Today I have a fabulous interview with Cynthis Neale, author of the historical fiction novel Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York

Please tell us a little about 'Norah' and where you got your inspiration for writing this novel.

The inspiration for Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York started when she was a child of thirteen in my first children’s novel, The Irish Dresser, A Story of Hope During The Great Hunger (An Gorta Mor, 1845-1850). As a writer, The Great Hunger (Irish Famine) grabbed me by the heart and wouldn’t let go. The only knowledge I had about the Irish Famine was from a high school history book, “Over a million people perished in Ireland from the loss of the potato crop.” After I wrote a short play in 1997 about The Great Hunger and was researching for the first novel, people would asked me, “Why did the Irish only eat potatoes?” OMG! Americans and even Irish-Americans did not know this history. Honestly, I hadn’t known much, either. John Walters writes, “Surveys, I’m told, indicate that the Irish people do not want to hear about the Famine. But it is also precisely why the subject must be talked about until we remember the things we never knew.” As a writer, I knew this was a subject that would become the vehicle for a story. There was no number tattooed on the Irish skin, but the marking of cultural shame was evident. Tom Hayden writes in Irish Hunger, “There are unmarked famine graves in all of us.”
In 1997, I was dancing at an Irish pub one evening and looked up at the well-known poster titled, Irish Dresser. It was a photograph of an nineteenth-century Irish dresser (comparable to a china cabinet). As I danced, I imagined a young girl suffering from hunger and tragedy, but dreaming of a better life when she climbed inside this place of refuge, her hiding place, and place of hope. Norah McCabe eventually travels across the sea to America hidden away in this dresser. After I wrote the first book and found a publisher, I thought I was finished telling her story. But I couldn’t leave her on the shores of America and I also learned through genealogical research that there was a real Norah McCabe who had come from Ireland to NYC in 1847! After many rejection letters for the first book and nearly giving up trying to find a publisher, I also learned there was a real ship called The Star (I had given this name to the ship Norah McCabe travels on to America) with a family traveling on it with my last name, Neale. They had a thirteen year old girl traveling with them.
I became convinced I was writing about a real person who had lived during this period. And so I wrote Hope in New York City, The Continuing Story of The Irish Dresser that continued her story of survival in her new country, a country that despised the Irish immigrant. And then once again I assumed her story was over, but I felt the stirrings of a young woman’s dreams and struggles. And the more I read about New York City and America during the years prior to the Civil War and post massive immigration, the more intrigued I became. Abolitionism, the Nativist Movement, and the Women’s Rights Movement were in their heyday. There were uprisings, bank runs and crashes, riots, violence, and xenophobia. Many movies and books portray the Irish woman as an ignorant Brigit who spoils the soup and talks back to her betters. Certainly there were a few of these types, but in my research I learned that Irish women far exceeded other female ethnic groups in education and economics. They climbed up in the world come hell or high water! They paraded down Fifth Avenue dressed in Paris fineries bought from the money they saved (still sending money back to Ireland), and aristocratic Protestant ladies were incensed that these Irish maids looked just like them.
I could imagine the child, Norah, becoming a vibrant and determined young woman who wanted to desperately climb out of her Irish skin as much as she wanted to stay inside it. She didn’t want the limitations of her race and she dreams of success, but still longs to return to Ireland. The two children’s books about Norah McCabe convinced me she still had a story to tell and so I trusted her to continue to tell me her story in Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in the 19th-Century. And so she did!


Have you always wanted to be a writer and how did you start?

I spent my girlhood in the Finger Lakes region of New York reading while sitting under trees in the summer and reading at night curled up under the covers with a flashlight. I identified with Jo in Little Women and Anne in Anne of Green Gables because they were determined to write stories. I wrote poems and skits and shared them with my family and when I convinced a friend we could make some money with writing, we knocked on neighbors’ doors and performed by reciting our works to them. Sometimes we’d get a quarter and sometimes we’d get homemade cookies. We never made much money, but it was so much fun for a kid. I lived in Los Angeles for a few years and told people I was a writer. It helped to say it aloud so I could believe it, but I wasn’t published. I was always writing short stories and essays, but I worked as a legal secretary to pay the rent. Eventually, I took writing courses and worked as a freelance writer for a brief time. A few of my articles, essays, stories were published, but it was the novel I longed to lose myself in. Later, after I married and had my daughter, I studied at Vermont College and obtained my degree. And then my experience with immersion in Irish culture brought forth my first young adult novel.


Are you working on anything at the moment?

While working on Norah, I was nudged in many unusual ways to write about a Native American woman who lived in New York State in the late 18th-century. I shuddered to think I could write a novel about an Iroquois woman with an oral history. I began researching, digging for the real truth of her life, but there was only so much information I could obtain from historians. And then much of it was conflicting and misconstrued. I had been fortunate to meet a French author who had delved into the life of the grandmother of my character and thus, pieces began falling into place. However, there is still so much I don’t know. That is why the vehicle of historical fiction can be liberating in that history provides the skeleton and then the author of fiction can put the flesh on it as he or she deems will fit. Ah, it is much more difficult than that, but it’s the beginning. I started writing this novel while promoting my other books, doing speaking engagements, and then Norah came to tell me that she had more to say about her life in New York City. A few readers had contacted me and said they felt there was more about Norah’s life. I, however, was adamant that I needed to write the other novel. And I had become irritated with a friend who insisted I continue Norah’s story. And then the night before my birthday a year ago, I dreamed of Norah walking through New York City wearing fabulous hats. I woke and knew that I was going to write about her living during the Civil War in New York City. And then the friend who had been insistent brought me a gift she had found in an antique here in New Hampshire. It is a framed print of an illustration from Godey’s Lady’s Magazine, a popular magazine of the time when Norah lived. Norah was always sneaking in stores to read this magazine. My working title is The Irish Milliner and I’ve put aside my other novel to work on this one. I hope to have a first draft finished late spring. I will continue with the other novel, for the character is still with me, patient and very much still alive within me. I’ve also written a collection of essays to accompany dessert recipes in a book titled, Pavlova in a Hat Box, as a tribute to my eighty-six year old mother. The plan is to have it published this spring. There are other writing projects I’ve completed that I’ve decided to try and promote this year, as well. I recently encountered two trees full of bluebirds on a walk in the woods. The symbolism is transformation, healing, and creative power. I believe that 2014 is a special year for my writing!


Your top five favourite books?

Many books have impacted my life and are favorites, but I can’t choose just one! The books by George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Louisa Mae Alcott, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Emily Bronte, and Daphne Du Maurier, Anya Seton, Chekov…And, of course, contemporary novels by Susan Vreeland, Barbara Kinsolver, Jena Seter Naslund, Louise Erdrich, and many others, as well as a number of children’s novels.


Your best job ever?

This is my best job! I have been a paralegal, legal secretary, freelance writer, fitness instructor, and I owned a short-lived Victorian tea catering business. However, I dreamed of being able to devote my days to writing and living as an author. I’m doing it. There are many pitfalls and I don’t make a decent wage, but it is my best job. My first real job was at the Beverly Hills Courier in California when I was eighteen. I was a typist and helped put the newspaper together. It was thrilling to work at a newspaper in glamorous Beverly Hills. At the time, I thought it was my best job ever.


Tell us a it about a typical working day for you - where o you write? What do you do when you're not writing?

I’m spoiled. My husband brings me coffee and I read something inspirational to start my day. I’m currently reading China Galland’s book about her search for the feminine in the deity, Looking for Darkness. I make a list of ten or more things I must do (and only accomplish one or two). And then I try not to procrastinate by doing more research, especially if I already have piles of legal pads of notes. Sometimes the next scene or next chapter is so vivid and real to me and if I don’t sit down and write it, it nips at my heels all day into the evening. By the end of the evening, I am damn irritated because I didn’t sit down to write it. Fear? That is for another question altogether and I won’t talk about it here. I have learned to be somewhat disciplined from working at home over the years and will sit down at least two hours to write on most days. There is also all this social media networking that has to be done, as well, and honestly, I haven’t found the balance between promoting, speaking, and writing. I’m better, but still working on it. And when I’m not writing, ideas for writing come into my head when I go to my kitchen to bake. Story ideas, chapter scenes, plots, and endings often form and rise in my head while I mix, shape, and bake scones, breads, and pies. I’m spicing up my writing already mixed up on a page or two, or even concocting ideas for a new story. I can create and complete something tangible and scrumptious to share with others in an hour or so. There is immediate gratification and success in baking, unlike writing done in many rooms day after day, week after week, and year after year (and sometimes without success). I like to do a myriad of things when I’m not writing, such as Irish set dance, going to the woods and to the sea, getting together with friends, and creating art. I like to volunteer, to travel, to dream, to read and read. But all the while, the words are waiting and if I don’t eventually stop doing all these other things I love, these words can turn into a silent sorrow. I’m learning. These words of Barbara Kingsolver’s should light a fire underneath all of us, no matter what the calling is, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.”


With thanks to Cynthia Neale and www.fireshippress.com for the review copy of Norah and for the interesting and insightful interview.