From New York to Rome: Authors in Conversation: Connie Hertzberg Mayo and Crystal King

April 17, 2022 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

From New York to Rome: An interview with authors Connie Hertzberg Mayo and Crystal King

Crystal: We both write historical fiction. I do it because I love uncovering lost moments in time and trying to imagine the lives of people in those eras and those places. I was so drawn to Italy and I fell in love with the country and people in the process. Now I can’t help but set the stories of my books there. What about you? Why do you write historical fiction? Do you also have an obsession that was fueled by your books?

Connie: I am a bit obsessed with American cities at the turn of the century. Everything was evolving so quickly – the telephone, the camera, the car, electricity were all new, life-changing inventions. And yet many people were still caught up in their Victorian stuffy outlooks. I like that dichotomy of innovation moving forward and some people clinging to the rules of the past. Also, cities are fun places to set stories – it’s easy to have a lot of diverse characters.

Crystal: I was utterly enthralled by the story you put forth in SHARP EDGE OF MERCY. I think I read the book in 2 or 3 nights and the story stayed with me. Part of the reason is that you wrote such a compelling cast of characters from all walks of life—you don’t shy away from wealth disparity, medical ethics, racism, sexual prejudice, characters with disabilities, or the challenges of being a woman in an extremely misogynist society. It’s a lot to pack into a book, but you do it in a way that it feels natural to the story. What made you decide to tackle such a range of somewhat formidable topics? And why did you choose the backdrop of a turn of the 20th century hospital to do so?

Connie: If I knew at the start I would be tackling all of these subjects, I would have been overwhelmed! I initially just set out to write a book about medical ethics, set at the country’s first cancer-only hospital. I figured there would be plenty of ethical gray area there, especially at a time when there was no chemotherapy or even radiation treatment. But then all these other elements crept in. For example, I learned that one of the founders of the hospital, Dr. J. Marion Sims, was considered the Father of Modern Gynecology due to his perfection of fistula surgery – but he perfected it on slaves in Alabama with no anesthesia, even though ether and chloroform were commonly used by that time. So how could you write a novel about medical ethics at this hospital without figuring him in? And yet he died before the hospital opened, so I created Jupiter, the fictional nephew of the real-life Anarcha who endured 30 painful surgeries courtesy of Dr. Sims.

I also decided that I wanted to have a character with significant disability, because I think that not enough has been written about disability in historical times. I want readers to imagine how difficult it must have been in 1890 for Lillian, the main character, to care for her 14-year-old sister Marie, who is blind and cognitively delayed due to scarlet fever. I actually wanted to create a character with OCD in my first book, The Island of Worthy Boys, but I could see that would take over the story a little too much, so instead there is a character that has mutism, which is never explained but is something his friends just accept. But I am hoping to create a character with OCD in my third book – I’m not giving up on that idea.

Crystal: What were some of the challenges of writing such a varied cast of characters?

Connie: It was hard to make sure there was balance between the various characters’ stories. In particular I wanted to make sure that I gave enough time to Michael, Lillian’s beloved cousin who is struggling with his homosexuality. I didn’t want him to turn into the “gay sidekick” that crops up in some movies! And getting back to my interest in urban stories, it was great to have Michael experience his struggle in New York City, which had a vibrant gay scene in lower Manhattan. If he were on a farm somewhere in Ohio, he would have had a harder time meeting like-minded people.

To make sure I gave fair time to my characters, I created a spreadsheet (which, being a systems analyst, is often my solution to problems). There was a column for each chapter, and the cells underneath each chapter described every scene. Every cell had a color that corresponded to a secondary character, so if Chapter 9 had a scene that primarily involved Michael and one about Jupiter, there would be one green box and one blue box in that column. That way I could easily see if there was a character that I had been neglecting, just by looking at the colors.

Crystal: The hospital you set the story in was a real place. How did you find out about it? What were some of the more interesting things that you discovered when you were researching the hospital…that made it into the book, or perhaps did not?

Connie: I heard about the New York Cancer Hospital on a podcast called 99 Percent Invisible, which is about design, often about architecture (another interest of mine). The episode was about how innovative the building was, with its round rooms so that dirt could not collect in the corners, and a large central ventilation shaft. And since I had been thinking of writing a novel about medical ethics, this was like a neon sign saying, “write about this place!”.

I think the most interesting thing I found was when I was looking at microfiche of the surgical notes from the hospital, I discovered that they injected whiskey intravenously to try to revive a patient that was “going bad” on the table. If I made that up in an 1890 surgery scene, no one would believe me!

Crystal: Years ago, when the economy crashed after 9/11, I lost my job and ended up temping in a variety of places. One of them was at St. Elizabeth’s here in Boston, in a psychiatry office. One of the rules was that I couldn’t wear open-toe shoes, because it might be too arousing for some of their patients! Imagine my amusement (and horror) when I discovered that the main antagonist in your story, Dr. Bauer happened to have a foot fetish! Plus he was already such a jerk…but this interest made it all the worse. What compelled you to give him this fetish?

Connie: Let me just say I love that story about St. Elizabeth’s! Maybe you were singled out because you have really sexy feet? OK, back to Dr. Bauer… I’m really glad you asked this, because I don’t want my readers to think that I have any particular interest in feet! But the foot fetish was important because there are several “victimless crime” elements in the story, which ties in with the overall theme of what is ethical. Lillian starts out in the story very sure of right and wrong, but Dr. Bauer’s interest in Lilian’s feet makes her eventually consider, momentarily, whether it would be so bad to go along with him so as not to incur his wrath. And this, along with other events, makes her think about whether she really does know right from wrong.

Crystal: One of the big themes of the book is one that women today are still grappling with—the trauma of being marginalized, sexualized, and/or abused by men. I expect that Lillian’s experience in the novel is, sadly, a familiar one to a lot of women. Did the #MeToo movement influence any of the writing of your book?

Connie: Absolutely. I always knew there would be an arrogant doctor in the story who would look down his nose at the female staff, because honestly, how could that not have been the case back then? But I did not originally intend to write him as a #MeToo perpetrator. In fact, I started writing this book in early 2017, and the Me Too hashtag started being used in October of 2017, thanks to actress Alyssa Milano’s response to allegations against Harvey Weinstein. And of course, the #MeToo movement just grew and grew from there. So as I was writing Dr. Bauer, he became more and more important in the book. And then the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh happened in September 2018, which was when I was at the height of writing the Dr. Bauer piece, and I just pulled out all the stops. In the end, a story that was supposed to be just about medical ethics turned out to have an equally important #MeToo theme.

Crystal: Another theme of this novel is that of quality of life for the ill and aging. Lillian, as a nurse, is faced with a tough decision in the novel, to aid a patient that was in great pain and whose life would never be the same as it was. I personally think about quality of life a lot—both my mother and my mother-in-law have Alzheimer’s and I see their lives and the lives of the people around them shifting and changing, and of course, it brings up the question of my own mortality and future. You told me that both your parents were ill and passed when you were writing this book, which must have been incredibly painful. I also imagine it greatly influenced your depiction of Lillian’s character in the book?

Connie: I might have always been destined to write this book given that I am my mother’s daughter. There was never a more staunch believer in quality of life than my mother. I first heard that phrase from her mouth in the 1970s, before anyone was really talking about it. She had a PhD in Anatomy and was a “devout atheist” as I like to say. So it was excruciating to see her fade away with simultaneous dementia and Parkinson’s – if her past self could have seen her at the end, she would have been horrified. She died a few months before I finished the first draft. My dad died 18 months before my mother, when I was starting to write the book.

He had broken his arm and his leg, breaks that happened because of his bone cancer and could not heal, so he was bedridden for the last months of his life. He was a fighter until the end, but it seemed to me that those months had pretty much no value and so much pain. So I deeply feel the issue that Lillian faced with her patient Mrs. Sokolova – when there is no more hope but still plenty of time.

Crystal: While I write novels set in the historical past, they are all books about food. I write about food because it is the ultimate connector. It is at the center of most of our social interactions: in religion, in politics, in our economy. And I think that’s what I’ve learned most — that the people of 2,000 years ago and through the ages after have the same struggles, the same obsessions and the same connections to food that we do today. What have you learned about yourself or modern day humanity by writing about a nurse that lived over a century ago?

Connie: What I came away with was that even though we have made great advances in the last hundred years, it is surprising how in some ways we have NOT advanced in this country. Yes, there have been great medical advances, but I don’t think we have evolved as much as we should when it comes to end-of-life care. We’re better at keeping people alive but we don’t really know when to stop. And it would be hard to say that we have really come a long way with #MeToo. There are still so many men that use their positions of power to coerce young women. And yet, on both these fronts, we have had progress. At least 10 states have passed death with dignity legislation, and a hashtag brought a long standing problem between men and women out into the daylight where at least we can see it more clearly. So there is reason to be hopeful about the future.

CONNIE HERTZBERG MAYO grew up in Westchester County, New York, but moved to Massachusetts to get a Literature degree from Tufts University and never ended up leaving. Her first book, THE ISLAND OF WORTHY BOYS, (2015, She Writes Press) won the 2016 Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Connie’s short story, “Little Breaks”, was published by Calyx Journal in 2017. Her latest novel, THE SHARP EDGE OF MERCY, will be published by Heliotrope Books in May 2022. Connie works as a Systems Analyst and empty-nests with her husband and two feuding cats. Visit her online at conniemayo.com.

Crystal King is the bestselling author of The Chef’s Secret and Feast of Sorrow, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a Must Read for the MassBook Awards. She is an author, culinary enthusiast, and marketing expert. Her writing is fueled by a love of history and a passion for the food, language, and culture of Italy. She has taught classes in writing, creativity, and social media at several universities including Harvard Extension School and Boston University, as well as at GrubStreet, one of the leading creative writing centers in the US. A Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and former co-editor of the online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review, Crystal received her MA in critical and creative thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in medias res. She resides in Boston. You can find her at crystalking.com.