Sara Paretsky

Q&A with Sara Paretsky about Bleeding Kansas

Kansas? What’s that about? You’re so identified with Chicago
My family moved to Kansas when I was four; I lived there until I moved permanently to Chicago in 1968. When I left Kansas, I was trying to leave behind my whole past, but of course that has a way of sneaking up on you, and the time came when I had to write about it.

A History of Segregation
My father was the first Jew hired in a tenure position by the University of Kansas. In the fifties, the town of Lawrence suffered from de facto segregation, which affected Jews as well as African Americans and American Indians. My parents side-stepped the problem by buying an old farm house out in the country. The house was quite wonderful, with three fireplaces, a silver-backed drinking fountain on the second floor, a Tiffany chandelier in the dining room, and beautiful wood molding along the high ceilings.  It had been built by a family called Gilmore in the decades after the Civil War; even though my family lived there for 45 years, people still call it the Gilmore House, never the Paretsky house.

Unfortunately my parents’ marriage imploded. During three decades of bitter fighting, they neglected the house, which began to look like the House of Usher. I use the Gilmore house as the model for the Fremantle house in Bleeding Kansas (you can see the outside in the photo on the left).

A Connection to Helen Keller
A few years ago, when CBS filmed a dramatic version of the life of Helen Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan, they chose my childhood home as the setting. They put on fresh paint and wallpaper, and even built a gazebo in the garden. On the down side, they took out all the wall sockets to keep the house “in period,” then tried to avoid re-installing them, claiming the house didn’t have electricity when they started filming. 

Naive Wiccans—Were They Naked or Clothed?
When they became old and frail, my parents had to move back to town to be close to medical care.  The young couple who bought the house turned out to be Wiccans—followers  of a religion based on pre-Christian European beliefs—who were hoping to practice Wicca ceremonies in the Kansas countryside.

Poor things—they were city women!  They didn’t realize one has far more privacy in the middle of New York city than in rural America. After they performed a full-moon ceremony—and reports differ whether they were naked or clothed—a neighbor objected. He lived over a quarter mile away, but he was both a Sheriff’s deputy and a born-again Christian and  began harassing them in a frightening way.
My brother Jonathan, a lawyer who still lives in Kansas, helped the women get an injunction against the neighbor, but it was all very unsettling. This happened when my father was dying eight years ago, but it sat in the back of my mind all these years as a story I wanted to tell.

Bleeding Kansas
In the 1850’s some of America’s bloodiest battles were fought in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery settlers. Over a thousand anti-slavery pioneers were murdered by slave forces, but in the end, in 1861 Kansas came into the Union as a free state. My home town of Lawrence was at the center of the anti-slavery action.

A century later some of the bloodiest battles over civil rights were fought in Lawrence, Kansas. For fifteen months in 1970-71, there was at least one bomb a day exploded on the University of Kansas campus or in the surrounding county. Women’s rights, African American rights, American Indian rights, and protests against the Vietnam War divided the community and the state.

You have a PhD in American History?
My dissertation discussed Calvinists and education in the 1820’s through the 1850’s. I loved having a chance to go back to that period. I read a lot of diaries and memoirs of anti-slavery emigrants to Kansas, and even created diaries for the members of the Grellier and Schapen families who came to Kansas during that period.

What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Tommy Franks’ book asked why Kansans vote against their own interests. A big part of the answer lies in the history of Bleeding Kansas. The riots and bombs of the ‘70’s convinced conservatives that Godless Communism had taken over. They vowed to undo this situation by gaining control of all important institutions at the grassroots level. This was the start of the so-called Republican Revolution, in which social conservatives took over library and school boards along with local government and local political party leadership.

So Kansas—is it a state of freaks?  In Cold Blood and no evolution in the public schools?
Maybe because it’s the geographic center of the lower forty-eight, Kansas is kind of a bellwether of the nation—first in the fight over slavery in the 1850’s, then in the confrontations over civil rights in the 1970’s, and, more recently, in the fierce debates over religion and public policy of the last ten years. In 2006, the state began turning its back on conservative extremism. Moderate Republicans bolted the party to defeat an extremist attorney general, who ignored the law to pursue his own religious agenda, and the state as a whole banded together to support proper science standards. This change should serve as a harbinger of hope for the rest of the nation.

Bleeding Kansas: The Novel
The political and social history of the state provides the backdrop for a story set in the Kaw River Valley where I grew up. Three families who have been farming in the Valley since their ancestors came as anti-slavery pioneers in the 1850’s have a long history of feuds and friendship. Two of the families, the Schapens and the Grelliers, are divided on almost every important issue, from the brand of Christianity they practice to the war in Iraq.

When Gina Haring, a young woman who is a lesbian and a Wiccan, rents an abandoned farmhouse close by, she serves as the catalyst for upheaval in all their lives. The Grelliers’ son Chip enlists in the army and goes to Iraq. His death there devastates the Grellier family. 

The fundamentalist Schapens find themselves with what looks like a perfect red heifer in their dairy herd.  Their belief  that the heifer will speed Jesus’ return in glory adds to the turmoil in the valley. Gina’s bonfires, Chip Grellier’s death, the Schapens’ heifer and an exorcism at the Schapens church, combine in an explosive climax on Halloween.

A Perfect Red Heifer?  Is this for real?
I first heard about this in a New Yorker article. Apparently fundamentalist Jews and Christians are united in wanting to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Christians think prophecies in Revelation mean Christ can’t return until there’s a Temple for him to destroy; Jews want a Temple for worship.  Both groups interpret a passage in Numbers to mean that the High Priest can’t perform Temple sacrifices until he’s purified with ashes made from a perfect red heifer. 

No one knows what perfect means—can she have three white hairs? Five? Meanwhile, fundamentalist Christian farmers in Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere are working like mad to genetically engineer such a calf.

The Israeli government worries about the heifer in a serious way. They know that any effort to rebuild the Temple will make the Middle East explode, and one of their anti-terrorism institutes closely monitors efforts to breed such a calf. 
An entertaining footnote: one of the contracts between Christian and Jewish fanatics on the subject says that in the event of the Rapture—in which the Christians will be whisked directly to heaven—the Jews get all rights to the perfect heifer.

No V I in Bleeding Kansas?
V I took such a beating in Fire Sale that she’s recuperating in a spa near her mother’s childhood home in Umbria. She’ll be back next year in an adventure that takes her back to the riot-filled summer of 1966, when her father Tony was a beat cop helping protect Martin Luther King.

Was it hard to write a book without V I?
Bleeding Kansas was a book I’d wanted to write for eight years.  Besides, I needed to take a break from V I, so I could think about her stories in a fresh way.  It is always challenging to write a book in the third person, told in multiple voices, but it’s the challenges that help me grow in my craft.

Paretsky in Private

An ideal Day
My granddaughter loves elephants and wants to dedicate her life to rescuing and caring for them. For her thirteenth birthday, I took her to St. Louis to see their baby elephants – Chicago’s zoos don’t have any right now. This trip made the two of us start asking everyone we know what their ideal day would be. The kid’s? A day in bed, an evening at the beach with the dog, a movie and a pizza. Mine? A day at the beach with the kid and the dog, a hike in the mountains, and a long leisurely dinner with good friends.

A Shoe Fetish Inspired by Her Grandmother
My quest in life, as is true for many women, is for a pair of shoes that look elegant—and that will take me ten miles without hurting my feet. I have a pair of killer heels that I bought because they reminded me of the shoes my granny used to wear.  She was 4'11, but she had so much energy she projected 6 feet. She always wore suede high heels, open toed, with rosettes on the toes, so when I saw a pair I bought it. I love these shoes, but I can barely totter across the room in them, which gives me even more admiration for my granny than I had before.

The Montblanc “Dostoevsky”
I love beautiful pens and writing paper. When I do book signings, I use a Montblanc roller ball, a model the company calls “the Dostoevsky.” It makes me a more confident writer, to be connected to Dostoevsky.  In fact, I just wrote an afterward for the new Signet edition of The Brothers Karamazov.

If You Invite Sara for a Drink
I love red wine and champagne, especially Drapier, although if I could afford Krug, that's what I'd drink. I like soft big reds, like St. Emilions and St. Juliens, which I also can hardly afford. I'm trying to find a wine from Italy called Torgiano—it's supposed to be a wonderful red and comes from the same part of Italy—near Orvieto—where V I's mother grew up. When I do drink whisky, I prefer the single malts, particularly Oban, but there are days when Johnny Walker Black—VI’s drink—is the only thing that will do.

Treasured Mail
My 60th birthday present: a letter a week from Dorothy Salisbury Davis for 60 weeks. Dorothy, now 91, is one of the biggest influences on my life and writing.

A note from Julia Child written shortly before she died after I wrote to describe the anniversary dinner I’d prepared for my husband from The French Chef.

A handwritten letter from President Clinton after he read my essays, Writing in an Age of Silence.

Love letters from my husband of 36 years.

Her Dog Digs
According to the experts, dogs dig because they’re bored, lonely or anxious. My dog interrupts play to start a new excavation. I even put in a sand box so the dog would have her own digging space. That worked for about one year. My best guess? The dog is channeling a World War I trench warfare victim. Every now and then she thinks the shelling has started and it’s time to create a new fox hole. Cesar Millan agrees.

In Her Next Life, Paretsky Will Come Back as Audrey Hepburn
I’m in love with clothes. I have several Givenchy pieces in my wardrobe, probably because Givenchy dressed Audrey Hepburn, who I will look like in my next life. My husband says a Polish streetfighter cannot possibly resemble a Parisian gamine, but I keep hoping if I put on the right outfit, people will think I've stumbled out of Charade.

Paretsky on Writing

Day Dreams
As a child I lived in a world of day-dreams, where I read stories and wrote some of my own. It was how I made sense of the world around me, and how I escaped from some of its more painful parts. My older brother and I would write plays together, and make up fantasy games that we acted out.

Teachers Make a Difference
My mother was a great story-teller, who could think up stories on her feet in a way I’ve never been able to. It was my fourth grade teacher who encouraged me to write more, and a high school history teacher who told me I had a gift in writing; I dedicated my fourth book, Bitter Medicine, to my teachers.

A Long Wait for a Public Voice
Although I kept writing throughout my adolescence, and into my twenties, my stories were very private, the expressions of a world of daydreams. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties and working for a big insurance company, that I developed the confidence to try to write for publication.

An Obsession with Voice and Voicelessness
The summer of 1966, when Martin Luther King was in Chicago working for social justice, I volunteered in a nearby community day camp. I saw up-close the painful emotional scars created when people have no power, no control, no voice in the decisions that determine their lives.

Growing up as the only girl in a family that prized boys, growing up as the only Jew in a mostly Protestant world, had left me feeling voiceless myself in ways that made me especially sensitive to the lives I witnessed in Chicago in 1966. I have written about this experience in depth in my essays, Writing in an Age of Silence (Verso: 2007).

Voice and voicelessness—who speaks? Who is heard? Who decides?—are the themes of all of my work, both in my novels and essays, as well as my public lectures.