Julie Gerstenblatt, DAUGHTERS OF NANTUCKET
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[1:03]Julie Gerstenblatt is the author of Daughters of Nantucket.
[1:07]Julie holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Teachers College Columbia University.
[1:12]Her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post and cognitive center among others.
[1:16]We're not writing.
[1:17]Julie is a college essay coach, as well as a producer and on-ear host for a mighty
[1:21]blaze.
[1:22]A native New Yorker, Julie now lives in coastal Rhode Island with her family and one very
[1:27]smart.
[1:28]Sishan Poo.
[1:29]Daughters of Nantucket is her first novel.
[1:31]Welcome, Julie.
[1:32]Thanks so much for coming on Moms.
[1:33]Don't have time to read books to discuss Daughters of Nantucket.
[1:37]I am thrilled to be here.
[1:39]Okay.
[1:40]I need to know what fun events you're doing in Nantucket to celebrate this book because
[1:44]I want to come to something.
[1:45]Okay.
[1:46]Okay.
[1:47]So because the book came out, you know, came out in March, March is now the thing
[1:51]on Nantucket right now, which is I explained to Harper Collins.
[1:56]So the plan is for Daffodil weekend to be the Nantucket launch for the book.
[2:01]So I will be there signing books at Mitchell's On Main Street during the part of the parade
[2:07]where the cars are parked in town, all the anti cars are covered in Daffodils.
[2:12]Everybody strolls through town in the morning and shops and comes and has books signed
[2:18]at Mitchell's and then there's an anti-car parade out to Wisconsin and picnics and tailgating
[2:24]out there.
[2:25]I mentioned it to my friends and 20 people are coming with me just for fun for the weekend
[2:32]and some people have like their child's junior prom on Friday nights or they're coming
[2:36]early Saturday, some are coming for the whole thing.
[2:39]My Boston writing group is coming.
[2:41]My mother's making Daffodil headbands for my gosh, so fun.
[2:46]I knew you would be doing so they fun.
[2:47]Wait.
[2:48]So when is Daffodil weekend?
[2:49]Daffodil weekend is the last weekend of April, so it coincides with independent bookstore
[2:53]date.
[2:54]Oh, perfect.
[2:55]Yeah.
[2:56]I'll be interested in fair retreat, but I won't.
[2:58]There's more.
[2:59]Okay.
[3:00]The book festival, the Nantucket Book Festival in June, 15th to 18th, Thursday to Sunday
[3:07]and my husband and I are going for the whole thing when they were like, can you arrive
[3:12]early?
[3:13]I was like, yes, they're like, can you stay late through Cisco Brewers on Sunday?
[3:16]Yes.
[3:18]And then I'll be there for two weeks for family vacation at the end of July through
[3:23]the first week of August.
[3:24]So there will be things then too, but they haven't been planned yet.
[3:28]Okay.
[3:29]Well, I can't come not that this is about this.
[3:31]I can't come that week.
[3:32]I can't come in June, but I would love to come.
[3:35]I would love to get to Nantucket.
[3:36]I haven't been in so long and I haven't gotten married like, I don't know, that must have
[3:40]been like 15, 20 years.
[3:42]I don't even know.
[3:43]So I would.
[3:44]Anyway, keep me posted.
[3:46]I want your list.
[3:47]I know I follow you, but whatever.
[3:48]Okay.
[3:49]Now back to the book and now that I've learned all about Nantucket from your book, I feel
[3:53]like more of a vested interest in the whole community anyway.
[3:56]Okay.
[3:57]Starters of Nantucket.
[3:58]Julie, can you please tell us what your book is about?
[4:01]Sure.
[4:02]My novel is about three women whose lives intersect in the days leading up to and immediately
[4:07]following Nantucket's great fire of 1846.
[4:12]So what I like to say is that these women's personal dramas, their secrets, their jealousies,
[4:18]and all of their, you know, climactic moments hit just as the fire hits town.
[4:25]Did you read yet Rachel B. Land's book?
[4:28]Like a half an hour?
[4:29]No.
[4:30]Oh my gosh.
[4:31]You two have to do an event together?
[4:33]I know.
[4:34]I tried.
[4:35]She approached us to be interviewed by Mighty Blaze and I was like, I'm the perfect person
[4:38]to do it, but I will be on book tour when she's on book tour.
[4:42]So we kind of are both so busy separately, but we will plan something.
[4:46]Yes, two fires are better than one.
[4:49]Yeah, you should do like, yeah, it would be, it would be a good conversation.
[4:54]I should like moderate it or something.
[4:56]Yes.
[4:57]You should.
[4:58]Yeah.
[4:59]Yeah.
[5:00]We could try to figure something out.
[5:01]If I could convince you both to go to the store in LA, I wonder if we can hear you are coming.
[5:09]When I'm going to be there, it's kind of a weird time though and you're not going
[5:12]to be there.
[5:13]But that's true.
[5:14]But my son's out there, so I'm happy to go back any other time.
[5:17]All right, we'll figure I'll loop her in and we'll figure something else out.
[5:23]What drew you to this fire?
[5:25]Why did you decide to write a novel like where did this come from in your house?
[5:29]I've been going to Nantucket since I was eight years old, the summer of 1978.
[5:34]My family packed up our car from New York, which like, you know, Nantucket wasn't
[5:38]a thing to New Yorkers in the 70s, like Hampton's Jersey Shore, whatever.
[5:43]And my aunt lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts heard about it from her neighbors, convinced
[5:48]us all, including my grandparents to come.
[5:51]And we went to Nantucket and I fell in love with it and have been going back ever since.
[5:55]I did not know about the great fire, however, until I stumbled across it in a history of
[6:02]the island written by Nathaniel Filbreck.
[6:04]And there are two paragraphs about the fire, like on page 11.
[6:08]And that's it.
[6:10]I was hooked.
[6:10]I was like, give me more than that, like I want to know about this fire.
[6:14]So it really started with that curiosity.
[6:17]I was not a historical fiction writer at all.
[6:20]I wrote funny contemporary stories about women, like the one about the woman in her
[6:25]30s, who the woman in her 40s, who I had agents.
[6:30]I had, I wrote three or four novels, nothing sold.
[6:34]And so my agent at the time said, I think this historical one, when you talk about it,
[6:40]you sound excited.
[6:42]I know you don't think of yourself as a writer of historical fiction.
[6:45]But this is said on Nantucket and that makes it different.
[6:48]That has the hook for you.
[6:50]Maybe you should explore it.
[6:52]And that's how that came to be.
[6:54]So cool.
[6:55]Yeah.
[6:56]And then the agent broke up with me.
[6:58]What?
[6:59]Yeah.
[7:00]I wrote the first hundred.
[7:01]I was shocked and embossed and with my class, they were all into it, really feeling strongly
[7:06]about it.
[7:07]And my agent said, in a very long letter, said in emails, it's something like, it's not,
[7:12]I'm not saying I hate it, but I remember the rest of that sentence.
[7:18]But after she failed to sell one novel, told me she didn't like another contemporary
[7:23]one I was working on and then convinced me to do this one and didn't like it.
[7:28]I got on the phone with her.
[7:30]We talked it out.
[7:31]I had like an angry cry.
[7:33]I was like, I've not said I'm mad at you.
[7:35]You know, it was really bad.
[7:37]And she said, she's here for me, no worries.
[7:41]She's sticking with me.
[7:42]And then the next day, emailed me to break up.
[7:44]Well, you know what?
[7:45]It sounds like that was not a match made in heaven to begin.
[7:48]Right.
[7:49]It wasn't meant to be.
[7:52]But at least this book came out of it.
[7:53]Now maybe you can go buy each other's other books.
[7:55]Wow.
[7:56]You know, I wondered about that.
[7:58]And somebody has asked me about that.
[8:00]But I feel now like I'm in this historical fiction thing for a little while.
[8:05]Okay.
[8:06]I have two of her books in the series planned.
[8:08]They're stand-alone, kind of like out of Josie or Natalie Jenner where characters come
[8:13]back.
[8:14]But you know, it's a few years ahead.
[8:17]And I'm psyched about I'm psyched about them.
[8:19]So then after that, maybe I'll return to the to the funny contemporary.
[8:24]Oh, but they found your groove.
[8:25]This is exciting.
[8:26]I want to hear about the other ones.
[8:28]And then we'll come back to this one.
[8:30]Okay.
[8:31]Sure.
[8:32]So the second one will take place five years after this one ends.
[8:36]And well, there's a sentence, you know, as a writer, you know, the phrase like to kill
[8:41]your darlings.
[8:42]Yeah.
[8:43]Sometimes you have like something's not working a character like you have a mother and an
[8:47]older neighbor who are both giving the main character advice.
[8:50]Yeah.
[8:51]You have to consolidate them into one and kill one off.
[8:53]So I had to do that with a friend to Eliza Macy who was not a point of view character and
[9:00]was competing with Mariah for attention on the page.
[9:04]So I and I loved her.
[9:05]So her name is now Starbuck.
[9:07]And there's a sentence in the book now where now Starbuck is off with her merchant husband
[9:12]sailing the seas and traveling the globe to bring back where's to New England.
[9:18]And any event in that at the very beginning, because I remember reading Starbuck and thinking,
[9:22]oh, I wonder if that's related to Starbuck's.
[9:24]Yes.
[9:25]And it is that the Macy's are the Macy's of Macy's department store and the Starbuck.
[9:30]So are the Starbucks of the coffee brand, two of the 10 original families to find Nantucket.
[9:35]Well, not find it, but to claim it for the Europeans.
[9:39]So yeah, so now is the second book.
[9:43]It's going to be it starts on Nantucket while she's packing and you see some of the people
[9:46]you missed at the end of the first and get some answers.
[9:50]And then you go on clipper ship, which is the fastest ship that was ever set on, you
[9:55]know, that's sailed the seas clipper ship to San Francisco.
[10:00]the height of the gold rush and then on to China where it calamity ensues.
[10:03]That's a long boat ride.
[10:06]I know.
[10:06]I'm going to try to know.
[10:07]Oh my gosh.
[10:09]Yeah.
[10:10]I think it was 80 days.
[10:11]Oh my goodness.
[10:13]Wow.
[10:14]Yeah.
[10:15]Yeah.
[10:15]Around the world and it is.
[10:16]Yeah.
[10:17]Yeah.
[10:17]There are like,
[10:18]it's still.
[10:20]Oh my gosh.
[10:21]And then what's the one after that?
[10:23]And do you have a title yet?
[10:25]You know, I don't because I come up with terrible titles.
[10:28]My title for this one was the first one was a great fire.
[10:33]And I called it that forever until I wrote the prologue with my agent.
[10:38]That was an addition later.
[10:39]And the last sentence of the prologue says every great fire begins with a tiny spark.
[10:45]And now all Nantucket needs is for someone to light the fuse.
[10:48]And she's like, let's call it a tiny spark.
[10:51]So we sold it with that and Jenna Blum, who is my writing teacher and friend, um, said,
[10:58]you can't say tiny in your title.
[11:00]You want this book to be big and it's a fire and it's got to be big.
[11:04]And apparently everybody agreed and changed the title to what I now know is a good
[11:10]system of like, tell them who and where daughters of Nantucket, you know,
[11:14]witches of Eastwick.
[11:16]Oh, interesting.
[11:18]Librarian, the lost girls of Paris.
[11:20]So it helps somebody very quickly decide, yes, I like this because they feel
[11:27]connection with the character or the setting.
[11:29]So I know there's a term for a woman who was a merchant and it's she merchant.
[11:37]So I don't know if the she merchant of Nantucket works, but that's kind of my
[11:42]working title because it's going to be the daughter who really steps up and takes
[11:47]over for Peter and now after said calamity.
[11:51]And the third one is two sisters after the civil war, who go to Europe for
[11:58]their European tour, kind of like a room with a view.
[12:03]But for men, it was much more, it was much less about sitting in museums and
[12:06]having culture and much more about adventures, sexual and otherwise.
[12:10]So I feel like these women have to have a little bit more fun in Europe.
[12:14]Interesting.
[12:17]Maybe you should call it the second one, Nantucket travels.
[12:20]Yes, travel, I mean, it's like travels is great.
[12:23]That's a good idea, like because that's really what it is.
[12:25]They start a second, but then they go other places.
[12:27]Yeah, Nantucket travels.
[12:30]I think that's good.
[12:30]I wonder if it sounds more non fictiony, but I work with that.
[12:35]I like travel travels from Nantucket.
[12:38]Yeah, something like that.
[12:41]But considering I love coming up the titles.
[12:45]Good.
[12:45]You have time.
[12:46]I was going to say three pages.
[12:51]Think about it all summer and all fall.
[12:54]And that's a book for publishing.
[12:56]I'm like, oh, no, I'm not going to change the sun.
[12:57]I was like, but what about I don't know.
[13:02]That's awesome.
[13:03]So what when you did, so how did you do the research on the fire and
[13:06]everything?
[13:07]Like were you, were you in historical must be societies with like creaky
[13:11]boards and addicts and all of that.
[13:13]That's how I picture it.
[13:14]I spent like two hours at the Nantucket Historical Association.
[13:19]And they presented me with original documents in hand-running.
[13:22]I couldn't read and I realized I was in trouble.
[13:25]Like I planned a three day trip to Nantucket to do research.
[13:30]My husband and I went like right before Memorial Day, like just before the
[13:33]high season and things were open and weather was great.
[13:36]And he went off for like a bike ride to the other side of the island.
[13:41]And I was like, I don't know.
[13:43]I was like whispering to myself, like, I don't know what to do.
[13:46]Oh, no, it was stuck.
[13:48]And I was like raising my hand like a student in class.
[13:50]Like can anybody and they were like, no, we can't help you.
[13:53]You're here to do your research.
[13:56]And luckily that was only a little bit of it.
[13:58]I did go to interview, I interviewed that former head of the Nantucket
[14:03]Historical Association, Betsy Tyler, who is a great researcher and has
[14:08]written several books about prominent Nantucket women.
[14:11]And she actually is interviewing me at the book festival.
[14:15]And so I spoke to her one day and I went to a Mariah Mitchell Association
[14:20]and spoke to Jason Finger, the head of that.
[14:23]So I was really busy and it was just those bad two hours.
[14:26]The good thing about what I found on the fire was someone had self-published
[14:32]an entire history of the fire and had done all that first person, like,
[14:37]accounting and like red newspaper articles and gone through archives and
[14:41]placed everybody, you know, in town at different points in the fire so that I
[14:47]could use all of that and did not have to do very much old musty,
[14:52]creaky research interesting.
[14:55]And for people who aren't familiar with the fire, can you give like the basics of it?
[15:00]Yeah, I don't want to ruin it too much, but I will say that what I do in the book
[15:05]is I count down to the fire, which was an idea that someone in my class
[15:10]I love that by the way, that was very cool.
[15:12]Like one week to the fire, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[15:14]Yeah, because you're like building suspense and exactly.
[15:17]So I like stories like that.
[15:19]Like I watched Titanic again.
[15:21]I made my daughter, my daughter was like, I'm never getting on a boat.
[15:23]It was like the perfect storm.
[15:25]All the disaster films because we have the dramatic irony is we as viewers or
[15:31]readers know this event is coming and people in the story do not.
[15:35]I love that tension and it's sort of highlighted that.
[15:38]But at some point, you know, a week after the book opens, a fire breaks down in
[15:43]town and because of several things that happen, it spreads quickly and it goes
[15:48]in directions that they could not have predicted.
[15:51]And they tried all the things they tried earlier.
[15:55]There were two other great fires, neither one as great as this one.
[15:59]And they tried things like blowing up a house between, you know, two others
[16:05]because the idea was if there's nothing for the fire to catch onto, then it will
[16:11]stop.
[16:12]It will die out and it was called a fire break and that was done.
[16:16]I believe also in Boston and that was kind of like the technology at the time.
[16:20]Let's blow up a house to save the rest of the block kind of a thing.
[16:24]That didn't really work.
[16:26]So it's, you know, many hours of people running through town and trying to
[16:31]save the people and the things that they care about the most.
[16:35]And then you'll see what happens also after the fire.
[16:39]Love it.
[16:40]This is going to sound like such a privileged conversation.
[16:43]But I've been going to the Hamptons since 1979 and you've been going to
[16:46]anti-Hits since 1978, I've seen like a bazillion changes to the community and the
[16:52]commerce and just so much from when I used to go when it was like potato fields all around
[16:57]the houses and all that stuff.
[16:59]What have you seen shift in all of your time going in and taking like what do you happy
[17:03]about or not so happy about and like what has that been like sort of having a first
[17:09]person view of that shifting tide, if you will?
[17:12]Yeah, I will say that my parents, so in 78 we started going in 83.
[17:19]My parents became back from camp.
[17:20]My brother and I and we were getting ready for our chipton and tuck in and my parents said.
[17:25]And actually you and I need to talk about this at some point.
[17:27]My parents said we're getting divorced.
[17:29]But and I know you're family from reading your memoir.
[17:33]Oh, thank you.
[17:34]You're, you know, childhood story too.
[17:37]We're getting divorced, but we're still going to nan tuck it as a family because it will always
[17:41]be we will always be a family and that is where we will always be a family.
[17:46]So yes, very interesting.
[17:49]They never then bought anything because they divorced.
[17:52]My aunt and uncle divorced, the family just kept reconfiguring.
[17:56]So while I've gone there every summer, it's in some, you know, I just have to get back there
[18:03]for a weekend or a week or with my kids and with grandparents, but, you know, different houses
[18:09]where I'm walking back and forth across the street from running at one rental house to the
[18:13]other and still feeling like a childhood divorce.
[18:16]And so I don't, the changes I've seen have been in terms of really how many people come to
[18:23]the island now and in particular post COVID because people were not going farther away.
[18:31]They weren't going to Europe and they were like, oh, nan tuck it's exotic.
[18:35]I've never been there.
[18:36]And suddenly everybody showed up.
[18:39]So now it's very hard to get reservations at restaurants.
[18:43]I cannot get my car on the ferry the past two years, even though I'm up at five a.m.
[18:48]to press the buttons and the system shuts down and then, you know, it's a mess.
[18:54]So for me, I find that it's still about going to beaches, packing lunches in the morning
[19:01]peanut butter and jelly on a, you know, warm Portuguese roll that I got that morning
[19:06]at the nan tuck a big shop, packing up sandwiches, who likes, you know, peanut butter,
[19:12]chunky peanut butter with this kind of jelly and this kind of that, packing up the car and spending
[19:16]the day on the beach.
[19:17]So I try to keep it as, you know, simple and pristine and like the old days as possible because I'm
[19:25]only there for a week or two, but certainly big, big yachts, big houses, lots of influx of money
[19:33]and people and try to keep it, try to stay away from that as much as possible.
[19:38]Wow.
[19:39]Yeah, influx of people for sure.
[19:42]They have to do so really.
[19:44]Yeah, but I feel like Nantucket has maintained so much of its charm.
[19:48]And some of those like independent stores more so than like East Hampton, which is now
[19:53]become a lot of chain stores and sort of like an outdoor mall, which is such a shame.
[19:57]But, oh, yeah, that's a good point because-
[20:00]Nantucket in the late 80s, I think,
[20:03]or early 90s kind of came up with this idea
[20:06]of the historical preservation society
[20:09]to maintain the look and feel of the homes
[20:11]and to decide who could come and open a shop.
[20:14]So besides from like Veronica Beard and Ralph Lauren's store,
[20:20]there are no traffic lights, there's no McDonald's,
[20:23]there's no big commercial stores or chain stores
[20:27]and all the homes outside of town are gray,
[20:31]shingled with white trim,
[20:33]and you only can have 10 different colors
[20:35]you could paint your front door,
[20:37]historic Nantucket colors,
[20:39]you can get them at marine home.
[20:41]Well.
[20:42]And so they really,
[20:43]and also the land preservation trust buys up land
[20:49]if you buy an acre, they buy an acre.
[20:52]So the island will never get over grown.
[20:55]People are knocking small things down
[20:57]and putting up big things,
[20:58]but still need to make sure they look
[21:00]a certain way in past certain roles.
[21:01]So they're trying as much as possible
[21:03]to keep that old feeling.
[21:06]Do they have height requirements too?
[21:08]Like a camping certain height and all that you have.
[21:10]You're in LA, there's this neighborhood
[21:12]where somebody has built like a secret third floor
[21:16]and like the talk of the town, you know,
[21:18]because it's like just a little too high
[21:20]and now the people haven't moved in
[21:22]and I'm like, how can these people even move in?
[21:23]You know, like everyone hates them already.
[21:26]So yeah, yeah, there was,
[21:27]I read the Nantucket current,
[21:29]which is the newsletter that comes
[21:30]like three times a week in email.
[21:32]Like some people read the New York Times play.
[21:35]I'm so into it, but there's a story about the back
[21:38]of someone's house having much more modern
[21:40]like very contemporary from the back,
[21:42]but it's not visible to anybody, but then there were people
[21:47]who were saying there is a path and I do pass by
[21:49]and I am upset by one of my guys.
[21:51]I'm on the path and then they had to take pictures
[21:54]and she said, oh my goodness, that is so funny.
[21:57]That is, that's just crazy.
[21:58]Oh my goodness.
[22:00]So when you're creating,
[22:02]when you were creating these characters
[22:05]and obviously based on like how did you pick
[22:08]which families to spotlight,
[22:10]like which characters are in the family?
[22:12]Like how did you dive in?
[22:13]So I knew once I had the fire
[22:17]and I watched Titanic a million times,
[22:19]I was like, well, nobody cares.
[22:20]I'm not so scared about the people.
[22:21]So who am I populating this with?
[22:23]And the first person I came up with was a whaler's wife
[22:27]because that was what was known to me
[22:29]having done little research.
[22:31]And so I created a Liza Macy first.
[22:34]I picked one of those 10 founding names
[22:37]and just attached a Liza as an old-fashioned
[22:40]he sounding name, but meanwhile,
[22:42]I got a call the other day from a guy who was like,
[22:45]hi, I found your number on the internet
[22:47]and I was like, this cannot, this is not gonna be good,
[22:51]but I'm listening and he said,
[22:53]and I'm a descendant of a Liza Macy.
[22:56]Oh, no.
[22:57]And Lina, I'm wondering if your Macy Liza Macy
[23:01]is our Liza Macy and I laughed
[23:04]and I said, no, I just pulled the name.
[23:06]He said, we thought so based on what's happening
[23:08]in your book and our Liza had a son
[23:11]who found Macy's department store.
[23:14]So and I only, my Liza Macy has only daughters.
[23:18]So yeah, but then other Macy's are coming out of the woodwork too.
[23:22]There's a woman who invited me to Minnesota
[23:26]to see her genealogical tree of Macy's.
[23:30]So I'm gonna put them in touch.
[23:33]Good.
[23:34]Yes, yeah.
[23:35]So Liza was first, she's like a desperate housewife.
[23:39]She's alone most of the time, let's say,
[23:43]of her 20-year marriage,
[23:44]she's ever been on land with her husband
[23:47]for who are three years total.
[23:50]And then she just gets a letter from him saying
[23:54]that he's not coming back to Nantucket as planned.
[23:58]So she's also angry with him, she's out of money,
[24:01]she's lonely, she's not her best self
[24:03]when we first meet her.
[24:05]And then I thought who would be a good balance to that,
[24:09]a good counter.
[24:11]And I thought of Mariah Mitchell,
[24:13]who is a real person.
[24:15]She's my only main character who is based on a historically
[24:19]accurate person that is her name.
[24:21]And it's hard because it's M-A-R-I-A.
[24:23]And so I know people are gonna read it as Maria.
[24:27]I tried to cue that someone calls to her and says
[24:30]like in an old Boston accent, Mariah, you know.
[24:33]And it's like you can hear it.
[24:35]But Mariah Mitchell was the first female librarian in America.
[24:41]You can only have happened on Nantucket
[24:43]because I think a man would have taken that job
[24:45]anywhere else in the country, but many men were away.
[24:48]She's very bright, she studied science,
[24:51]she became an astronomer, there's a whole,
[24:55]she taught a basser where there's an observatory in her name,
[24:58]there's an observatory in her name on Nantucket.
[25:01]And so she's a woman of science,
[25:04]she's independent, she never married,
[25:08]she makes her own money.
[25:09]So I thought that was a good balance to Mariah.
[25:13]I mean, to Eliza, now I'm getting old.
[25:16]Use, but the thing about Mariah was growing up.
[25:20]Like I would walk into the library
[25:22]and see this painting of her on the wall.
[25:24]And she did not look fun and friendly.
[25:26]And like I needed to shake off that perception of her
[25:30]as like this matron, like librarian who would, you know,
[25:34]get mad at you for whispering in the,
[25:36]or bending the page of the book
[25:38]and make her more interesting and make her my own.
[25:42]So once I did that, I was really happy with her.
[25:44]And then I read about this entire free-born black community
[25:50]that was prospering on Nantucket at the same time,
[25:53]living sort of parallel to the white community.
[25:56]The most integrated place in America were whaling ships.
[26:00]They did not care what the color of your skin was,
[26:03]where you were from, anything about you,
[26:06]except if you could pull your weight on a vessel.
[26:09]And if you could work hard and make that money, they loved you.
[26:12]And so it was possible for people of color
[26:17]to do really well at whaling.
[26:19]And so black captains of color would come back wealthy
[26:23]and set of businesses and shops
[26:26]and schools and educate their kids.
[26:29]And so I based Meg on one or two of those women
[26:33]from history who took the entrance exam for the high school,
[26:37]but did not pass.
[26:38]I mean, did pass, but could not be allowed into the high school
[26:41]because it was only for white kids.
[26:44]She now has a child of her own and one on the way
[26:46]and wants something better for her children
[26:49]as well as her own business with her husband.
[26:52]And that's how I came up with the three of them.
[26:56]So interesting.
[26:57]Oh, I guess.
[26:58]So cool.
[26:59]This literally inspires me to be like,
[27:01]I wonder what the backstory of such and such a person
[27:05]in that portrait?
[27:07]Because it's so easy to walk past all of the history
[27:10]or like all the benches in Central Park.
[27:12]And just all of those are stories with so much rich history.
[27:15]And I don't know.
[27:16]I'm like, if I could do a historical level.
[27:19]I don't know.
[27:20]Yeah, it was interesting.
[27:22]And also there's something that we know about Mariah
[27:26]that happened during that time that left us
[27:28]with very little about her, which gave me as a novelist
[27:32]the chance to make it up.
[27:34]So that was really fun.
[27:35]So it wasn't just doing the research.
[27:39]But yeah, you forget that there are all of these things
[27:43]that happened before and that people are complicated.
[27:48]And me and an angry and all of that,
[27:50]not just like, do gooders with a name on a bench.
[27:53]Yeah.
[27:54]And 40 months of a husband traveling back then
[27:58]is sort of like how I feel about my husband being away
[28:01]for like two weeks.
[28:02]I mean, I'm like, really?
[28:03]Two weeks?
[28:04]And they're like, 40 months?
[28:05]OK.
[28:06]Yeah.
[28:06]Like, oh my god.
[28:08]And that's what my husband is always in one of my novels.
[28:12]In the last one, it starts with this woman
[28:14]who's husband died suddenly.
[28:15]So so Brett was like, well, I guess in this one,
[28:19]at least the husband is alive even if he's off at sea all the time.
[28:23]And she's mad at him.
[28:26]She's not dead.
[28:27]But Brett moved to Rhode Island.
[28:29]He got a job here.
[28:31]We were still in New York.
[28:33]We were in Skarsdale.
[28:34]And he was looking for a job for two years.
[28:36]And it was at the point where people were talking about us
[28:39]and told me after, like, how can you stay in Skarsdale?
[28:42]Your husband hasn't worked for two years.
[28:44]And I was like, yeah, it's pretty hard.
[28:46]Like, you know, we're doing what we can.
[28:48]And he got a job in Rhode Island, which
[28:51]is where he's from.
[28:52]And a friend reached out about a job at CBS.
[28:56]And I said, OK, go interview.
[28:58]And of course, he got the job.
[29:01]And I got a job in New York teaching at the same time.
[29:04]So for a year, we lived separately.
[29:06]And I worked full time.
[29:08]And I had a third and sixth grader and no child care
[29:10]lined up.
[29:11]And I was out of the house before they got on the bus.
[29:14]And things got complicated.
[29:15]And I did feel lonely.
[29:17]And I did feel sort of like I was in this marriage
[29:19]with a person who was doing something to help us,
[29:21]but wasn't physically present when I needed him
[29:24]to be in the room doing this or that.
[29:27]And that helped me create a lot of that.
[29:30]I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that.
[29:33]Julie, congratulations.
[29:34]So exciting.
[29:35]Daughters of Nantucket.
[29:36]So many fun events coming up.
[29:38]I'm sure they're all on your website or Instagram, right?
[29:41]Absolutely.
[29:42]OK.
[29:43]Thank you so much for coming on.
[29:45]And congratulations.
[29:47]Thanks, Ruby.
[29:48]OK, take care.
[29:49]Bye.
[29:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[29:53]Have Time to Read Books.
[29:54]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[29:57]at the VONs, and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:00]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com
[30:02]and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:04]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:06]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[30:09]for the Sound Editing.
[30:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:12]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.