Episode 90: Kimberly Brock, author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare
Kimberly Brock shares the inspiration behind The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, a novel described as “complex, compelling, and beautifully crafted” by William Kent Kreuger, New York Times bestselling author.
In this episode Kimberly tells us what caused her to cry during her research phase, when I asked her for her best advice for her fellow authors she gave the most accurate description of what it is like to be a writer that I’ve ever heard, and she gives a long list of her must-read, favorite books.
Books Mentioned:
The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare by Kimberly Brock (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
In the Keep of Time by Margaret J. Anderson (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Beale Hurston (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Ashley Hasty 0:00
Kimberly, thank you so much for joining me with you. I'm so excited for our listeners to hear all about the last book of Eleanor dare. As Patti Callahan said from its haunting first line, the last book of Eleanor, Derek transports the reader to a mysterious land time and family. So I want to dive right into the book. Can you start by telling our listeners what it's about? First, I will tell you that this is the first time I have talked about this book to readers that if I said the words last colony, somebody else would come up with a great idea and do it faster than me. So it's so weird to be like, Okay, now tell us about it. And I'm like,
Kimberly Brock 0:42
so I'm actually going to read something to you. Because not practiced yet. The book tells the story of Alice Young, a war widow in the last days of World War Two, and her 13 year old daughter pin. They're struggling to reimagine a world at peace. And they returned to a pre revolutionary home, south of Savannah, Georgia. There Alison pan, recover, lost faith lost loved, and an antiquarian book full of secret wisdom. Most importantly, it contains the dreams of the women from whom they descended women with hair that smells of Evergrey and who always find their way home, the story, the books, heart, Eleanor's tale, ties Alison pin, to the oldest American mystery, the fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke years ago, I was inspired. When I learned the dare stones, a collection of engraved rocks that emerged at the height of the Great Depression purported to solve the fate of The Last Colony. The first of these stones appears to be a message from Eleanor white, their daughter of the colonies, Governor, a young mother and widow, who disappeared from history, a woman whose story has gone untold. And I began to wonder what it meant to live when you and all you've known were lost. And what kind of mark Eleanor would have wanted mostly behind, I began to imagine the story, she would have told her daughter, the larger legacy of that stone before it was ever found. What came to me was a story for all of us a family story, the fable, of how to make a way forward as Alison Penn discover a tale of curious girls of dreams, paths from mothers to daughters of imagining a life bigger than the one imagined for us, and daring to live the mystery, most of all, because stones remember, but stories teach us how to live. I have a vague memory of it. I really liked history growing up, because my dad was great about telling us family stories, and we had this wall. So I felt like I lived in history, you know, things that came before are always important to me. And on this wall, we had family photographs that went back to and three generations back to 10 types. And he could trace them and say this is this person. And this is this person. And this is this person, and everybody that ever visited my house had to stand and look at that. And so I think the idea of a group of people that that came and then just disappeared. Of course, that was something that like I was obsessed with as a kid because I want to know, who were they where did they go? So yeah, I do remember that. But what inspired me for this book was just an accident. I grew up in North Georgia, I've lived here most of my life. And I knew nothing about the history, this obscure strange history of the death of stones that were found in the late 30s, early 40s, right after the depression, and they are housed in a college in North Georgia. And they're supposedly, at least the first one they've never been able to prove or disprove is an inscription that was written by Eleanor white there, who survived a massacre and left this big rock with an inscription. And it was said, I think 19 Let's see, it would have been 1587. And then not to 37 when the rock was found. And so I when I learned about that, I was like, How do I know that these things exist? And it was huge. It was all in the papers. And you know, everybody that was anybody came in, study them and try to decide if they were real. And then it was all dismissed as a hoax. And I think the college was embarrassed, but like I said, they never could prove. So I got in my car, and I wrote it to the college because you can ask to go and see them. They had them in an Archigram. And I knew I was intrigued. But what I didn't expect was that I stood there and I looked at it the first one and I cried and I thought what if it's real
Oh, here's this woman has left this message, which is essentially a tombstone, a memorial for her family. Maybe for her life, I don't know that she would have believed she would have ever been found. And we couldn't decide what it was. So we just put it in a case and forgot about it. And I thought another part of me didn't care if it was real, because somebody had taken the time to write a story for her. And the only thing that young girl probably ever wanted in a young mother would have been to be remembered.
So I wrote a story
Ashley Hasty 5:37
That is beautiful. I absolutely love that. And I feel like I'm having that same feeling of how did I not know about this that you had? I'm really excited that this is bringing that to life. So I want to talk a little bit more about your research. Process. Research, of course, is a very important part of writing historical fiction. So could you tell us a bit about your research process, were there any particular sources you found specially useful or interesting, or anything that you wanted to include, but didn't fit the story for one reason or another?
Kimberly Brock 6:11
Oh, so many things, it's so easy to get bogged down in all of the minutia and the detail, because you fall in love, you become obsessed with whatever it is that you're learning about. And you want to tell every single thing, and you lose your way easily. If you can't kind of weed out what's important to the, your fictional people. For me, um, first of all, I am not a historian, not a historian. I have issues with math, like diagnosed issues with math. And I chose to go two timelines and 16 generations of women. So I'm insane. First of all, that's my research process. Secondly, I sort of just go at it from every direction. I know I was the internet crazy. Looking at anything I could find about the deer Stones, The Last Colony, there's not much we don't 11. So it was tricky. I was trying to find things that I found three sources that I really liked. And then I intentionally ignored a lot of things. Because I wanted it to be fiction. I didn't want it to rely entirely on what I could find now, because the people in my story exist in the 1940s. So there would have been a lot less that they would have known or have access to. So I pasted together a hope in a way that isn't extremely historically heavy. Because I write fiction, I made a lot up. It was great. But I can show you. The first book that I found is called searching for Virginia Dare. It's by a North Carolina author named Marjorie Hudson. And it's memoir, and she talks about Virginia Dare who is documented historically, as the first English child born in the colonies, that's what they say. So that's what we go with. That's the story we have. And Virginia is actually mentioned in the first dare stone as having died in the massacre. So she doesn't survive along with Eleanor according to the stone. But this book is the author really talks about her own female journey in life and as as a mother and a woman. And that appealed to me. Like that was where I was coming from when I wrote this book, that is food. That's the dare stone, and he has theories about that stone and I thought it was interesting, and he really gave me some perspective on the lack of history about him or her at all. Which you know, I was like, Okay, so who was this person who was Eleanor dare before she disappeared before she ever got on a boat, pregnant and newly married and suddenly here and there's nothing her father was a miniature as he painted portraits, and there are no pictures of Eleanor anywhere. And I was like, dang it. I was you know, it was great for a fiction writer to be able to come from that and think about it. There was one more book called last rocks. David De Vere, I think is his name, not sure how to say it. And it's another one about the stones themselves and about the colony and what we know and don't know. And it's all theory, you know, some things we know some things are documented and letters in history that we have, but so much of it is literally just gone. And in particular, those women are gone. There.Stories are not in there. They shouldn't get to ride them. Or somebody helped her write hers on a stone. And I thought it's pretty storm. Even on a stone, it's we're still don't know about it as women's history that says a lot.
Ashley Hasty 10:18
I think in some ways as a fiction writer, were you happy that there wasn't a lot of history known so that you could make your own imagine? Or did you wish that there was more,
Kimberly Brock 10:31
you would think that I would have been thrilled. And instead, I wrote an entire manuscript, I made it all up in my head, what I thought had happened to Eleanor, but I didn't put it on the page. And I turn this book into my agent. And she said, so this is awesome. Where's the wrist. And it took her months to convince me to tip toe into it, even though I already knew it. And I mean, I'm filled like, you know, those yellow notepads, I love to write handwrite. A lot of my prewriting is done that way, I fill them up, and had like four or five of them with family histories and what had happened to Eleanor and where she went, and I did not know how to speak for her. I could speak for the women that I had written in the 1940s for Alice or daughter pin, because they were mine. But somehow, I really hesitated about speaking for Eleanor, and I felt guilty that I wasn't because I felt like that was the whole point. And I couldn't find my way to that. And I woke up literally like 2am One night, and I could hear it. I could hear it. And I realized I wasn't what I was trying to do with this book was not to tell the truth wasn't about the truth. I wasn't interested in the truth, the facts, I wanted to tell story, I wanted to tell a story that the girls that came after her could carry and understand and live from, and I realized that I was telling a mother's story, a mother storyteller daughter. And so Eleanor's tale is written that way, as Alice's mother would have told it to her. And as she's written it in the book, and then I'll leave it up to the reader to decide, you know, what you need to hear. I also struggle with that in my own writing about because I'm a historian by education, inserting that fiction into real women or any real character. So it's interesting to hear you struggling with that too, giving her a voice, but that it did eventually come to you. I love that. Yeah, I hope I got it right, we'll see.
Ashley Hasty 12:56
This is your second published novel, you're being the river which an Amazon bestseller? What have you learned between writing and publishing your debut novel and your sophomore novel? Or what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Kimberly Brock 13:11
That you never are smart enough to write the book you're writing until it's done, I felt that way the entire time I was rotting river which and I would say, I just I don't think I'm good enough to rock this book. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know enough about what I'm writing about. I don't know what I'm trying to say. You're just you're you're in a battle with yourself and your subconscious. And when you finish it, and you sit back and undo what we're doing now, we start talking about it and other people talk about what they got when they read it and it becomes something outside of you. And you and all of a sudden you realize everything you learned while you were writing it and, and you also realize, oh, that's all about me. So you learn about yourself too. And and you learn you know the process of it always going to be the technical you can learn over and over again, you can have a system, but the process is always going to be if it's if you're writing, the way I write from my guts out, it's always going to be a war that you're in with yourself. I mean, you're self conscious about everything you're putting on the page. Your subconscious is keep keeping stuff back here that it doesn't want you to know you're working on. And I know that when I finished river which I felt a huge sense of accomplishment and a relief and I felt like I could skip off to target and have my nails done and never have to write anything else. I was totally satisfied for about 10 minutes and then you're doing the same thing again and you think why? Why am I doing this to myself, but I don't know What I'm doing, I can't write a book I don't. And I felt like that with this book from beginning to the end, that I just was never going to be good enough to finish it to write it. And I think I will always feel that way. And I think most writers I know will always feel that way. I'm proud of when it's done. And then I also look at it and think, I wish I had been smarter. When I started it, it would be so much better, you know, and so you write another one. That's why, I don't know,
Ashley Hasty 15:29
I think that's the most relatable description of writing I've ever heard that.
Kimberly Brock 15:38
It's, I don't know what it is about writers, but I'll tell you, I can't process life any other way. You know, the, the, you have to be able to tell the story of what you're going through, or what you're witnessing. And something about the riders, your brain has to tell the story from beginning to end, and you will go mad until you can do it. And I drive my husband nuts. We can't travel, we can't do anything without me saying, but why? Why are they why are they doing that? Why? Why are we eating this? Why does this look like that? And he's just like, can we not just be here? Can we not just be here? And that's just this is just how it is? No, always why why?
Ashley Hasty 16:35
In addition to writing novels, you're also the founder of tinderbox Writers Workshop, can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
Kimberly Brock 16:42
I think I'm trying to remember what year I actually did that I can tell you that my family was going through a crisis, I had friendships that were in crisis, and I kept walking through the world hearing women in their 30s and 40s. You know, I just be in the grocery store, wherever because I had small children at the time, and you know what you do, and I would hear women talking to one another. And I'm great eavesdropper, by the way, this is why I cannot work anywhere. But oh, but I would hear these women saying things like, they wish they were creative. I'm just not creative, or I don't have time we created, I don't even remember how to be creative. You know, I just do things every day for everybody else. Or when I sit down and try, I just I don't think I'm good enough. All of those things that just, it just sounded like I was hearing over and over and over again. And I was not writing at the time, because I couldn't tell my own story that I was living at the time from beginning to end. So I lay down at night. And I would go in that circle in my mind trying to come to a conclusion about things and I couldn't. And so I said to a friend, you know, I don't know how to do much. But I can make a space. And if you want to come and sit with me. And we'll do some writing. And I have a background in teaching and have a background in theater. And I worked with special needs who had severe special needs. So you know, I dabbled in reading a lot of brain science and things about creativity. And so I went and found this place here in my hometown. And this woman was wonderful. She was like I've been waiting for you. Here you go. And so I put a little ad, I made some postcards. And the day I came and sat down in that room. I thought nobody's going to show up. I'm just going to see her by myself and six other women showed up that I did not know. And we sat there and we told stories. And we did some creative writing. And we did some art, and we did some walks and became something else to one another. We found creative ways to express ourselves. Some cookbooks were written, some poetry was written. Some art was made. There was an art show with pottery and like quilts, and it went on and from there and it became a retreat. I was invited. Orly Connick, I love invited me to come and teach the four hour workshop that I do on creativity. For the first women's fiction writers retreats, and I had not been anywhere in probably two years. Now had I Twitch the whole weekend, right? This is what I got. It's all I got. But if you want to tell stories, we'll do it. And we danced and we made art and we told stories, and somebody stood up and saying there was some tears feels great. That's what tinderbox is. It became a retreat. I did that for a little bit that sprang from a relationship with another writer at 30. Riku had a place and in South Carolina on the beach. And so we did some retreats there. I did, one can't remember I was going to do one at a lake here in North Georgia. And then we had the pandemic. So it's been two years since I've done anything, and in the interim, have published a book. So we'll see, I would like to start back. But we'll see, you mentioned that you also had a background in theater and teaching, I sort of stumbled into it. I was actually a dancer when I was a little girl, and then into middle school. And I really wanted to teach ballet, I didn't have dreams of like becoming like any kind of great dancer, but I wanted to teach it because I wanted to do it all the time. But I have severe scoliosis, and I wore back brace for several years. And then I had a massive spinal fusion when I was 16. And that was kind of that was it for ballet. And I ended up doing a play in high school, and then got a scholarship for theater in college. And I was a double major because I thought I wanted to teach drama. And I thought I was going to teach upper level drama and a director to children's play. So I got my degree in elementary education. And I wound up teaching at a private school in Washington State right after we got married. And the thing is, is that throughout all of it, I know when I decided I wanted to be a writer, without really knowing that's what I was deciding, like, I never thought that I would be published. But I knew I knew I was a storyteller. And I can remember, I was always in trouble. When I was little for talks too much won't stay in your seat, right and I wasn't being bad I was trying to teach. I was going to other people's desks trying to teach trying to help I was the helper but I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. And I was running my mouth. So I can remember going into the library and the town where I grew up. And it was this big antebellum home that they had turned into a library. And I was just, I looked around, and I saw those books. And I thought, This is how you talk too much. And you don't get in trouble. You write a book, you can say whatever you want. So going from ballet, whereas you're expressing a story, it's an artistic, creative way to express a story. Another way to do it without talking too much and being in trouble. Then theater, they give you the words in this day do you can say it right there from everybody you're not talking to you about you're not in trouble, you can be out of your seat, then the teaching thing, you know, I was working with those kids who were you had to really be creative, but how you presented your material and, and what worked for them. And I did the first play that the children's school had done with those kids was always storytelling behind it all it was always storytelling. I you know, like everybody else. I wrote really horrible poetry when I was a kid and got some prizes for it. And I wrote my first book chapter book in fourth grade for the language arts fair, my mom tatted up. This called, it came on the scent of Jasmine. It wasn't new. It was just that by the time somebody said, Hey, you know, you should write a short story. It was like a new idea. Okay, I didn't realize, well, maybe that's something I could actually do that out of that relationship came my first publication, that short story, and then the first book. So it's I don't think for I don't know, any writer that will ever say to you, I just decided I was gonna sit down and write a book when I was 23. There's it there's always this if you can trace it back to the understanding that that is how you process your world. There's a beginning there's a middle, there's an end. And usually for women, it's a circle, and you get to the end, it starts over again. So women's fiction.
Ashley Hasty 24:19
Most writers and probably all writers started out with a love of reading first. Tell us a bit about your reading world. What do you like to read? What books would you recommend?
Kimberly Brock 24:30
I want you to know, I know you're gonna ask me this. I've got like 30 books stacked up right here on my desk. And I hate it because I can't tell them all to you. I just remember that is that's the only place I wanted to be. And the playground. Because I made up stories on the playground. I got in trouble with some of the stories I made up on the playground because I scared some of the kids. I can remember being in the library and my class leaving and my teacher having to come back and find me because I would still be in the library I didn't even notice people had left. Then I can remember little school library, my library and sneaking books in because I'd already read everything. So she was bringing me Victoria Holt in the eighth grade, like under the table. Here you go, that, you know can always continued for me. So early reading was important. There's this one book and I had to find this online. It's called in the keep of time, Scottish time travel started early for me. This is about a bunch of kids that go and stay with relatives in Scotland and there's something called a keep. And when they go inside, they travel through time. And I just read it over and over and over again. And I found this library book online and bought it. I was so excited a couple years ago. And of course, there's a key doesn't look at all like the cover of my book there does it? I love literary literary fiction. Okay, gibbons love her. Zara. Love her Lee Smith. Oh my god. lately. I can tell you I'm reading like I love Susanna. Curiously for her historical novels. I wish I could write like Susanna cures like for language, just kid I read I will pick up just kid and just read. Just read a sentence. Just read a paragraph. And, and I love Alice Hoffman. She has a small book called Blackbird house that I'm obsessed with. I read it every year, maybe more than once. A Patti Callahan surviving Savannah historical fiction was beautiful. citygml Johnson, the yellow wife, great historical fiction. This year though. The two well, Jessie Burton, Sarah Perry. Oh my god. I think early early when I was first trying to get my head around my own voice. I read Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani. And I cried. And I told my husband and said she knows me. I just know she knows me because she sounds like me. And that's kind of hard to find when you're really regional. I mean, I sound like this. I sound like many pearl. So trying to find somebody that that felt to me like I, I can do that. I can write a book with my voice and somebody in the larger world will want to read it. That was a big deal. The two that I read over and over right now are the swabs at Uluru. I don't even understand how she did it. And CRC, Madeline Miller CRC. I think I would die if I met either one of them. But you asked, so there you go.
Ashley Hasty 27:45
I'd like an author who can't end on any one book that there's another one that they want. That's perfect.
Kimberly Brock 27:52
Still stuck up here. I'm like, Who did I forget?
Ashley Hasty 27:55
And of course, I want to hear what you're working on. Can you tell us anything about your work in progress?
Kimberly Brock 28:00
I am really, I am like, it is hard to pry it out of me. I'm really I, my agent has just like literally yesterday, I sent something to her. And now I want to puke because it's out there in the world. But I can tell you, it's about ghost stories. It's another southern fiction. It's set on the Georgia coast. I like writing about the Georgia coast. And it may be the last one I'd set there for now. But it's been in the back of my brain and I I have I have multiple ideas, but they usually are around a long, long time before. One of them is the one that bubbles up. This one. I would say I've been thinking about for five or six years. So we'll see where it goes.
Ashley Hasty 28:47
Is this is this inspired by the scary stories you told on the playground?
Kimberly Brock 28:53
Um, maybe a little bit. I mean, yeah. I think those stories I have a theory that all stories are ghost stories. I think that that's what we think about it's a ghost is not necessarily a spirit so much. Is it? The haunting? Whatever haunts us? Yeah. So I think most of our stories if you're if you're not telling a story that haunts you, then though I'm not sure you're gonna stick with it to the end, you know? Yeah, I can see that. I also want to share how people can find you.
Ashley Hasty 29:32
So can you tell us where you hang out on social media and your website?
Kimberly Brock 29:36
I am on Facebook. I have a Facebook author page. Do you need the links? Are you good? I can add the links. Then. I really liked Instagram. I'm doing more Instagram. I'm on Twitter, but I'm not there as much. I tend toward the visual. I like the the images on Instagram. I'm on BookBub I'm on good reads all the places