Why the Donner Party?

 

Definitely the most common question I get when speaking at schools or libraries is “Where do you get your ideas?” And I always answer that ideas come from all over the place. They are everywhere! But specifically, why did I write a book about the Donner Party? That’s a question I keep asking myself.

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So my brother was the impetus for this. He asked me one day if I’d listened to this podcast about the Donner Party. I hadn’t. But I did just hours after he mentioned it. I was intrigued! Not really about the cannibalism but about everything else—murder, romance, thievery. What a story! I checked out a bunch of books and watched the Ken Burns’ documentary and still—that wasn’t enough. Pretty soon I was reading diaries and sending off for copies of letters, but all just because I was curious. I definitely didn’t think I was writing a book.

But then a poem started burning a hole in my head and I had to release it on paper. And then another. And another. And I wondered if…maybe I was writing a book.

I wrote a scene in prose then because I wasn’t sure this was a story I should tell in verse. I sent it (and the poems) to my friend Stefanie and my agent. They both said: VERSE! Keep going in verse. So I did.

I often get interested (and briefly obsessed) about a lot of things, many of them historical. But they don’t all turn into books in my head. So why this one? I’ve come to realize that what To Stay Alive and Caminar have in common is: I was writing from a place of fear. This fear I have of being unable to save my kids in some time of peril. I think I had to write the stories of other kids who saves themselves to help work through my own issues.

I wonder where my fears will take me next.