Just because you’re told something is true doesn’t make it the case. I have never accepted received ideas before subjecting them first to my own personal sniff test. Non-fiction is a wonderful way of acquiring knowledge, and stories open a door to the human soul to make possible living through someone else’s sensibility. Life becomes more vibrant and meaningful. My Ph.D. in English taught me to analyze the ways writers tell their stories. Add in my own life experience, and something magical happens during the creative process. Whether writing historical, literary, or popular fiction, I can’t help but reshape limitation into independence and personal freedom.
I wrote...
This Godforsaken Place
By
Cinda Gault
What is my book about?
The year is 1885, and Abigail Peacock is resisting what seems to be an inevitable future−a sensible career as a teacher and a marriage to the earnestly attentive local store owner. But then she buys a rifle, and everything changes.
This Godforsaken Place is the absorbing tale of one tenacious woman’s journey, set against dramatic myths of the Canadian wilderness and the American Wild West. Abigail’s adventure introduces her to some of the most infamous characters of her time−including Annie Oakley and Gabriel Dumont−and brings the high stakes of the New World into startling focus.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Stone Angel
By
Margaret Laurence
Why this book?
Hagar Shipley’s voice is a force of nature forever lodged in my psyche. She is an infuriating woman, but so committed to being an asshole right to the end of the story that you have to shake your head in grudging admiration. Whether right or wrong, she's resolute. When she finds herself staring down the end of her life, she takes full responsibility for all of it—the pain, the joys, the failures−but still will not go darkly into that good night. I wanted a similarly epic voice for my young pioneer protagonist who flung herself at life.
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Lives of Girls and Women
By
Alice Munro
Why this book?
In this book of linked short stories, we meet protagonist Del Jordan as a child fascinated by words and their relationship to all she is beginning to discover. We watch her grow into a precocious young woman who seeks out experience that will help her understand who she is and what she wants. Unflinchingly honest about her desires as a woman and a person, she makes fearlessly original observations about the people and places in her life. This is the story of a remarkably observant writer through whose eyes we see the world as an entrancing place in all its “radiant” detail.
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Atlas Shrugged
By
Ayn Rand
Why this book?
Dagny Taggart is an epic protagonist who must use her mind to transcend the intellectual fog blanketing her world that is disintegrating from misguided values. Hauntingly contemporary considering the novel’s publication in 1957, she is surrounded by people who hold philosophies that encourage collectivism and irrationality. She has to trust her own insights to transcend the truisms of her day. Instead of propping up those who don’t deserve her heroic efforts, she lets go of what people tell her she should be doing to instead create an individual life worthy of her respect. The intellectual sweep of this novel is breathtaking through the philosophical clarity of its courageous female protagonist.
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The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley, Volume 7
By
Glenda Riley
Why this book?
While researching Annie Oakley as a character in my novel, I was amazed by what an exceptional icon she was. This non-fiction book gives sumptuous detail about a singular woman and the life she led. Oakley met Frank at a shooting competition, where she beat him by only one shot. Rather than becoming defensive, he married her and became her agent. Clearly, she didn't need his help to do what she did better than anyone else in the world, but he helped showcase her skills for adoring crowds in a rough and tumble business. My protagonist Abigail was inspired by her, and frankly so am I.
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Pygmalion
By
George Bernard Shaw
Why this book?
This play is perhaps better known to contemporary audiences by its movie title My Fair Lady. I loved this movie as a child and studied the play years later as a graduate student. I always admired Eliza Doolittle for having the gumption to act on whatever quirky opportunity life gave her for the mere sake of stretching herself. Henry Higgins’ self-serving wager that he could transform a Cockney flower girl into a duchess held out no tangible reward to the young woman who just wanted to better herself. While Eliza learned to transcend social class through her speech and deportment, the more valuable reward was an independent assessment of who she ultimately was despite the class context of her social world.
