Laurie Halse Anderson, a New York Times best-selling author, joined Monticello and the Virginia Festival of the Book Sunday to discuss her newest book, “Rebellion 1776.” In her talk, Anderson laid out her process for writing novels, which she said she hopes will allow young readers to connect with fictional characters from the 18th century and learn to enjoy history in the process. She also reflected on her takeaways after years of researching the American Revolutionary Period, as this year marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Anderson has written young adult novels set in Revolutionary America for more than 25 years, and four novels in historical fiction. They began with “Fever 1793,” published in September 2000, followed by the “Seeds of America” trilogy from 2008 to 2016. “Rebellion 1776” follows Elsbeth Culpepper, a 13-year-old whose father went missing during the Siege of Boston, seeking shelter and work in a wealthy household. Aside from her novels in historical fiction, Anderson also wrote “Speak,” a New York Times Bestseller about a young survivor of sexual assault. The discussion, hosted in celebration of Women’s History Month, was moderated by Jane Kamensky, former history professor at Harvard University.
Anderson explained that her inspiration for writing her new novel came while she was sick with COVID-19 during the 2020 pandemic. An episode of the HBO miniseries “John Adams” where the characters were vaccinated led her to research the history of the Smallpox epidemic in Boston in the summer of 1776. Anderson said her research painted a picture of a community “devastated” by mortal disease and that she saw parallels between the experiences of young people in Boston in 1776 and those grappling with the impacts of the pandemic in 2020.
“I just saw this smoking mirror [between the two],” Anderson said. “I knew our children today in the United States were going through a lot of the same stuff that I suspected the kids did back then.”
One technique Anderson said she employs to make her novel more relatable for young readers is to have the story revolve around the main character’s emotional adolescent experiences. One example Anderson pointed to was the argument the protagonist has with her father shortly before he goes missing for most of the book. She said the fact that individuals love their parents while being “incredibly frustrated with them” is a recognizable dynamic she sought to utilize in making the story relatable for younger readers.
“The human heart has not changed [and] will not change,” Anderson said. “Adolescence is still its own interesting time period … and you [also] had what we could consider to be very young people having adult responsibility.”
Citing a desire to write works of historical fiction where the characters “come alive,” Anderson explained her process for attempting to honor the accuracy of the setting in her work. She recounted cross-referencing primary sources of the siege in 1776 from wealthier citizens who watched from their rooftops as rebel forces surrounded the city with cannons.
Anderson also laid out some of the techniques she employed to make the setting immersive while keeping accuracy intact. She described consulting the Oxford English Dictionary to write dialogue for the characters that a resident of Boston in 1776 may have used, while using her “fictional license sparingly” to refrain from using phrases that would confuse readers. Anderson also explained that vivid sensory imagery can contribute to the immersiveness of a fictional historical narrative.
“I knew that the only hope that a historical book can succeed is if I make it very sensory,” Anderson said. “There’s always a gap between the story and the reader … I trust my reader to fill in that gap if I’ve given them the clues they need to bring it to life in their own imagination.”
Anderson also shared some of her own reflections after her decades of writing about the period, expressing her disbelief that the Revolutionary War was won by armies mostly consisting of poor young men, claiming that older men eventually went back to their families while “poor teens” carried the rest of the war effort out of support for ideas associated with the Revolution.
“I come from rural, northern New York State. I’ve … watched a couple generations of young [people] drop out of high school … to go into the military because that’s the only option that looks like it’s viable,” Anderson said. “Those are the people who won our revolution for us … we owe those working class kids our country.”
Reflecting back to a scene in her novel where Boston celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence July 18, Anderson said that as the 250th anniversary of the signing approaches, she hopes her work can serve as a reminder to readers that war is “really easy to start.” She argued that rarely do people who start wars think through the process of what happens in their aftermath, pointing to the celebratory scene as an example.
“I hope over the next seven years of the commemoration of the war, we begin to think about that moment where everything was possible,” Anderson said. “[About] the choices that were made, [to] be honest about them, and then reflect on … that document.”
One of the event’s organizers, Savannah Miles, assistant at the International Center for Jefferson Studies — the research division of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which owns and operates Monticello — said that the event is part of ongoing programming efforts to bring authors to Monticello to describe their love of history. Miles explained that as part of Anderson’s visit to Monticello, she met Anderson and gave her a tour of the historic site.
“I am a trained historian, and when I was younger I read her books,” Miles said. “I think it was a full circle moment for me to come and … meet her and actually get to spend time with her.”
Miles also expressed pride that she related with school-aged girls in the audience carrying copies of the novel and expressing an interest in history from Anderson’s work.
Monticello will also be hosting a “Declaration Book Club” in the buildup to July 4 semiquincentennial celebrations — a three-part series hosting authors on a variety of time periods in U.S. history for in-depth discussions on the document’s history, principles and “modern relevance.” The first meeting will take place April 9 at 2:00 p.m.
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