Good morning, dear hearts! I have a special treat for you today! The author of an impressively expansive Biographical Historical Fiction story has presented me with a comprehensive response wherein he delves into his back-history as a writer inasmuch as the fuller scope of what defined this new release as it was being crafted to surmount a perspective of living history augmented against the fictional life of Belle.
As I read the book, I took a few issues with the in-definitive contrasts between the living and fictional lives but also, how some of the vision of the novel turnt a bit muddled to me. However, in the end – what stood out to me most was the realistic portrayal of Belle; a woman who should have lived and sadly, never did. You can see her step through the pages of the novel in such a kaleidoscope of emotional intuition – both through the fused internal thoughts threaded through her poetry and the arc of the narrative itself – which served to fill in the unknowns where the lines of poetry left ambiguous questions.
As you read this interview, you will have the pleasure of being treated to extracts straight out of the novel – where some of Belle’s poems are on display – the poetry of Ms Buhr Grimes truly felt ‘authentically Belle’ to me. A true credit to how she left such a very strong impression on me as a poetess who knows how to pull the depth and breadth of a soul through the spirit of how they harness their essence into the poems themselves.
It is my hope, in combination with my previously shared review and this conversation – you’ll have a fuller impression of what you shall find if you pick up this novel to read. It’s one of those moments where an author shared key sequences of the story to better acquaint the (perspective) reader with a strong visual impression of what his novel contains inasmuch as the reasons behind his choices to tell a story in the way it was delivered.
Born at the turn of the twentieth century in Glen Arbor, near the dunes of Northern Michigan, young Belle is the first child of a gruff stove works boss and a crippled mother who weaned Belle on the verse of Emily Dickenson. When a natural disaster results in her mother’s death and nearly takes the life of her younger brother Pip, Belle creates a fierce, almost ecstatic farewell song. Thus begins her journey to compose a perfect Goodbye to Mama.
At 21, Belle ventures south to Ann Arbor for university, with teenaged Pip in tow. There, she befriends Robert Frost, Ted Roethke and Wystan Auden and finds that her poetry stands alongside theirs, and even with that of her hero, Dickinson. Her lyrics capture the sounds, sights, and rhythms of the changing seasons in the northern forests, amidst the rolling dunes by the shores of the Great Lake.
Despite the peace she finds, Belle also struggles in both homes. Up north, she battles her father who thinks a woman can’t run the family business; and clashes against developers who would scar the natural landscape. In Ann Arbor, she challenges the status quo of academic pedants and chauvinists.
Belle’s narrative brings these two places to life in their historic context: a growing Midwestern town driven by a public university, striving for greatness; and a rural peninsula seeking prosperity while preserving its natural heritage. Through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Post-War Boom, Belle’s story is hard to put down. Her voice and songs will be even harder to forget.
How did you initially create the capstone of Belle coming full circle in her life from her early tragic loss of her mother to how she defined her life through the adversities of her life and of History’s?
Dimond responds: I went away to college in Amherst from 1962 to 1966, where I learned more about the two great American poets I had studied briefly in English classes growing up in Ann Arbor, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. After Law School back home and several good careers, I turned in my seventh decade to writing fiction, including a historical novel: the two Amherst poets beckoned. Emily Dickinson lived in the family Homestead from her birth in 1830 to her death in 1886 and left more than 1800 unpublished poems there. Robert Frost, a college drop-out, joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1917 at age 43; despite leaving 4 times, he always came back to his academic home for the next 45 years. During his long life, Frost campaigned for his poetry at more than 1,000 public readings and talks; won the most ever Pulitzer Prizes, four; and read the first poem at a Presidential Inauguration. In 1892, Frost discovered Dickinson’s first series of published poems. Despite their long associations with Amherst, few other connections linked these two great American poets, except for the irony that most of their archives escaped the College. I therefore determined to write a novel to link Dickinson and Frost through a woman poet from yet another generation, born on December 30, 1899.
I grew up in Ann Arbor with the University of Michigan and summered in Glen Arbor amidst the Sleeping Bear dunes bay, and shore. They became the two settings to nurture and challenge Belle, her brother, their family and friends. At her invalid mother’s knee, Belle learned to love Emily Dickinson’s odd poems and to compose her own “Up North” songs. On her Mama’s tragic drowning in the Great Lake on January 4, 1913, in the opening scene of the novel, the 13-year-old Belle must swim her 6-year-old brother Pip she helped raise to shore. Late that night, a short, wild poem burst forth that captured one aspect of Belle’s several roiling emotions: the strange ecstasy she felt when the deep waters of the bay buoyed her up while swimming her little charge to safety.
Your lips are
Blue Salvation—
flowing over my
hills and valleys
cooling the red heat
of my Passion—
soothing summer balm
after the wintry storm—
Poetry quoted from “The Belle of Two Arbors”; words by Martha Buhr Grimes. Quotation selected and provided by the author Paul Dimond to thread into this Interview. Used with permission of the author.
The poem incorporated the Dickinson style her Mama helped instill. Belle hid it with her other draft songs in her mother’s chest in the attic of their family home. For the next two decades, she kept trying to compose a better goodbye for her mother.
Only at age 21 will the headstrong Belle be able to fledge her Glen Arbor nest for the big university downstate. There, she met Frost and grew over time from his student acolyte to lifelong friend, colleague and correspondent. In the fall of 1921 when Frost heard Belle say her second poem of remembrance for her mother – “Mary Bell’s Death” – he exclaimed, “It sounds a good song, but, good Lord, is it poetry?” Frost encouraged Belle to keep trying. She did for another ten years, until she wrote a more compelling elegy to lock away, but not before Frost honored her at Michigan’s first Hopwood Creative Writing Awards ceremony for her poem:
Goodbye to Mama
water below ice
spilling from our fishing hole—
sly silence—and then—
one long lonely Crack!
our fishing shanty’s heaving sigh—
spinning silver shards—
brother ‘neath my arm—
her gloved hand waving toward shore:
Mama’s gray goodbye—
frozen arm flailing
reaching for life, pumping hard
through unforgiving gray shock—
now stroking steady
in peaceful rhythmic splendor:
lake lips caressing
the hills and valleys
of my cold suffering soul—
O! Blue Salvation…
Poetry quoted from “The Belle of Two Arbors”; words by Martha Buhr Grimes. Quotation selected and provided by the author Paul Dimond to thread into this Interview. Used with permission of the author.
While Frost (and her two other great poet friends Roethke and Auden) moved on, the more private Belle remained tethered to her two safer arbors. With her brother Pip and their Ojibwe friend David, Belle struggled to protect the sacred Sleeping Bear and her Great Lake waters while expanding their family enterprises. In Ann Arbor, Belle, her brother, and their friends challenged the more prejudiced academic pedants who sought to keep creative writers, inventors, the deaf, women, and other minorities down while Michigan worked to become a great national university. Through the roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II and the post-War Industrial Boom, Belle wrote her story and poems as the link between the changing times, Dickinson and Frost, and the forces sweeping the globe and her two arbors.
When a terminal ovarian cancer struck Belle in the spring of 1953, she took to her bed in Ann Arbor and told her family and friends just to leave her alone. Until the niece she raised as if her daughter with Pip in their two family homes shared Emily Dickinson’s poem, “’Hope is the thing with feathers.” The family matriarch soon determined to get out of bed, to live life and to settle her accounts before she died. On her last day at her cottage up north, Belle gave the locked chest with her hundreds of poems, more letters, and the narrative of her life to David’s albino daughter, Angel, in trust for Ruthie. Belle added a sealed letter of instructions for Ruthie.
After twenty-five years, Angel finally could share this treasure trove: only then, will Ruthie unlock Belle’s story and poems for all to read and hear.
It’s an interesting premise in the Belle of Two Arbors– where you’ve put an incredibly strong heroine at the center of everything that is happening both on the local, state and national level and of the world during the timeline of her life. What inspired Belle’s character and is she rooted in living history by someone who actually lived?
Dimond responds: Belle is not based on any one historic character. Yes, she shares some traits with Emily Dickinson, but she is a much different person. Much larger in stature, Belle lumbers on land but is a big fish born to swim long distances in the deep waters of the Great Lake; and she welcomes hitting tennis balls hard on the court even if slow afoot. Perhaps Belle suffers more from bellows that won’t work in front of an audience than Emily and from greater private fears that can’t stomach publishing even one poem. Yet, Belle also escapes the shelter of her two arbors only a handful of times. Although never married and childless like Emily, Belle has two great romances and helps raise Pip and three more children from the next generation. She also benefits from her closer friendships, regular meetings and more frequent correspondence with her three great poet friends than Dickinson with her one occasional “preceptor,” Wentworth Higginson. Belle is also from a much different time and era, with the right of women to vote secured in 1920 and women participating in the Olympics in tennis and swimming.
Despite her father wanting only a man – i.e., his son Pip – to take over the family stove works, Belle early on spies on the plant’s workings from afar and sneaks in to her father’s study when he’s away to pore over the books and records up close. She also learns how to persuade her stubborn Papa to make needed changes and improvements, including in the name of the company when he moves the plant from Glen Arbor to Empire and thereafter in hiring David’s keen eye to oversee operations and in producing Pip’s inventions in order to remain competitive. Belle also adopts David’s Ojibwe stories of the sacred Sleeping Bear and the Great Waters and learns to work with the aging lumberman who traded in his sawmills for planting new forests and orchards to host tourists visiting rather than clear-cutting their incomparable north coast.
Not much for the tedium of textbook learning or the chauvinism of many on the all-male faculties at Michigan, Belle instead hones her poetry skills with the likes of Frost and supports her brother’s stargazing and inventing despite his loss of hearing. She also learns how to partner with allies within the University to challenge the academic pedants who stand in the way of making Michigan not only great but also open to all comers with the necessary gumption, grit, wit and imagination.
In my drafting, writing, and revising scenes, acts, plot and characters, I used the following tests: For Belle (and the other fictional characters), insofar as they influence real persons, events, and places, these changes must all read as authentic; and where they try but fail to change history, it’s because I did not believe they could alter the outcome. For the real-life characters such as Frost, Roethke and Auden and real historic events and places, they must also read as authentic, including in their interactions with fictional characters, events and places. The fact that so many readers ask if Belle is a real person and an actual historical figure suggests this historical novel meet these tests.
Except I would add further – sometimes when you cannot make a distinction from fact and fiction within Biographical Historical Fiction it becomes a bird of a different feather. Your constantly confused by who or whom is real and who is fictional. I like the suspension of reality and living history but at the same time, it’s peace of mind to understand who is who when reading a tome of a Biographical Historical such as yours to understand how each character ‘fits’ within the perimeters of it’s context. I, personally, thought perhaps it would have served better to let this be Belle’s own story and a secondary release focus on the poets themselves as a proper Biography – as you did intimately understand the poets but where the cross-sections occurred between Belle + the poets – this is where things muddled and the focus nearly shifted off of Belle. To me, this is Belle’s opus – it’s her story and hers alone. I broached this in part, on my review.
How did you conceptualize the novel to involve the work of a poet? Did you find breaks in the sequences of the narrative where a poem could be inserted or used to highlight a particular evocation of emotion or was it an organic process which evolved through drafting the story? How important was it to you, a poet’s poems were used to represent Belle’s voice?
Dimond responds: Fortunately, I already knew a woman poet who could compose in what I hoped would become Belle’s voice. A lifelong resident of Ann Arbor who also summered up north, Marty Buhr Grimes has been writing and teaching poetry for more than fifty years. A friend since junior high, I had previously contacted Marty to help me think through a woman poet character in an earlier (and still unfinished) novel, Widower’s Song. Although that was a much different character in age (starting in her mid-40’s), time (2004-6), setting (Manhattan, D.C., Madison, and New England), and perspective (not the narrator or lead character), Marty’s insights there gave me confidence she could help me imagine and write Belle. Marty also brought to our work another long-time friend to serve as a reader to test our early drafts of Belle’s first-person narrative and poems. Both helped me rewrite the prose to make Belle a more authentic woman and compelling voice throughout her life in the novel, 1913-1953.
Ah! So as I mused on my review – part of the narrative was influenced by her poetry! I had a feeling – because the poetry owned Belle in such an intrinsically authentic way as to ascertain Belle was wholly alive and tangible. She tapped into the emotional undercurrents of Belle’s psychology and thereby, heightened how Belle breathed life on the page whilst complimenting the narrative which served to fill in the pieces between the poems.
The process of my writing Belle’s narrative and Marty composing Belle’s poems turned out to be dynamic. Early on, I shared a draft chapter with a scene and a possible idea for a poem that might fit, advance or deepen the story. Marty sent back a draft poem, as often as not either with a different take on the scene or a deeper insight into the character. I then revised or rewrote the narrative and scene to fit the better poem. On other occasions, Marty sent a draft poem, asked questions about the point of view or scene, and shared her concerns about her draft. Sometimes, I suggested a very minor tweak so her poem better fit the narrative, while other times I rewrote the scene to help inspire Marty to write a new poem.
As we interacted, wrote and composed together, Belle the character began to take over. I began to write as Belle and Marty to compose as Belle. In our writing and composing, we became as if one author-poet, Belle. That’s why the prose and poetry in this novel complement one another so well and Belle’s voice rings in her prose and poetry. That’s also why we decided to make Marty’s villanelle Belle’s anthem and the title poem of Ruthie’s posthumous publication of Belle’s complete poems:
UP NORTH
My yearning for Leelanau is like a disease—
the sun through my window bids me awake:
a chorus of robins sings from the trees
to return to Her bosom, where She offers ease
from the thorns and the thistly losses that ache—
my yearning for Leelanau is like a disease—
the shoreline’s now free from its ice-sculpted frieze,
and frothy white waves roll, tumble, and shake.
Five or six finches peek out through the leaves—
I dream of the pond near our bubbling creek,
the nest of a wood duck and her handsome drake—
my yearning for Leelanau is like a disease—
a riot of flowers—the hum of the bees,
the honeyed fragrance of spring in their wake,
a redheaded woodpecker taps on a tree:
Soon Brown-Eyed Susans will sway in the breeze.
The squawk of the seagulls, the bluest of seas—
My yearning for Leelanau is like a disease—
A chorus of robins sings from the trees!
Poetry quoted from “The Belle of Two Arbors”; words by Martha Buhr Grimes. Quotation selected and provided by the author Paul Dimond to thread into this Interview. Used with permission of the author.
What originally inspired you to become a novelist and did you know at that point in time you wanted to focus on the historic past rather than the contemporary world? What motivates you to write historical dramas in other words?
Dimond responds: I majored in history at Amherst College and in my junior year began to research original sources in the musty archives of the old library for term papers and theses. When I returned to Michigan for law school, I began my study of the history and meaning of the Civil War Amendments, including the original debates of the framers in Congress and the recorded speeches, papers and pamphlets for and against ratification out in the country. For the better part of the next two decades, I continued this search – in the 1970’s as a civil rights lawyer and director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, including in four cases that challenged a divided Supreme Court; and in the 1980’s as a Con Law Professor, and author of numerous articles and three books, including Beyond Busing (1985, reprinted in paperback with a new “Retrospect” and “Prospect,” winner of the 1986 Ralph Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association). After three more careers (as a partner in a real estate investment firm, Special Assistant to President Clinton for Economic Policy 1993-1997, and lawyer in private practice), I turned to writing fiction to see if I could imagine better endings. This historical novel proved a natural, as I found I still loved researching all the primary and secondary sources surrounding particular places (e.g., Sleeping Bear Dunes and Bay, Glen Arbor, Glen Haven, Empire and Omena up north and the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor, downstate) and people (D. H. Day, Beals, Burton, Osborn, Ederle, LeMaitre, Kraus, Frost, Roethke, Auden, Steger, Hayden and yes Emily Dickinson to name a few). And these real places and people had to be set in the historic context of the events and the time.
I also wanted to engage readers in Belle as much as great historical novelists had engaged me: for example, Wallace Stegner (The Angle of Repose), Patrick O’Brian (the 20-volume Aubrey-Maturin Novels), and Ivan Doig (The Montana Trilogy, Prairie Nocturne, and The Whistling Season). No small challenge starting so late in life, but I took my time, nearly a decade, to do my best to meet it.
How did you approach the authentic voice of the real persons who appear in the novel alongside Belle? How did you give gravity to their truths whilst honing in on Belle’s journey?
Dimond responds: First, I read as much of the real persons’ original writings, letters and talks and reviewed as many of their photographs and videos as I could. I also read biographies and reviews written by others. Second, I studied their settings, events, and whereabouts during specific time periods relevant to Belle’s story. Third, with the exception of Emily Dickinson, I did not quote any poems of the real characters, but tried instead to write and place their conversations, letters, and interactions with Belle in as authentic a context and voice as possible.
In several instances, this required a reinterpretation of the words quoted or conclusions drawn by particular biographers to praise or damn the real-life persons at particular times and places. Based on my extensive research, I tried to share a more authentic story, at least from Belle’s perspective. I am convinced that her view of her three great poet friends reveals more about the character of each in the context of this novel than any biographer ever could. Put differently, Belle’s unique first-person perspective offers a sharper eye, a more attuned ear and a better personal feel for the character of these real-life persons.
The landscape inside the novel is of little outside knowledge to those who neither have visited Michigan nor contemplated visiting the state. How did you want to entreat readers to understand the landscape as a part of the cultural heritage of the area being discussed? How did you make it feel as tangible as you did, as a living presence of where someone ‘could have’ lived?
Dimond responds: For a historical novel to be authentic and engaging, the setting in place and time must come alive for the reader. Consider O’Brian’s “little wooden world” on the HMS Surprise sailing the high seas to distant parts of the world between 1800 and 1814, or the settings of the historical novels of Stegner and Doig in several of the most isolated and least populated places in the Rocky Mountain west in the late 1800’s through the 1950’s. These three authors crafted the setting and time so that every reader becomes a part of the different landscape and understands how its geography, geology, weather, history, relationships and man-made structures shape the characters, events and plot of the novel.
Consider Belle’s two arbors, one an isolated but glorious peninsula jutting out into a Great Lake, the other a major university striving to become great in its academics, arts, architecture, and athletics. The descriptions, details, and changes in both settings over three decades must engage the reader in “being there” with Belle and her cast of allies and antagonists. For example, up north that’s why the primary antagonist Sven Surtr is not an enemy to be fought to the death; although a more recent immigrant, he’s trying to make a living with the Day family in this unique landscape as much as Belle, Pip, David and their families. They disagree as to means, and do engage in a few pitched battles, but over time they learn from one another and eventually join forces. In contrast, the primary antagonist downstate, Ned Strait, represents such an archetype of bias in academia that Belle (and Nym’s other enemies and objects of disdain) try to avoid, undercut, get around, remove or outlive him. Only in her last days does Belle finally realize that Ned Strait has aged into a blowhard relic of the past.
Given the timeline of Belle’s story, how did you approach bridging her independent ideals and her fortitude against moments in history where women were challenged the most for having an independent mind? What did you want reader’s to take away most by Belle’s example?
Dimond responds: Belle fought the longstanding, hidebound academic bias against women from her first days at Michigan to her last, as much as she bridled at her father’s male prejudice against any woman, even his daughter, running the family business. Yet from beginning to end, whether in pitched battles or nudges, suggestions, alliances with new allies, strategic investments or end-arounds and detours, Belle also came to love her Papa and the University more. This hard-won respect was a two-way street, as her Papa accepted Belle as an equal partner and named her his replacement as Chair of their Empire and as the University began to accept some of her suggestions, honor her, and ever so slowly to make a few changes.
Consider how Belle counseled her brother right after World War II when Pip wanted only to wash his hands of the University. Pip had started helped fund, and headed one of the largest and most important War Labs with many UM grads and scientists across the Huron River from the main campus: its goal, to win the “cat and mouse games” to detect any threats by enemy planes, ships and subs and to provide cover for Allied attacks by air or sea. But the University chose a full professor with a Ph.D. over Pip to oversee all research at War’s end and sent the rest of Pip’s best scientists and closest astronomer partner John Kraus packing. Ironically, Kraus ended up at Michigan’s biggest rival, Ohio State, along with their long planned “Big Ear” radio telescope to scan the universe for signs of intelligent life. Although furious at the University over another slight to her now war-hero brother, Belle doesn’t throw in the towel. Instead, she fought all the harder to keep the University open to qualified women, even as the WWII Veterans began to flood the campus; and she worked with her allies to get Michigan to sponsor a creative writers’ camp at her Homestead Inn. Over time, she also encouraged Pip to work with Michigan’s new CFO on several conservation and research initiatives up north and a new North Campus for engineering and scientific research. As a result, Pip and the University work so well together that Michigan’s new President (from Ohio State, no less) honors Pip by making him the keynoter at the opening of the North Campus.
By such examples, Belle shares: (a) how a strong will, if not deterred by losses and slights, can with persistence and smarts make a difference; and (b) why it’s important to keep building on the good parts of an important institution or unique place rather than tearing it down or giving up and moving on. And along Belle’s journey, the reader will enjoy a great story.
Was there anything in your research you were unable to broach inside the novel? How did you pick and choose what to highlight and use as you wrote the novel?
Dimond responds: For three reasons, I invented the two main antagonists to personify the different challenges and types of people Belle, Pip, David and her allies had to confront Up North and downstate. First, I didn’t feel comfortable naming and shaming any of the several lesser real-life adversaries Belle and Pip might confront in either place. Second, as set forth in 6 above, my research did guide the two different types of antagonists needed for the two different places.
Third, I got lucky with the Ned Strait character who acted under the pseudonym Nym, a very minor character in a few Shakespeare plays. Alan Seager, the UM English Professor who inspired much of my Rabbie character, also wrote the best biography of Ted Roethke. In that book, Seager quoted from a letter written by another UM English Professor under the pseudonym Nym: it “blackballed” the Michigan poet from teaching and left Roethke out of a job during the depths of the Great Depression. Guess what? In researching a completely unrelated aspect of Frost’s life in the archives of Michigan’s Special Collections for Frost’s assistant and companion after 1938, I found a copy of a 1926 student literary magazine to which Frost had given a poem for the cover: several of the short stories and essays offered satires about a know-it-all, domineering Michigan professor of Shakespeare named Nym who looked down his nose at all creative writers. In one of the short stories, Nym even tried to impress one of his young woman student marks by showing her how to drive his stick-shift roadster. What better model and name for Belle’s antagonist at the University than Nym, AKA Ned Strait?!
Did anything surprise you as you were writing Belle of Two Arbors?
Dimond responds: After my last edit and final publication of this novel, many drafts and more revisions, long after Belle started blessing me a decade ago, I continue to wonder about her. I hope that readers will continue to wonder just as much about her, long after each finishes reading The Belle of Two Arbors.
What uplifts your spirit the most when you are not researching or writing novels?
- sharing time with my two adult daughters and four Grandlads;
- continuing to play competitive tennis with my long-time partners and competitors, some for more than 60 years
- watching a great movie or reading a good book
- helping conserve Michigan’s two magnificent peninsulas, four Great Lakes and pure fresh water for generations to come and helping the University of Michigan and Amherst College do even better by their new students than each did for me.
I am thankful to the author for providing such a comprehensive response to my enquires thereby giving my readers a visceral insight into why Belle resonated with me. They can also see a different in perspectives – from my own takeaways from my review and how the author sees how his novel will be perceived by readers. Literature is dynamically intuitive – each of us interprets what we read through a different pair of lens; both author and reader complete the circle of ruminations which can be lifted out of a singular work.
May this conversation help you decide if “The Belle of Two Arbors” has intrigued you to read. I limited my responses to a few I felt pertinent to add a thread of response whilst letting the authors words speak for this work of Biographical Historical Fiction.
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Similar to blog tours where I feature book reviews, as I choose to highlight an author via a Guest Post, Q&A, Interview, etc., I do not receive compensation for featuring supplemental content on my blog. I provide the questions for interviews and topics for the guest posts; wherein I receive the responses back from publicists and authors directly. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them; I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers.
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Thanks so much for being on the blog tour for this book. This interview was fantastic.