Read the interview for A Dream of Wolves
Where did the idea for the novel come from?
Several years ago I came across an article in my local newspaper in Western Massachusetts about the murder of a Yankee farm boy, Marcus Lyon, on the Boston Road in 1805. Two Irish-Catholic immigrants, Dominic Daley and James Halligan, were arrested and charged with the crime. What I found interesting to start was the fact that the murder happened in my hometown of Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Unlike the rest of my novels, which are fiction, this one is based on fact. Most of the characters in the novel are actual historical figures.
The murder of Marcus Lyon by a pair of Irish-Catholics caused a great furor during the time. Could you talk about why this was so?
The murder occurred at a time when the country was undergoing great change. It was experiencing its first real influx of non-Protestants, especially in New England. Yankee Protestants, descendants of the Puritans, had always held Catholicism in great disdain. Since Luther, Rome had been anathema to them, and priests looked upon as corrupt men who sold indulgences. Now, for the first time America was facing Catholics, or "papists" as they were called, in increasing numbers. With the French Revolution, many Catholic émigrés, such as Father Jean Cheverus, fled France and came to America. Even more numerous were the Irish-Catholics who wanted to escape Ireland after the failed Uprising of 1798 and England's brutal retaliation. The earlier Irish immigrants were mostly Protestants from Ulster, educated and economically middle-class when they arrived. These new Irish were poor, uneducated, and Catholic. America, founded by people who wanted religious freedom, ironically looked with suspicion, fear, and hatred at these new immigrants. There were laws banning certain aspects of Catholic practice. For example, Catholics had to pay a tax to support Protestant ministers, and for a time a priest could not legally marry a Catholic couple. So the brutal murder of a Protestant by two Irish-Catholic "highwaymen" gave vent to America's growing xenophobia. There were lurid articles in the papers about the "horrid murder," as well as broadsides, editorials, and even sermons in church about the two Irish murderers, and about "foreigners" in general.
In the novel you make much of the political environment surrounding the trial.
The period leading up to the trial took place during a gubernatorial election that would be one of the closest contests up to that time. At that time in Massachusetts, the governor was elected yearly. The incumbent governor for many years was the Federalist Caleb Strong. However, the Federalist party's strength was waning, both nationally and in the state. Opposing him was the Republican candidate, Attorney General James Sullivan. As with political candidates today, both Strong and Sullivan wanted to look "tough on crime." Each side hoped to use the trial for its own political advantage. Strong offered the incredible reward of $500 for the capture of the two murderers, and it was Sullivan who, as Attorney General, prosecuted the case. Incidentally, some years before this, Sullivan had put Father Cheverus on trial for unlawfully marrying two Irish-Catholics. Sullivan's negative view of immigrants and Catholics belies the fact that his own family came from Ireland as Catholics, only to switch to Protestantism once they arrived in America. One last point--the trial took place in Northampton, the hometown of Governor Strong and a stronghold for Federalist support. Sullivan had hoped that a successful prosecution of two hated Irishmen in his opponent's hometown would bode well for his chances in the next election. This, in fact, proved true. James Sullivan eventually defeated Strong in the next election.
As presented in the novel, the prisoners' rights to a fair trial were clearly violated. Can you specify how?
In many ways the Daley-Halligan trial was the Sacco-Venzetti affair of the early nineteen century. First of all, habeas corpus--the basic legal requirement that someone accused of a crime must be brought before a court and formally charged--was virtually suspended in their case. Daley and Halligan spent five months in jail without being formally arraigned and without benefit of counsel. Eventually they were assigned counsel, but only a few days before the trial. Their lawyers (they actually had four which I, for fictional purposes, compressed into one, Francis Blake, since it was he who made the strong summation in their defense) didn't have time to interview witnesses, to visit the crime scene, or to prepare an adequate defense. In the courtroom, according to the law then in place, defendants in a capital crime were not allowed to testify in their own defense. The main piece of evidence in the State's case was the testimony of a thirteen-year-old boy, Laertes Fuller, who supposedly saw the two men riding the dead man's horse shortly after the murder. The defense counsel argued that the then accepted age for testifying was fourteen and therefore the boy's testimony should be excluded. However, one of the two judges present overruled this objection and allowed the boy to take the stand. During cross examination the boy made several contradictory statements, which would seem to negate his testimony. And yet, after both the defense and the State made their closing arguments, and right before the jury was to deliberate, the same judge instructed the jury that he thought the boy's testimony was "ever consistent," and that if the jury believed him it would be necessary to return a verdict of guilty. So egregious were the violations that in 1984 Governor Dukakis was prompted to grant Daley and Halligan a full executive pardon, citing various violations of their civil rights.
How much of the courtroom scenes were based on fact?
I was able to obtain an unsigned bound volume called Proceedings on the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan. It is a transcript of sorts, supposedly written by someone who attended the trial. It's about eighty pages and contains opening and closing statements, as well as the testimony of all the witnesses called by the prosecution (the defense didn't call a single witness, though they did cross-examine the prosecution witnesses). A good deal of chapters 6 and 8 in the novel are heavily indebted to this source. Almost all of Francis Blake's stunning summation, in which he attacks the assumption that the accused are guilty simply because they are Irish, comes from this source.
Part of the novel is told from the point of view of Father Cheverus, the Boston priest who comes to the prisoners' cell to provide them with spiritual comfort. Why did you find him interesting enough to tell half of the novel from his point of view?
The more I read about Father Jean Louis Anne Madeleine Lefebvre de Cheverus, a long name for a man who was not five feet tall, the more interesting he seemed. . Forced to choose between signing a loyalty oath to the new Jacobin government and going to prison, he chose the latter. Freed from prison through family connections, he went into hiding in Paris. However, many of his cleric colleagues and friends were imprisoned throughout the city. In lay clothes he would go to visit them and offer them spiritual comfort. He was there in the Convent of the Carmes on Sunday, September 2, 1792, when what would later be called the September Massacres broke out. Hundreds of priests were summarily slaughtered that day because they refused to sign the loyalty oath to the new government. Cheverus managed to escape with a handful of other clerics and go into hiding. In disguise he was able to escape to England, and four years later came to the United States. There he helped to found the New England diocese. He stayed in Boston for twenty-seven years, becoming the first bishop and working diligently to help overcome the prejudice and hatred of Catholics, especially Irish-Catholics. Renowned for his eloquence and oratory, his sermons later drew huge crowds in Boston, including many Protestants. Breaking with the tradition that said a Protestant minister would give the condemned man's funeral sermon, he demanded that he deliver the sermon for Daley and Halligan, which he gave in the very same meetinghouse where Jonathan Edwards had preached his fiery sermons a half century before.
In the novel, Cheverus seems to suffer from post-tramautic stress based on his experience at the Convent of the Carmes when he witnessed the slaughter of hundreds of his colleagues by the Jacobins mobs. Is this truth or fiction?
The short answer to this is that it's fiction. One of the biographies I read of Cheverus, by Annabelle Melville, states only that he was there on the day of the massacre, and that Cheverus somehow was able to escape from the garden with a handful of others, climb over the walls, and run for his life into the Paris streets. Similar massacres happened at other prisons throughout the city over the next several days. Nothing is mentioned of Cheverus' inner struggle over the fact that he escaped when so many of his friends were horrifically butchered. These are the bare facts. However, reading other eye-witness accounts of the September Massacres and coming to understand Cheverus as a sensitive, introspective, and vulnerable person, one who suffered for years over whether he should return to his family and Church in France or stay in America, I thought it reasonable to assume that such a man might have long-lasting inner conflicts about such a traumatic event.
Where did the idea for the novel come?
I originally wrote a short story called "Disturbances." This story was based on an actual incident that took place when I was living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Down the road from where my wife and I lived, there was a domestic dispute that escalated into a murder. A woman, who had a small baby, shotgunned her lover to death. A doctor friend of ours who worked at the hospital with my wife, a nurse, had to go out and pronounce the body. From that small incident I wrote a story and some years later that story formed the basis of A Dream of Wolves.
Is it difficult changing a short story into a novel?
It was hard in some ways. The short story began and ended during one night. There was not much in the way of complicating circumstances - just the murder and then what to do with the baby for that one night. When I decided there was a novel - or at least the germ of one - buried here, I obviously had to extend the timeframe as well as the cast of supporting characters. I had to give Doc not only a past but a future as well, one that loomed on the horizon. I also had to create a realistic setting and realistic characters. Consequently, I had to do a lot of research on the area, on legal issues, and, though I had lived in the area for a number of years, on the people themselves. Having said this, however, I found that this novel was much easier to write than my first two, perhaps because I had a clear starting point and a clear and compelling voice in Doc Jordan.
Your previous two novels, A Brother's Blood and The Blind Side of the Heart, are told from the points of view of a woman. Why did you switch to a male narrator this time?
After two novels from a female point of view, I wanted to get back to what is, quite naturally, a more familiar voice for me. In this case, as I mentioned above, I had written a short story that had Doc as the narrator. When I decided to extend "Disturbances" into a novel, I liked Doc's voice so much it seemed to be the perfect vehicle to tell this newer, longer story. After a while, I felt comfortable with him and just continued to relate things through his point of view. I could hear him, his inflections and tone, the words he would use. In fact, Doc felt like someone I knew quite intimately, a good friend I'd known all my life.
Did you have to do a lot of research for the novel (for example, Doc Jordan is an OB/GYN specialist, a highly technical field)?
Yes. In fact, if I had known how much I'd have to do I probably would have made Doc a country GP. I do a lot of research for all my novels. I like to do enough so that I feel comfortable with my character's life, enough so I know when, as Hemingway once said, to leave out material. That is, I want to give the reader a flavor of what the character's world is about - in this case, the world of an OB/GYN doctor who is also a medical examiner - and to present a credible world, but not so much that it gets in the way of the story and the reader's appreciation of that story. For Doc Jordan I had to know a lot about pregnancy, and about difficulties relating to it. For that I was helped immensely by my wife, a nurse. When I was off-base on an issue or with my terminology, she would correct me. She also provided me with professional magazines as well as a general book on obstetrics. Beyond that I had to know a little about the coroner's profession and the law. I also read a number of books about bipolar disease, which I needed to know to develop Annabel's personality. Finally, though I had lived in the area for a number of years, I made several trips back and read half a dozen books on the area and its people.
Writers are often asked how they develop their characters. Do you make up your characters from your imagination or are they based on people you know?
Both. Some of my characters are completely fictional. Others start out, at least, in fact. They are based, in a general sort of way, on people I actually know or have known. For example, Bobbie Tisdale is loosely based on a woman I am good friends with. Bobbie looks and acts much like this woman does; both have the same spunky style and engaging personalities. Several other characters, Troy Bumgartner and Stella Plumtree, are also partly based on people I know. However, all of my characters, those completely made up as well as those rooted in actual people, are, ultimately, of the imagination. Fictional characters undergo a transformation on the page. For me this is especially true when I have two characters interact in a scene. Dialogue brings out many things in a fictional character's personality that were not there when I first conceived of them. Like one's children, they grow and change, many times in ways you could not have predicted beforehand. So, I would say that all of my characters are in the last analysis figments of my imagination.