The historical novel is extremely popular at the moment – why do you think this is?
We live in unusually challenging times. There’s no recipe for how to fix a global economic collapse and climate crisis. Our news media don’t always help, when they flood us with superficial glimpses of disaster or lurid gossip about people we will never meet. It’s not surprising that readers may be hungry to put our […]
The research for this book must have been massive. Was it daunting, or fun?
Both. Fortunately, I like research. I was trained as a scientist, and tend to approach tasks methodically, enjoying what I learn along the way and trying to use it resourcefully. Sometimes I did feel I was trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon. I read many books about U.S. and Mexican history just to […]
How long did it take to write the book?
I began plotting out the structure of the story in February 2002, and finished exactly seven years later. I took a hiatus between 2005 and 2008 to write and release a nonfiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but the novel was still on my mind during that time, accumulating weight and momentum. The research and writing […]
Is Harrison Shepherd inspired by an actual 1950’s writer? Are his books modeled on real ones?
No. While the novel is chock-full of real events and people, the reader’s engagement will always hang on a well-constructed plot. This I know. For sympathy, intrigue and heart-pounding suspense, I needed protagonists who would be completely malleable to my authorial control, to give me the flexibility to turn the events exactly as I needed. […]
You included actual newspaper and magazine articles in this novel, alongside fictional ones. Why do that? If the history is that important, why set it as fiction?
The Lacuna explores some shocking things that happened in our country’s history. Some of the events are so unbelievable, I decided to use historical figures and actual news clips from the New York Times and other sources to anchor the reader’s attention to the facts. I didn’t want these uncomfortable truths to be dismissed as simply […]
In addition to Mexico, why did you choose Asheville, North Carolina as a main location for this story?
In the early months as I laid out the plot, I cast around for a setting for the U.S. portion of my story: a medium-sized city within a day’s drive of Washington, whose history I could research thoroughly. My character would live there throughout the 1940’s, so it would be ideal for me to find […]
Why did you choose to include Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and other real-life characters? Did you portray them accurately, or take a lot of liberties?
Frida and Diego are relatively minor players who received a disproportionate amount of the review attention, probably because it made for good artwork on the Sunday Arts section of the newspaper. But that’s not why I included them. When I construct a novel, I back up from “effect” to “cause.” I wanted to examine the […]
Lacuna is a word with many meanings: an absence, a gap, a missing manuscript, a tunnel through time or substance. Why did you choose it as a central theme
The theme arrived long before the word. I worked on the novel for six years under a different title, which wasn’t a very good one. I was near the end of a first draft when one day I thought about this amazing word, lacuna, with all its intertwined meanings that unlock the inner workings of […]
What was the genesis of The Lacuna? Is it a story you’ve wanted to tell for a long time?
It raises questions I’ve wondered about for nearly as long as I’ve been a writer, starting with this one: Why is the relationship between art and politics such an uneasy one in the U.S.? Most people in other places tend to view these as inseparable. Mexico, for example, has historically celebrated its political artists as […]