How did you research the historical events and characters in Four Sisters, All Queens? Did you visit any of the European sites your characters frequented?
Yes, I had visited London and Paris, in particular Westminster, Sainte-Chappelle, and Notre Dame Cathedral, and I went to Egypt to see where King Louis, Charles of Anjou, and Jean de Joinville were held prisoner in Mansoura as well as the beach at Damietta where they landed. Mostly, however I read Nancy Goldstone’s Four Queens, biographies of Eléonore, Blanche de Castille, St. Louis, Simon de Montfort, and Richard of Cornwall—even a biography of Marguerite written in French, which I translated very painstakingly into English! I read many books on medieval culture and studied online courses about the Church, medieval philosophy, and the high Middle Ages. I read the letters of the sisters available through the women’s Epistolae project online and books on the Crusades. I listened to medieval music and read about the troubadours. The thirteenth century was such a fascinating time, and one that hasn’t been written about as much as, say, the Tudor era. It enchants me.
Your first book, The Jewel of Medina, was about life with the Prophet Muhammad, as told by a wife. What did you learn from the experience? How was its sequel, The Sword of Medina, received?
I learned never to send a historical novel to a historian for an endorsement, for one thing! A University of Texas professor’s overwrought response to The Jewel of Medina caused my original publisher, Random House, to “indefinitely postpone” publishing the book and its sequel in 2008 for fear of retaliation from radical Muslims. Her remarks to the Wall Street Journal characterizing the novel as pornographic caused an uproar that resulted in the firebombing of my U.K. publisher’s home office, scaring him into canceling publication of my books. Ultimately, I found a U.S. publisher as well as publishers around the world.
I also learned that people believe what they want to believe, and I learned that A’isha lives not only in the pages of my books, but also within me. My challenge throughout the controversy—death threats, Islamophobic jeers, accusations, even body guards!—was to not be distracted by all the hype but to remain steadfast in my commitment to telling A’isha’s remarkable story. My books have inspired many thousands of readers, especially women and girls (including me), with her example of courage and strength.
The sequel, The Sword of Medina, was not controversial. It received much critical acclaim, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly and a silver medal in the Independent Publishers’ Awards. It tells of A’isha’s life when things got really interesting, after Muhammad’s death, when she was a political adviser to three caliphs and a military strategist who led troops in the first Islamic civil war. It tells, also, the story of her nemesis Ali, Muhammad’s cousin. Writing from alternating points of view—first A’isha’s, then Ali’s—stretched my limitations as a new author and gave my readers a more complex portrait of both characters, far beyond the A’isha and Ali you see in Jewel.
This novel is very different from your first. What drew you to medieval Europe from seventh-century Arabia?
As usual, it was the story. I read about Marguerite, Eléonore, Sanchia, and Beatrice in Nancy Goldstone’s biography Four Queens and felt unsatisfied when I reached the end. I wanted to know more about these fascinating sisters. What did they look like? What were their personalities like? I wanted to hear them speak, to eavesdrop on their conversations with their husbands, to feel their feelings and think their thoughts. I’d had the same experience when I’d first read about A’isha, the protagonist of The Jewel of Medina and The Sword of Medina. I felt inspired, then, to write a novel about them.
You describe yourself as an avid book lover. What are your top five, all-time favorite books?
Hilary Mantel’s brilliant Wolf Hall is my all-time favorite book, hands down. I adore Iris Murdoch, and love her book The Sea, the Sea. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth is the first, and only, book ever to make me cry. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. And, of course, Little Women, whose four sisters correspond so beautifully, in order, to the sisters in “Four Sisters, All Queens.”
Other books and authors I adore include Debra Magpie Earling’s haunting, beautifully written Perma Red. I also love the books of Eudora Welty—Southern like me, she was an amazing writer, especially her use of metaphor; Salman Rushdie (a genius); Ellen Gilchrist—The Annunciation was a huge influence on me in my twenties; Anne Tyler, Isabel Allende, Anne Patchett, Louise Erdrich, and Alice Hoffman, to name a few.
Your path to becoming a novelist was long—you’ve recalled wanting to write a novel since your early twenties, but didn’t begin writing until twenty years later. What inspired you to finally start writing?
Actually, I decided in the second grade that I would become a writer. I had a teacher who praised my poetry and stories and said to me, before the entire class, “If you ever become a published author, make sure to keep your name so that I know it’s you.”
I have written all my life. In school, as I mentioned, I wrote poems and short stories. When I was eighteen and still in college, I began reporting and writing for the Kinston, N.C., Free Press. I worked as a journalist at newspapers and for magazines for thirty years. All that work delayed my college degree, but I was determined to get one. In 2002, I was casting about for a topic for a story or novella to submit to the University of Montana’s Davidson Honors College for my honors thesis, and I ran across the interesting fact that the Muslim prophet Muhammad had a harem with twelve wives and concubines in all. This fascinated me, and as I read more I discovered A’isha, his youngest and favorite wife and the most famous and influential woman in Islam. I would have liked to know this feisty, witty, tender-hearted gal. I think we would have been friends. She’s long gone, though, so I wrote a novel about her, instead. Actually, I wrote two of them.
Do you have any advice to share with aspiring novelists?
1. The first draft, as Hemingway famously said, is always shit. Don’t let writing badly discourage you. Just keep going, finish, and then revise. In revision is where the real writing starts.
2. Read, read, read. Read everything you can, of the highest quality possible.
3. Don’t publish too soon. Find, and pay, a good freelance editor to critique your book, then revise again. Don’t be in a hurry. Be patient. Musicians study and practice for years before playing Carnegie Hall. Olympic athletes train hard before reaching their level of achievement. Writing novels takes exactly as much hard work and dedication.
4. Don’t give up. Be stubborn. Believe in yourself. If you write something truly good, someone will publish it.
5. Get a literary agent. Be prepared for this to take a year or more. Make sure your work is as good as it can be before you send it out. Expect rejection, and more rejection. Cry if you must, then get back up and query again. If your work is good, someone will represent you. A literary agent is the single most valuable asset to your career. I dedicated Four Sisters, All Queens to mine, and with good reason.
Your first career was in journalism and you continue to be a freelance reporter. How does your background in journalism impact your novel writing?
Writing for a living meant I wrote every single day, on deadline. As a result, I’m a prolific writer, and I never suffer from writer’s block. Journalism taught me to observe details; it gave me an ear for dialogue; it taught me how to do research and it gave me lots of experience working with editors. Also, reporters are usually the generators of their own story ideas. I’m such an idea person now that I will never run out of books to write.
When the four sisters are young, they talk about which historical queens they are most like. Is there a queen of the past you would compare yourself to? What traits do you share?
I’d be Eléonore, the second sister in Four Sisters, All Queens. Bold, outspoken, competitive, ambitious, devoted to her family, fanciful, interested in fashion, a lover of literature and a patron of the arts—these are the traits we share in common (many of which Eléonore also shares with Jo, the
second sister in Little Women). Unlike Eléonore, however, I’m a peacenik, while she seems not to have hesitated to send troops into battle. Indeed, she may have preferred war to negotiation. “Love is a verb.”
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