Julie Gerstenblatt on Maritime Adventures and Historical Rabbit Holes | S5 EP241: Book Banter
Behind my conversation with Julie Gerstenblatt about The Stargazer of Nantucket, the surprising amount of math involved in historical fiction, and why learning history through a great story beats sitting in history class.
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Hello My Happy People,
I knew very little about Julie Gerstenblatt before interviewing her, so I really did not know what direction our conversation would take. What I discovered was an author whose move into historical fiction was not originally part of the plan. Julie had spent years writing contemporary novels before an agent suggested she try writing the historical story she had mentioned. That suggestion ultimately led to her award-winning debut, Daughters of Nantucket.
One thing Julie and I immediately connected over was one of the stranger realities of writing historical fiction: there is a surprising amount of math involved.
Seriously, no one warns you about the algebra.
I have run into this while writing my own historical fiction, and I have discussed it with other historical fiction authors as well. You think you are sitting down to write a novel, and suddenly you are calculating how quickly someone could travel from one location to another using the transportation available at the time.
Julie encountered the same problem while writing her latest novel, The Stargazer of Nantucket. Her characters travel aboard a clipper ship in 1851, so she needed to know where that ship could realistically be at different points during the voyage. Instead of simply guessing, Julie used the actual maiden voyage of the Flying Cloud as her guide. If the Flying Cloud was in a particular location on day six, she could place her fictional Stargazer in that same location on day six. She even had an experienced sailor and maritime literature professor review the nautical portions of the manuscript and correct details such as the speed at which the ship would have been traveling.
That attention to historical authenticity is one of the things I love about well-researched historical fiction. You can sit down simply intending to enjoy a story and come away knowing things you never expected to learn.
I absolutely despised history class when I was in school. I was horrible at remembering dates and names, and memorizing a list of events long enough to reproduce them on a test did very little for me. Put those same historical details into a compelling story, however, and suddenly I am interested.
Julie and I actually talked about this during the interview. She has encountered readers who avoid historical fiction because they are afraid it will feel like sitting through a history lesson. I described good historical fiction as a kind of passive education. You are following characters and becoming invested in their lives while absorbing information about how people lived, what was happening around them, and what the world looked like at that moment in time.
That is certainly true of The Stargazer of Nantucket. The novel follows eighteen-year-old Winnie Starbuck, whose parents refuse to allow her to accompany them on their final voyage to China. Winnie has other plans and stows away aboard their ship. The story takes readers from Nantucket around Cape Horn, through Gold Rush-era San Francisco, and on to China. Along the way, Julie incorporates the history of women on Nantucket, maritime trade, and the unusual amount of independence Nantucket women experienced compared with many women living elsewhere in America at the time.
Then Julie told me about her next novel, and our perfectly pleasant conversation took a disturbing turn.
Her next book moves between 1989 and 2024. Apparently, 1989 now qualifies as historical fiction.
Excuse me?
I was in high school in the 1980s. I cannot even get a senior discount in most places yet, but apparently my teenage years are now history.
Julie pointed out that 1989 was a pre-cell-phone and largely pre-computer world, which does make sense as a dividing line between that period and contemporary life. Logically, I understand the distinction. Emotionally, I reject it completely. Things only got worse when I mentioned that younger people sometimes refer to those of us born during the twentieth century as having been “born in the 1900s.” Julie was born in 1970, so at least I was not suffering alone.
I’m sorry, but if my childhood has officially become a setting for historical fiction, I should at least get something out of it. I can’t even get a senior discount in most places yet. Surely I’ve earned ten percent off my veggie burger and fries at Five Guys.
During the Five Quick Questions, Julie shared more of the real history that has influenced her fiction, including the Flying Cloud, astronomer Maria Mitchell, historic Nantucket homes, and a legend involving Mitchell supposedly preventing the destruction of a Methodist church during Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846. Julie could not verify that the story actually happened as it has traditionally been told, so rather than simply repeating the legend as fact, she found another way to incorporate Mitchell into that moment in Daughters of Nantucket.
That little detail probably says as much about Julie’s approach to historical fiction as anything else we discussed. Research does not simply give her material for her stories. She wants to know whether that material deserves to be presented as history in the first place.
Listen to my full interview with Julie Gerstenblatt and learn more about The Stargazer of Nantucket**.** Just click the purple microphone below.
Enjoy,
Dianne
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