresh snow. For generations thereafter and generations to come,
Milwaukeeans who wish to, rich or poor, can go there and enjoy broad sunrises,
draughts of fresh air, dew-drop grass and warm sand beneath their feet, and grand
views of a lake that stretch to the horizon.
The best of Florida:
Oh, so many bests. Just one? Nigh onto
impossible. So, a few then:
Birdsong in January. Soft breezes at
twilight. Palm fronds rustling overhead. Pale pink shells half-nestled in
caramel sand. The thonk of tennis balls volleyed over a net. The ping of a
250-yard drive sailing down a velvet fairway. Foam at the leading edge of incoming
tide. Coppertone doing business as perfume. Beach towels flapping on a lanai.
Limes. Coconuts. Umbrella drinks. Enough? Okay, I’ll stop now.
Why write non-fiction:
Because it teaches us, reminds us, warns
us, helps us, comforts us.
Why write fiction:
Because it entertains us, inspires us,
drags us to the depths, lifts us to the heavens, stills our thrumming hearts,
soothes our discontented souls, and, for long moments as we turn the pages,
expands our world beyond the cloisters of reality.
What’s in your
To-Be-Read pile?
Everything my book club is reading this
year. One thing I’ve always wanted to read. One thing I’ve never wanted to read
but always thought I should. One thing I won’t tell anybody I’ve read, and one
thing I will want everybody I know to know I’ve read (because it’s so darn
good!).
About
the author:
Although
the book takes place in St. Louis, Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick grew up in
Milwaukee and will always be a Wisconsinite at heart. She lives in
Milwaukee and Florida. going on nine is her second novel.
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