Blame it on that heirloom gold locket that my dad gave tome, after my house burned to the ground. The midwinter fire devoured all thejewelry my mother gave me over the years, all her knitting projects, ahalf-made crocheted bedspread for my youngest brother that I claimed after hersudden death a few years earlier, saying, “I’ll finish it for you.” Raging on atwenty-three-degrees-below December night, the fire took our clothes, my work,the children’s new Christmas toys. None of that compared to the importance ofthe three of us escaping, with burns on our faces and frostbite on our toes,from sock-footed hike a third of a mile to the nearest neighbor.

Dad drove north to check on us, a day later. He brought some family photos, thoughtfulnessthat impressed me; he brought my youngest brother the contractor, who’d neverreceive that bedspread after all, but who brought me boxes of his spare tools;and he brought the locket. Gold, shaped like a tiny box on a short chain, itopened to emptiness. No photo of anyone inside, but I saw an intricate goldgrating that flipped outward. “It’s a hair locket,” he explained. “You put alock of hair of your beloved into it.”

During the night of the fire, a mile from where myex-husband lived, the only “boyfriend” in my life was playing music in NewOrleans. He got a busy signal when he tried to phone me, and bitterly assumedI’d taken the phone “off the hook” to silence it during a date with someoneelse. Days later, he’d finally phone a neighbor and learn that a fire burnsthrough phone and electric lines. I didn’t put a lock of his hair into thelocket; he left not much later, for a dancer he’d formed a crush on.

When I turned fifty, in accordance with the answer aprayerful friend of mine had received, I met and fell joyously in love with mysoulmate. By then, the kids were grown and gone, but on their rare visits home,they agreed I’d finally found the right partner. Next time my darling got hishair trimmed, I collected a curl and popped it into the locket.

Historical fiction already meant a lot to me; a lifelonghistory writer, and a fumbling novelist, I found the combined threadssatisfying. And I wanted very much to give readers a vicarious experience of Vermont’sapproach to the Abolition movement and to diverse settlers (setting aside forthe moment the state’s sometimes cruel treatment of Native Americans; I’daddressed that in my first work of historical fiction, and the book is aclassic, The Darkness Under the Water, but also controversial). Ifigured, if readers followed along with the teens in my new story, they’ddiscover for themselves that Black people in Vermont in the 1850s were “freeand safe,” as one of the state’s great historians puts it.

If you haven’t yet written a novel, this might surprise you:Often the characters stubbornly diverge from where you thought they were going.So did the girls in The Secret Room: One morning, halfway throughwriting, I realized at least one of them would head into a dark collapsingtunnel, in a desperate rescue effort. As dirt fell into her eyes and mouth andshe moved resolutely forward, one hand landed on an object that she reflexivelytucked into a pocket. Later, in daylight, she discovered it was an antiquelocket.

Yes, there you have it: Dad’s little locket had crept rightinto my story. So it felt obvious, later, that I’d write another novel, thistime set in 1850, when that locket first hung at the throat of a Vermont teen.That turned into The Long Shadow, a book I’d never imagined would be thefirst of a series.

Yet when I turned it in for publication, the cheerful editorsaid, “I hope we’ll be hearing more from these characters!” Shaken, I asked,“You mean a series? How long?” She replied, “How about until everyone is free?”

It doesn’t take a lot of American history to recognize that“when everyone is free” probably means the end of our Civil War: 1865. If Iwrote a book for each year from 1850 until then, there’d be 15 books in theseries. A nifty idea! However: My teenaged characters from the first book wouldbe in their thirties. That wasn’t an age I wanted to write about – I love thevoice of a teen observing her world. How could I solve this?

It took another week for the idea to arrive: If the teenshad a reason for vanishing from the village at the end of each book, or maybeeach second book, and the next book’s protagonist became a girl who’d beenyounger at the start, and I kept passing it along that way — well, you see howit would work, right? Sort of a relay race, passing along the Vermont fight forhuman liberty to each new girl, or set of girls. Yes! On the spot, I decided(since I’m far from young) that there would be two-year jumps between the booksin the series. That meant seven or eight titles, which seemed workable, as longas I took my vitamins and avoided any repeat of the disastrous housefire.

Now we are in book 3 in what the editor and I decided tocall the Winds of Freedom series. Almyra Alexander, who showed up in book 2 asa fashionable girl from Boston, longs to be a minister, a difficult if notimpossible path for a woman in 1854. The Vermont village, with its changingideas about people and their roles, may give her a way forward toward herdream.

But first she’ll have to puzzle out several newly arrivedwomen at the local tavern, what they are carrying around the county, how tohandle an aging criminal who arrives while her uncle the minister is out oftown, and whether she can effectively assist the cause of Abolition.

If you’re ready to find out whether Almyra is up to thosechallenges, and what the risks are, and what allies she’s recruiting — getready to read The Bitter and the Sweet.

@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:8.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Aptos; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Aptos; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Aptos; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Aptos; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:8.0pt; line-height:115%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}