One more inspiration: One of my favorite books as a child was Island of the Blue Dolphins, about a woman stranded on an island, completely independent and cut off from civilization for years. Although Nadia’s situation is different, I think the seed for her isolation probably sprung from my early fascination with that kind of ongoing solitude.
All the Winters After has a stunning setting in Alaska, and as a reader, I felt your love and enthusiasm for it as a remote and exhilarating destination. What type of research did you do?
I have a lot of ties to Alaska. My first husband grew up on the Kenai Peninsula, and my oldest son went to college in Anchorage. In addition to family trips, I traveled there for my work as a creative director. For a long time, I wanted to live in Alaska, and I subscribed to Alaska magazine and read everything I could on the subject. A few years ago, while working on the book, I stayed in a log cabin on the Kilcher Family Homestead on the outskirts of Homer, right about where I’d envisioned the Winkel homestead to be and where they have a living museum in the old homesteaders’ cabin. I also lost myself in the Pratt Museum in Homer for hours and hours, where I loaded up on more books and visited the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center and the beautiful Museum of the North at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks. I have a pile of field guides, but if I couldn’t find the answer I needed, I’d call my son, Daniel. He earned a degree in biology in Anchorage and spent five summers working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Alaskan wilderness. He was my go-to guy.
A lot of the characters in this book have unique names. How did you come up with them, and what is their significance, if any?
With the exception of the family name of Winkel, which I changed after many drafts and which was an intentional nod to Rip Van Winkle and his long nap, most of the names just came to me early on, and I’ll admit that I didn’t see their significance until later. Kache was always Kache, after the Kachemak Bay—but it’s pronounced catch, and he is clearly caught, unable to move forward, as are Snag and Nadia. Aunt Snag stepped onto the page already christened, along with the story of how Glenn gave her the nickname, long before I knew what her problems were. And Nadia? I wanted something that sounded Russian, so I grabbed that one from the air. It wasn’t until years later, when I was trying to write the song lyrics, that I realized Nadia sounds a lot like knotted. I must have known at some subconscious level, but I’m a bit baffled that I didn’t notice that their names reflected their conditions.
I really yearned for Kache and Nadia to find some way to make things work between them. Do you know what happens to them next, and if so, will you share that? Or would you rather leave it to the imagination of the reader?
I don’t know what happens to them next. (However, I do know what my mother would like to happen!) I would need to write another book about them in order to find out. I will say that Kache and Nadia freed each other, but, in choosing to be true to that hard-earned freedom, they had to lose each other too. And yet not entirely. The kind of change they brought into each other’s lives leaves a significant and lasting impression, whether or not they reunite.
This is also a very sad story in a lot of ways—the death of Kache’s family and the subsequent fracturing of relationships for those left behind, Nadia’s self-imposed isolation, Nadia’s family’s rejection of her. As an author, how do you leave that emotion behind when you’re not writing?
Most of my angst comes beforehand, circling around a tough scene before I delve in. I know what it’s going to require, so there’s this pondering and buildup, but the actual writing of it can be cathartic. I’ll admit to a transitional period after, a reentry from the world in my head that I’m trying to get onto the page, back to the world on which I try to plant my feet. I can be a bit distracted and foggy-headed when I first step out of my writing room. It’s good that I’m not a surgeon. I do have a very understanding spouse. That helps.
Lettie is irresistibly drawn to Alaska and changes her whole life, possibly sacrificing an element of her relationship with her husband, to achieve her goal. Have you ever felt drawn to anywhere in this way?
Oh yes. I’ve already hinted at this, but I guess I’ll come out and call it what it was—my obsession. My first husband and I had planned to move to Alaska, where he was from, but we ended up in San Diego instead—practically the polar opposite, so to speak. I remained obsessed with Alaska for years, and Lettie’s story grew from that. Unlike me, she made it happen.
These days, I no longer obsess about moving north, but I do live in a house in the woods, a remodeled and expanded cabin, not far from a bay where we kayak and my husband goes crabbing and salmon fishing. I joke that it’s the closest I can get to living in Alaska and still get to live in California. My son has plans to finish his doctorate and return to Alaska, so I’ll probably get to spend a lot more time there in the future.
Are your characters based on anyone in particular?
No. I wrote a lot of material in my twenties and thirties that was never published, and much to my family’s relief, most likely never will be. After excavating my childhood, my writing process changed and became more imaginative. Now I excavate my obsessions, my fears, my observations, certainly my sense of place and, yes, my characters. But they’re not thinly disguised people from my real life. I definitely borrow from stories friends tell me, as well as lines of dialogue, and I’m sure there are traces of me and people I’ve known in characters, but that’s as far as it goes. I enjoy making stuff up.
The story of Kache’s dog and the butterfly that led to his end was a story that really stayed with me. What inspired this incident?
Here’s an example of one of the stories mentioned above that inspired a story in the book. While I was staying at the homestead, the host pointed to the cliff and told me about her childhood dog chasing a butterfly right over it. As a dog lover, that vision haunted me. As a writer, I had to include a fictionalized version of it in the book. In fact, at one time, the title was The Dog and the Butterfly.
The homestead is filled with books that likely save Nadia’s life. What books would be on your shelves if you had to live in a homestead for a decade?
Well, first of all, every how-to book and field guide ever written! After that, I would include my favorites—the complete collections of Annie Dillard, Barbara Kingsolver, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Geraldine Brooks, Jane Hamilton, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout… I could go on all day. More novels I love, sitting on this shelf next to me: Middlesex, The History of Love, The Sandalwood Tree, Never Let Me Go, Cold Mountain, Let the Great World Spin, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, The Handmaid’s Tale, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Snow Child, Beautiful Ruins, Room, The Signature of All Things, Life After Life, The Hours, Wuthering Heights, The Awakening. I would need volumes and volumes of poetry—Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Ted Kooser, Walt Whitman, for starters. Books on travel to help any wanderlust I’d likely experience. This list is obviously off the top of my head and nowhere near complete. But I would also want all those books I’ve been meaning to read and haven’t. And lots of big, thick classics. A decade isn’t nearly long enough, but I could make a serious dent.
What would you like the reader to take away from your novel?
I’d like the reader to experience a deep sense of place and of time well spent—of escape and connection, longing and fulfillment, recognition and discovery. The feeling of having walked in these characters’ boots. And maybe a cramp or two from sitting and reading too long. That’s a lot to ask, but I can hope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once long ago, I wrote about fifty pages of a book and then put it aside, and for complicated reasons, I didn’t pick it up again until twenty years later. That book eventually became this one. I guess you could say I now have about twenty years of accumulated gratitude spilling over, and much of it goes to my godsend of an agent, Elisabeth Weed, who believed in this story and who took the time to read
and reread as the novel found its shape. She and her assistant, Dana Murphy, offered thoughtful feedback that made all the difference. I’m so fortunate that I get to work with Jenny Meyer, foreign agent extraordinaire, who has made it possible for me to reach readers in other countries. Special thanks to her and hard-working assistants Shane King and Zoe Weitzman.
A deep bow of appreciation goes to Dominique Raccah and the amazing team at Sourcebooks, especially to my esteemed editor, Shana Drehs, a bright star who led the way, and to Anna Michels, for her smart editorial guidance. Heather Moore, Valerie Pierce, Beth Oleniczek, Heidi Weiland, Margaret Coffee, Chris Bauerle, Stephanie Graham, Heather Hall, Sabrina Baskey, Patricia Esposito, Adrienne Krogh, and Brittany Vibbert each played an important role in the publication process. Thank you, Sourcebooks!
I’m forever indebted to my gifted critique partners, Laurie Richards and Chelo Ludden, for marking up and talking through numerous drafts, and to those generous souls who read the manuscript in one or more of its various forms and whose comments helped immensely: Nancy Campana, Daniel Prince, Molly Eckler, Colleen Morton Busch, Amy Franklin-Willis, Suzanne Haley, Nicole Haley, Jan Aston, Shannon Barrow, and Melanie Thorne. I’m also grateful to the talented group of writer friends at Book Pregnant for support and advice on the ins and outs of writing and publishing. And Diana Foster and Angelica Allen share the award for attending more of my book readings than anyone should ever have to endure.
Thanks to Mark Madgett and Spencer Nilsen, old friends who told me a funny story about a moose head that inspired Kache and Denny’s escapade with Anthony. And I’m beholden to Catkin Kilcher Burton, who, in one of those wonderfully synchronistic encounters, hosted my husband, Stan, and me at her lovely cabin in Homer (which is available on VRBO, for anyone who’s interested) and took us through the old family homestead, sharing tales of growing up there—decades after I’d first read about her grandparents and many other Homer homesteaders in the book that started it all: In Those Days: Alaska Pioneers of the Lower Kenai Peninsula.
While that book planted the first seed, I also was lucky enough to discover the following, which all helped the story take root and grow: Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family’s Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness by Vasily Peskov; In the Shadow of Antichrist: The Old Believers of Alberta by David Z. Scheffel; the booklets of Old Believers’ food, clothing, history, and traditions written by the schoolchildren of Nikolaevsk School, Nikolaevsk, Alaska; Kachemak Bay Communities: Their Histories, Their Mysteries by Janet R. Klein; and Kachemak Bay, Alaska by the Homer Foundation. A long meandering afternoon at the Pratt Museum in Homer helped fill in even more details.
I’ve been blessed beyond measure by a circle of loving family and friends, old and new, who’ve turned out in droves to support my work in a myriad of ways. A big hug of appreciation for each and every one of you, and especially to all my parents: Jan Aston, Jan Beste, Jan Halverson, and Stan Halverson Sr. (And yes, I really do have three moms named Jan.) To my boys’ Grandma Alaska, Carrie Prince. And to those of you I still miss every single day: my dad, Don Beste; my stepdad, Bill Aston; and my writing sister, Elle Newmark. Thank you all.
And finally, this full heart of mine has my kids to thank: Daniel Prince, Michael Prince, Karli Halverson, and Taylor Halverson, who make it all worthwhile. And my husband, Stan Halverson, who makes it all possible. I met him in eighth grade, but it took until our twenty-year high school reunion to realize we were meant to be in this together. When it comes to getting some of the big things in life right, it seems I’m on the twenty-year plan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit: Steven Rothfield
Seré Prince Halverson is the international bestselling author of The Underside of Joy, which was published in eighteen languages. She and her husband have four grown children and live in Northern California in a house in the woods.
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All the Winters After Page 32
