BOOKS BY MY FRIENDS
Lonely Are the Brave by LARRY ZUCKERMAN
Welcome to BOOKS BY MY FRIENDS, Larry! You’ve got a fresh-off-the-press historical fiction novel to share with us. Let’s get started.
JH: What’s the blurb for your book Lonely Are the Brave?
LZ: War hero Rollie Birch returns a widower in April 1919 to a small logging town near Seattle and decides to raise his infant daughter by himself, an unheard-of, un-American idea. Almost overnight, Rollie becomes a pariah, and gossips snicker that he’s bringing up another man’s child. Meanwhile, Kay Sorensen, who dreams of a business career and marriage as a partnership, chafes at her husband’s cold tyranny and wonders if the war has marked him. Rollie, who served under him, might know—but when Kay overcomes her distrust and asks him, the truth threatens to destroy them both and changes their lives forever.
JH: What inspired you to write Lonely Are the Brave?
LZ: I write about subversives, the quiet ones, who choose to live in ways that upset others. For Lonely Are the Brave, I wanted to write about 1919, the immediate post-WWI era in Washington, my home state, where hypocrisy filled the air like an odorless gas. So I imagined a war hero returning to a small town, where he causes a scandal by turning at-home father. (Nothing's more subversive than challenging gender norms, and during my many years as an at-home father, I remember feeling as though I had a target on my back.) To give my veteran a complement and contrast, I paired him with the daughter of the local timber baron, who draws fire for her dreams of a business career.
JH: What one thing do you love most about writing?
LZ: Writing lets me live in my imagination, where my voice emerges loud and clear, and the characters I create do my bidding (or show me they'd rather not). For however long I immerse myself in my work, I can forget my cares.
JH: What’s next for you in the way of writing/publishing?
LZ: I'm working on a novel about Russian-Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side in 1909.
JH: How can readers contact you?
LZ:
BIO:
Larry Zuckerman, named for a Shakespearean actor because of crossed paths during World War II, has been blending drama with history ever since he took up writing at age fifteen. His first book, The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World, was excerpted in the New York Times and won an award in the United Kingdom. The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I resulted from his lifelong passion for that tragic era, which inspired Lonely Are the Brave, his fiction debut.
JH: Thanks, Larry. Lonely Are the Brave sounds like a great story. Best wishes for success with this and all your projects. Come back anytime and update us when the next book is ready for the big time!
All good things,
Joy
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A great period to write about. Good luck with it!