A Conversation With the Author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf

We are in the presence of greatness. Here, stopping in to Beyond Little House, is none other than Erin Blakemore. Why do I know that name? you’re thinking. Well, most likely it’s because Erin holds a distinction formerly attained by none other than Charles Ingalls himself.

She won the Spelling Bee.

Her winning word was “heinous,” which in no way describes her performance on that Saturday in July, the final day of LauraPalooza. Through round after round, she rocked. She also rocked her panel, “Loving Laura in a Lindsay Lohan World” (which also included author of the upcoming Wilder Life Wendy McClure and yours truly).

Now, Erin has written a book. It’s called The Heroine’s Bookshelf, and the subtitle is Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder. As of today, the book is yours to purchase. (I am so getting this book for my big-reading niece’s 17th birthday.) It’s already gotten some great press across the country. (On the last review be sure to click on the blue link to the graphic.)

I read The Heroine’s Bookshelf initially because it has a chapter on Laura, and, well, duh. But I kept on reading because I enjoyed the heck out of it. Erin’s that good of a writer. The way she shares the inner life of literary heroines like Louisa May Alcott, the Brontes, Margaret Mitchell, and yes, Laura Ingalls Wilder makes for some compelling reading. I haven’t even read any Zora Neale Hurston, and now I want to. As one reviewer put it, “Reading The Heroine’s Bookshelf feels like attending that dinner party you’ve always dreamed of, where your favorite authors and their literary creations sit around talking late into the night.”

We asked Erin to tell you all about it, and she graciously complied.

Q: How was the Heroine’s Bookshelf born?

A: I had an incredible agent but no book project (the first book proposal of mine he represented died on the conference room table). In late 2008, the publishing industry suffered through some terrible layoffs and we started emailing about what Pa and Laura (he’d been reading the Little House books to his kids at bedtime) would think of the recession to come. “Maybe there’s a book in here somewhere,” he said, offhand. We went from conversation to proposal to deal in less than six months.

Q: I like how the book is organized – with each “heroine” representing a particular character trait. How did that sort of organization reveal itself to you?

A: I knew I wanted each chapter to deal with an author/heroine pair, but I needed an organizing principle. Before long, I realized that each pair had a standout quality I associated with my ideal heroine. It seemed like a great way to organize what would otherwise have been pretty straight literary biography.

Q: What sort of readers will get the most out of The Heroine’s Bookshelf?

A: Anyone whose life has been changed by books. Don’t worry, you’re not required to be as crazy as I am.

Q: I actually have not read a couple of these books, but it made me want to read them. Was that your intention?

A: Absolutely! Friends always recommend books to friends, and I saw this book as a woman talking to her closest girlfriends about can’t-miss reads.

Q: The “heroines” in The Heroine’s Bookshelf are the characters. But are the authors “heroines” too?

A: Sometimes the authors’ lives are even more tantalizing than fiction! So many of the authors I profile lived in times when respectable women didn’t write at all, let alone make their living from the pen. I find it heroic that they managed to give us such beloved stories at all, let alone while doing things like arguing with prickly daughters, dealing with disintegrating marriages, or grieving the deaths of loved ones.

Q: You also zeroed in on a particular book in an author’s repertoire – for example, with Laura, you chose The Long Winter. Why a single book and not a collection, for her or anyone else?

A: From the beginning, I felt very strongly that I’d have to choose one heroine per author, which led to one book per author, too. It was partly a matter of space constraint, but I ended up being glad for the restriction. It kept me organized and focused and left something for my readers to discover.

Q: Which heroine resonated the most with you personally? Why?

A: I’m going to have to say Louisa May Alcott, who was as frenetic, sloppy, and restless as she was accomplished. Of all of the authors I covered, she felt the hardest to idolize, as much for her many flaws as for her very honest writing on things like work, family, and women’s rights.

Q: How big a Laura fan are you? What about her as a heroine made you think she was worthy of inclusion here?

A: As a child, I was known as “the girl in the bonnet” due to my insistence on wearing the prairie garb I’d forced my mother to make me to elementary school. That earns me some cred, right? I always felt like Laura belonged to me, even though I grew up on a suburban mesa far, far removed from the Big Slough.

As for her heroism, I admire Laura for her ability to hone in on what matters. That little glimpse into daily life…it’s just as precious to me as an adult as it was when I was an enthralled little girl.

Q: Maybe it’s me, but I saw quite a bit of similarities between Frances Hodgson Burnett and Rose Wilder Lane. For that matter, the Brontes and Louisa May Alcott were also quite morose and frustrated, as Rose was. Did you see that at all? Is Laura a different sort of heroine?

A: I’d say they’re all kin! It’s hard to separate Laura the author and Laura the heroine, or Rose and Laura for that matter. No matter their time period or background, all of the women I wrote about seemed to have a real capacity for working through tragedy and stressful life circumstances. Laura got started a bit later than many, but she certainly didn’t write the Little House books from a place of total serenity. To me, it’s important to take the bad with the good.

Q: How did you decide which heroines to include? Did you add in anyone you hadn’t thought of initially or did you have to leave anyone out?

A: Most of the heroines I chopped from the short list left because they didn’t have a fictitious counterpart, had life stories that significantly overlapped those I had already chosen for the book, or whose lives didn’t intersect those of their heroines in the right way. That excluded people like Anne Frank, Edith Wharton, Sylvia Plath, and Willa Cather. I got some incredible suggestions while I was in the process of finalizing my list, and ended up adding Zora Neale Hurston, whose work I was almost entirely unfamiliar with, and Harper Lee, whom I was afraid of including because her life has been so mysterious. I’m so glad I got to know both better…I feel they added a lot to the book.