Social status has not and will never fully go away. However, World War I’s catastrophic disruption on many levels changed the near monopoly that the wealthy class had on social status and land ownership in Europe and to a certain extent in the United States. Thirty-seven million people were killed or wounded, including great aristocratic leaders in society and those who would have filled their ranks. Political movements like Bolshevism put an end to whole aristocratic societies in Russia and its satellite states. Germany was bankrupted, prompting the fall of the aristocracy and the rise of Nazism. France, Belgium, Italy. All of Europe suffered enormously, as did the United States, first with the war and then with the Great Depression. To make matters worse, the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed fifty million to one hundred million of its victims. When this many people are wiped out—whether through an epidemic, invaders, bankruptcy, or a global war—power shifts. New opportunities are created for people who were previously prevented from moving upward, and societies find new ways of making meaning of these seismic shifts after the old ways are found to be insufficient.
5.Were there any writers, artists, or literary figures who inspired you as wrote this book?
Artists who inspired this work include authors W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, W. H. Auden, P. G. Wodehouse, Robert Graves, and Julian Fellowes (contemporary creator of Downton Abbey); painters John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer; and preachers Theodore Parker Ferris and Peter J. Gomes. Sadly, I didn’t read Seamus Heaney until after I had written the book. His work is exquisite and a touchstone for anyone who seeks to recover from deep trauma like that which many of the characters in this book endure.
6.What drew you to write your first novel about this time period and historical era?
As a young person, I was transfixed by the 1984 film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. I fell in love with the beautiful movie about a man traumatized by the Great War and his search for meaning in a world of elegance, violence, shattered dreams, and hope. I wanted to experience this world further through research and fiction writing.
7.Are there any lessons we can learn from the characters and/or events in the story?
The book puts the challenge in its first sentence: “Burial did not come easy…” How do we bury our dead so that we are not in turn buried with them? Put a different way, “How do I learn to live around the inevitable reality of pain and loss in life?” I like Copeland’s philosophy: hope, intimacy, delight are just as real as pain. This idea offers wonderful resilience in the face of a violent, broken world.
8.Did you always want to be a writer, or did you start off in a different career?
This novel took twenty-one years to come to fruition, so yes, I did have another career during that time! Professionally, I’m an innovation consultant and executive coach. I graduated with honors from Harvard Business School at the time the Internet was taking off and have had a front-row seat in this revolution. I love the exquisite thrill of creating new things that are good for society. I also love helping people become their best, most authentic selves. But I’ve always had the desire to write. To develop my skills, I had to overcome mixed messages about writing as a vocation and work hard at the craft, just like Copeland urges his students to do.
9.What are your favorite genres to read? What did you read while you were writing this book?
I am a curious person and read a broad range of materials. I love books in the areas of historical fiction, biography, military, political history, business, leadership, humor, and spirituality. We used to call such broad reading lists “renaissance,” but now we call it “unfocused.” (Personally, I like the former term better!)
What did I read over the two decades of writing The End of Innocence? Oh gosh, a lot. Some books were serious chest crushers: Brothers, Rivals, Victors, Jonathan W. Jordan’s triple biography of Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley; Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History; and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age to name a few. On the other end of the spectrum were books that put a smile on my face in tough times. My favorite collection of books is a shelf of biographies about famous women I call “women with bigger problems than me.” They are my favorite queens, princesses, pope’s daughters, missionaries who changed their world while in gorgeous gowns, all without the aid of modern technology. That’s fun and inspiring.
10.How would you describe your writing style in one word?
Gracious. I try to be mindful, truthful, and caring when describing imperfect people doing their best to navigate the confusing, complex world around them.
11.Are any of your characters inspired by the people around you?
Fiction is a lens into how I understand the world. Inevitably the people who impact me will be represented in my work. One character I love is my narrator! That voice is Peter J. Gomes, the brilliant Harvard preacher whose sermon called “The Courage to Remember” inspired the novel. It helps that he sounded a lot like Jane Austen, who has had a remarkable run as a novelist!
Acknowledgments
I offer deep thanks to the team at Sourcebooks. I especially thank my editor, Stephanie Bowen, for her insight, care, commitment, and humor. She not only understood what I was trying to say in this novel, but also made it much better. And, as fate would have it, she is a true-blood New England native from Concord, Massachusetts, with a strong history background and thus also provided great contributions to the descriptions of the New England people and places. She is a gift to an artist’s craft.
I am equally indebted to DuPree Miller & Associates. I especially thank my agent, Lacy Lynch, for her wisdom, good-naturedness, encouragement, talent, and energy. She is a force of nature, and one of its very best.
I thank Derek Britt and Courtney Williams, who brought this story to the attention of DuPree Miller & Associates, and Rex Miller who brought it to their attention.
I thank Jack Getman, Nancy McMillen, and Jan McInroy for their generosity in helping bring this book to life, especially at its early stages. I thank the librarians at Harvard University, the Imperial War Museum, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I truly appreciate military historian Jonathan Jordan’s careful review and comments regarding World War I military matters.
My partner, Theodore Ryan, told me his favorite definition of love, taught to him by the beloved professor James Loder. Love is “the unconditional delight in the particularities of the other.” I thank all those in my life with whom I’ve shared such delight. I especially thank Theodore, my sons Alex and Michael, my mother (Sally), my late father, my family, and my friends who have journeyed with me. Thank you for being you.
Finally, I would like to publicly thank Reverend Gomes for what his work meant for me as I wrote this book. I enjoyed reading his sermons long past my graduation from Harvard. I use my last few words here to reprint a portion of a benediction to Harvard seniors he delivered, applicable to us all:
Go out there, then, with courage, grace, and imagination. We give you our love—a word not used much around here, and saved for your very last moments—and we commend you to the love of one another and to the greater love of a loving God. This now, at last, is the best that we can do for you. This is the best that there is and it is yours, so go for it, for God’s sake, and for your own. Amen.
Allegra Jordan
Chapel Hill, NC 2014
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A percentage of royalties goes to support the work of the Epiphany School, a tuition-free school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The school was cofounded by John H. Finley IV, whose own grandfather mentored a generation of Harvard students by focusing on the good in people and urging them to excellence.
About the Author
Photo by Rex Miller
Allegra Jordan grew up in rural Alabama in the wake of the civil rights movement. She is an honors graduate of Harvard Business School and Samford Univ
ersity. Jordan has written numerous articles on leadership and innovation and bestselling cases for Harvard, and she published an award-winning magazine for the University of Texas School of Law. She directed marketing for USAToday.com, where readership went from 10,000 readers a month to 8.2 million. She was named a top executive under age forty in both Austin, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama, and a rising star by TIME magazine. She serves on the board of the Southern Documentary Fund and is the founder of Innovation Abbey. The End of Innocence is her first novel.
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