Featured Interview With Eliot Pattison
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I spent my childhood on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in what you might call chicken and crab country. We lived near a remote navy air base, and I used to lie down in the middle of our hayfield to watch the aircraft approaching the base, convinced that they had to be coming from the other side of the world and dreaming about all the exotic sights they had seen. It nurtured my imagination, and my appetite for travel. Today, after experiencing much of that world, I live on a colonial-era farm in the beautiful Appalachian foothills of Pennsylvania. Among our companions are many two and four-legged creatures, including Bernese Mountain Dogs, horses, and a guardian goose We are playing a small part in preserving an endangered breed of gentle giants, Shire horses.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I bonded with books at an early age. As a young boy, I spent three years on crutches with limited mobility and my beloved relatives, including a globe-trotting librarian aunt, kept sending me books. Many were beyond my years but I always eagerly paged through them and treasured them even more as I grew into them. I was seven when I discovered what seemed to be the very height of human civilization, the rural rolling library called the Bookmobile. I became an avid customer, often waiting first in line for its weekly arrival in the nearby village and always leaving with my arms filled with new knowledge and adventure. I was in high school—by then we had moved to Indiana– when my English teacher assigned us to write a short story. He really liked what I produced, and said “You should keep at it.” So I did.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Asking me to pick a favorite author is like asking me to pick a favorite color or food. There are so many great ones, offering up new hues and flavors to suit my varying appetites. I have very eclectic tastes, but overall my preferred genre is literary historical fiction, where British writers excel. My all-time favorite would be Patrick O’Brian, whose maritime novels have often transported me to the early 19th century. Close behind would be Hilary Mantel and C.J. Sansom, For pure escapism—think audiobooks on long drives—no one beats Bernard Cornwell, who opens doors leading as far back as the 11th century.
I had been writing reviews, essays, and nonfiction books for years before attempting a novel. Two books particularly informed that decision—Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park, two very different but very brilliant works. It is probably no coincidence that one was a historical mystery and the other a mystery set in a remote, somewhat exotic location. My Bone Rattler series is of course historical mystery and my Skull Mantra books have often been described as “faraway mysteries.”
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The novel, like the earlier entries in the Bone Rattler series, is driven by my belief that historical fiction can be an antidote to our historical apathy. We suffer greatly from being disconnected to our past. Part of the problem is that our history texts are sterile, presenting the characters that shaped our history as lifeless mannequins. But our past was not lifeless. The DNA that defines each of us was in living, breathing humans centuries ago, individuals who, despite differences in material goods and technology, had many of the same appetites, ambitions, frustrations and dilemmas that we experience today.
Like all the books in this series, Freedom’s Ghost builds on actual historical events and characters, bringing them to life by combining history with humanity. These figures include, John Hancock, John Adams, actual British officers, escaped slaves, and the enigmatic Crispus Attucks; their paths converge and become violently entangled, raising a startling question: was the Boston Massacre a military blunder or a murder plot? My protagonist Duncan McCallum painfully confronts that question. Ultimately the book is about the many dimensions, and perceptions, of freedom. The nature of beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but, as Duncan learns, the nature of freedom is in one’s heart.
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