Molly Patterson's ambitious debut novel, Rebellion, has garnered serious praise in advance of its August on-sale date. Tracing the lives of four daring women across several generations and continents, Rebellion received a starred review from both Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews. Per Kirkus, Patterson is "a talent to watch…manages to travel broad swaths of history and geography while creating intimate moments with a refreshing lack of sentimentality; and the novel’s sense of adventure makes it addictive reading." We are thrilled to have Molly join us today for a guest post, so without further ado, enjoy!
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For one academic year, from September 2012 to June 2013, I held the title of Writer-in-Residence at a tony boys’ school in Washington, D.C. The position offered a vanishingly small stipend, room and board, medical insurance, and very few duties. I was expected to teach a fifty-minute class four days a week and I was expected to write. That was all.
I’d been working on Rebellion for two years when I moved to D.C. and the book seemed to be falling apart in my hands: the structure was unsound, the main character uninteresting. I’d never written a novel before and I wasn’t sure that I was capable of writing one. There were no screens on the window to my apartment and one day, two different birds flew into my bedroom, hours apart. They found their way out, but I remained stuck.
The nation’s capital has a lot to offer someone with time but no money. One day, I took a bus down Massachusetts Avenue and made my way across the Mall to the Library of Congress. Previously, my idea of the type of person granted access to this institution was a researcher dressed in corduroy, someone who knew her way around a footnote, an endnote, and a bibliography. I had no formal research training. I didn’t even know what I wanted to look for in the Library’s vast catalog. But it turns out that in one important respect, the Library of Congress is the same as all the other libraries I’ve frequented and loved over the years: it’s open to all. You don’t need an association with any institution to use it. What you need is a project, a passion. That I had.
My first time—and, indeed, every time—in the Library, I was awed. It’s a stunning building, with marble floors and columns, stained glass, mosaic ceilings, and wooden study tables polished with age. In my memory, there are little alcoves off the main reading room where few ever venture. Several stories up, tourists gaze down from behind glass as if into a fishbowl, while inside the reading room, a focused quiet is maintained.
During my days at the Library, I perused volumes of correspondence from American missionaries in China. It was valuable research for the novel, but even more valuable was the feeling I got from being there. Sitting with my stack of musty volumes, surrounded by others with their own creaky books, I had no idea who was an academic working on a dissertation, who was tracking his family’s genealogy, and who was following a pet interest just for fun. It didn’t matter. We were all researchers, given credence by our curiosity and a desire to satisfy it.
When I was feeling stuck working on Rebellion, a visit to the Library couldn’t point the path forward, but it could reveal what was beyond the windshield and out the side windows, too. Of course, I wanted to see what was there—that’s what every writer always wants: to find out what’s on the next page, and the next, and the next.
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Thanks, Molly! Rebellion goes on sale August 8th. Can't wait? If you're a librarian, the egalley can be downloaded from Edelweiss. Happy reading!
-Chris