More interested in the author than the story. Happy to find that Harriet published her
first novel at the age of 73 in 1983 and with that novel, she went on to win a
national Book Award.
It’s never too late!
I found this particular story a bit dry – I didn’t really
connect with it but what I took away from the experience was learning about
Doerr – the author.
There is a rich interview with the author on the Stanford
University website (she finished her degree at the age of 67) and it seems that
she simply wrote about what she knew…and with that, she was discovered.
In the Contributor’s Notes section in the back of this
edition of BASS, she simply states that Edie was an actual person – someone she
“knew when she was young”.
