The Story Behind the Story of
Late Harvest
by Hadley Hoover
She was a pleasant, sane fan
of Rough Terrain who got me thinking about the story that would
eventually become Late Harvest. At the time, I had just sent
Unguarded Edge off to the publisher and could hardly imagine writing another Dutch
book so I'm afraid I wasn't terribly receptive!
But I could show you the spot
we stood in Little River CA when this reader said something along the lines of,
"You know, Hadley, here's what I think happened to that Fred fellow . . . and if
you were to set it in the 1940s, by then Dutchville would have been pretty much
Americanized so your research wouldn't be as intense. You can do it!" I had to
admit, her idea had merit—on both points: rough-sketched plot (even though I
veered off-course from her idea about parentage) and the time-frame (which I
followed to a T.)
Readers of Rough Terrain
tend to fall into two camps of persuasion about who Fred Wilson really was. All
I had to do was pick one and go for it, right? Hold on a minute! I had created
two families—the de Boers and Ter Hoorns—and had grown to love them. Whatever I
decided to do about Fred would likely mess up these very nice families' lives
big-time. I didn't want to do that.
So I put all thoughts of a
third Dutch story aside and started thinking seriously about the mystery my
husband and I (still) plan to write. Then one night, I woke up about three
o'clock in the morning with the thought almost like an audible voice: "Sanna
could be a nurse!" Suddenly I couldn't stop thinking about what that pleasant,
sane fan had said . . . could I do it?
I had been so focused on Fred
that one day I was sitting on a beach near Los Osos CA when I realized there
really was more to the story than what happened to Fred. There were
mother-daughter issues. That's when the story fleshed out and I began to think
about the three generations of women—Hanna, Brigetta, and Sanna.
Even with the plot growing
wings, the greatest difficulty in writing this story became a personal issue. I
knew what Sanna's struggles would be, and I knew the shape and depths of
Brigetta's fears . . . but Hanna stumped me. Well, stumped isn't exactly
truthful: blocked is more like it. Our family was dealing with something that
could realistically be Hanna's issue if I could handle writing about it:
Alzheimer disease. It grieved me to "give" Gustave that dreadful condition,
even as our family grieves that my Dad is one of its hapless victims.
The day I wrote the first
sentence in which Hanna admitted there was anything wrong with Gustave, I sat at
my computer and cried so hard I couldn't see the screen. If this book was going
to get written, that was a problem! But at that point, I couldn't turn back
even though I felt vulnerable in having my fictional and real worlds collide.
Writing Late Harvest
has had many emotional moments for me—indeed, it has taken me the longest to
write of all the novels. But perhaps most difficult is realizing this is the
first of my books Dad will not read.
My Dad would have liked
Late Harvest—I hope you do.
Hadley's Dad
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