Ask the Author: Victoria Johnson
Answered Questions (3)
Victoria Johnson
I grew up in a house filled with maps of New York City from every century, because my father is a retired professor of urban planning who specializes in the history of the city. On family trips, both my parents loved to walk us kids around cities and show us the layers of the past that were still visible in the present--and how to detect traces of what had vanished. I was thunderstruck the first time I heard that one of the most iconic urban spaces in the world today was once the leafy, rural site of the nation's first botanical garden. In American Eden, I try to whisk readers back to that world completely.
Victoria Johnson
I fall in love with a snippet of a historical story, read in passing one day. In this case...Rockefeller Center has the nation's first botanical garden buried under it? Founded by a doctor who was close friends with Burr AND Hamilton? I was hooked--and that first thrill never waned once through many years of research and writing. In fact the more I uncovered, the more excited I became about sharing David Hosack's dramatic and moving life story with readers.
Victoria Johnson
Following my characters through one archive after another like an obsessed detective and then conjuring up a whole lost world from their surviving written words. It's an intense, joyful feat requiring both historical fidelity and emotional imagination.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more