Transcription of Island Authors #297
Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Linda Greenlaw: Many, many years later, an opportunity to write a book comes along. As I said, at first I resisted it. “No. That sounds like a lot of work.” Then I had to understand and realize what an opportunity I was being handed. Not only was I being asked to write a book… I mean, “Wow, they’re going to pay me something?” The first thing I learned about being a writer is this thing called an advance. It was like, “That’s way different from fishing. You get paid before you do the work? That’s crazy, right?”
Jane Goodrich: It’s different when you’re older because you don’t have as much time, so you don’t think you can…. I can’t take on another 30-year project, clearly, but yeah, there are other things. As I said, people have been asking me to write more things now that people have read the book. Literary agents, people call you and they say, “You should write more. You should write more.” I do have ideas about other stories that I might like to write, and so perhaps that’s what I’ll do.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 297, Island Authors, airing for the first time on Sunday, May 28, 2017.
Our rugged coast and diverse geography make Maine the perfect place for writers to find inspiration. Today we speak with best-selling author Linda Greenlaw, a native of Isle au Haut, whose latest book, Shiver Hitch, will be released in June. We also speak with Jane Goodrich, author of the novel, The House at Lobster Cove, about her experience researching and recreating an architecturally-significant home on Swan’s Island. Thank you for joining us.
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Dr. Lisa Belisle: It’s always fun to have people back in the studio again, especially people who came in very early on in the Love Maine Radio world. Today I’m speaking again with Linda Greenlaw, who is a best-selling author and the only female swordfishing boat captain on the east coast of the United States. Her latest book, Shiver Hitch, will be published June 6. Thanks for coming in today.
Linda Greenlaw: Well, thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You’ve been so many things. I feel like we introduce you as the only female swordfish boat captain, but you’ve also been a cookbook authoress, author, you have this new…. This is mystery. Is that this latest book that you’re doing?
Linda Greenlaw: Yeah. Shiver Hitch is a mystery, and it’s actually book number three in a series. The first two….
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You’ve been busy.
Linda Greenlaw: Yeah. I’ve been really busy. I wrote the first two mysteries several years ago. At the time, I signed a contract to do three. Before I wrote the third one, I changed publishing houses. They were all about nonfiction from Linda Greenlaw, so I wrote a couple more nonfiction and then switched publishing houses yet again. They want me to finish this series, so I signed a contract for two more books, so this is three of four, Shiver Hitch.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I see. Okay. You’ve had this opportunity to really get your hands dirty as a swordfishing captain, but you also like to write. Some people would wonder about that. They’re in such different parts of the….
Linda Greenlaw: Yeah. Well, don’t wonder too long. I do not like writing. I never intended to become a writer. I love fishing. It’s what I consider myself. I introduce myself as a commercial fisherman. It’s a little weird now. This is book number 10, and I still pinch myself if someone introduces me as an author. Yeah, fishing is my first love. Now I feel like I’m writing to support my fishing habit, if that makes sense. Writing’s been very good to me. I’ve been very fortunate. My books have done well, so I’ve enjoyed the money, but the writing process itself, wow. Yeah, it’s the most difficult work I’ve ever done.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Why get into it in the first place?
Linda Greenlaw: I was invited to write my first book, and it was because of the very generous portrayal of Linda Greenlaw in The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. That book came out, and it was probably on the top of every best-selling list on the planet. I started getting phone calls from publishers saying, “Hey, you know, we’ve read The Perfect Storm. We’re intrigued with this female fisherman thing you have going on. Do you want to write a book?” At first, I resisted. I said, “No way.”
I never aspired to doing anything other than fishing. I love my life. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do was fish, and I felt so fortunate. I found what I considered to be my life’s work at a very young age. I started fishing commercially very seriously at the age of 19. It was a college job, paid my way through school. Back then, I said I was fishing for tuition, but I really did fall in love with my life and continued. After I graduated from Colby College with a degree in English, I took that degree offshore and started my career.
Many, many years later, an opportunity to write a book comes along. As I said, at first I resisted it, “No. That sounds like lot of work.” Then I had to understand and realize what an opportunity I was being handed. Not only was I being asked to write a book…. I mean, “Wow, they’re going to pay me something?” The first thing I learned about being a writer is this thing called an advance. It was like, “That’s way different from fishing. You get paid before you do the work? That’s crazy, right?” But I’ve been very fortunate with it. Still don’t like it. I like my books, and I like what the books have brought my way in the way of changing life. I can’t say that I don’t at least appreciate my writing life in the winter when I’m not on the water. I used to fish year-round, obviously, all over the place. I now do appreciate sitting inside and looking out. It’s blowing a gale, freezing spray, and I’m like, “Here I am in my nice, little, warm office looking out the window at it.”
Dr. Lisa Belisle: And you still get to get paid.
Linda Greenlaw: I still get to get paid, and I still spend as much time as I can on the water. I’m still very much involved in the lobster fishing industry, which is, for me, very seasonal. I just got my boat in the water last week, and I’ll be fishing soon. I fish for halibut May and June and get my traps in the water. Last year, I fished almost until Christmas, so it’s a good … It still kind of feeds that part of what I feel I need.
My husband’s a boat builder. I do all the launchings and sea trials, so I get to drive a number of boats. I do a lot of deliveries for him, which is fun. Again, it gets me on the water. That part of my life still, I feel, still feeds the writing part of my life. Even when I’m not writing nonfiction, I’m not writing about my life. Writing mysteries, they say, “Write what you know.” My mysteries are very much small Maine coastal community. The characters are…. Everyone I know is a great character for a book.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, that must be a little complicated, because I have been up to Isle au Haut and there’s not so many people there to choose from. Even in Surry and that whole area, especially in the wintertime, it’s not like there’s lots and lots of people.
Linda Greenlaw: No, there aren’t a lot of people. There aren’t a lot of people, but fortunately, inspiration comes in a lot of ways. As I said, almost everyone I know…. I can take anybody in my life and make a great book character just because people are quirky, and I like quirky characters. Those are the type of people that I am sort of, I guess, drawn to or attracted to. I find them interesting, and those are the kind of people that are fun to write about, and they’re the kind of people that are fun to read about. I mean, I think about the books that I’ve read and enjoyed. I mean, it wouldn’t make a very interesting book to just write about sort of a dull person.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: How do people feel about you using them as characters, or do they even know, really?
Linda Greenlaw: In my works of nonfiction, people are very aware because, in most instances, I’ve used real names just to keep it true. You may be surprised to find that the only people that are upset with me are people that I haven’t used in a book. I actually have friends who say, “Hey, you know, use my name. I don’t care what you say about me.” Those are good friends to have because, obviously, there are things you’d like to say that maybe you don’t want to put a name on, but hey, if they don’t care, it’s all good.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, let’s talk about Shiver Hitch. Let’s talk about the story behind it because, obviously, this is going to be coming out very soon, and you’ve put a lot of work into it.
Linda Greenlaw: Yeah. It’s a ton of work. All of my books have been a ton of work. It’s very difficult work for me. Shiver Hitch, as I said, is book three in a four-book series. My main character is Jane Bunker, and she is a highly-decorated detective. She has spent the majority of her life in Miami in Dade County where she’s really been very busy fighting drugs. She was born in Maine on a small island off the coast. I call it Acadia Island, but it’s very much fashioned after Isle au Haut. Jane’s mother pretty much kidnapped Jane and her infant younger brother at the time and went as far away from this island as she could find. That ended up being Miami, Florida, and this was where she raised her two children very…. Anyway, I don’t want to give you a book report here because I’m hoping people will pick the book up and read it.
Jane finds herself in her early 40s back in Maine because of some catastrophic, mostly emotional events that occur in Miami, which are yet to unfold. This is book three. I’m going to wait until I know I’m really on my last book to solve all the mysteries in Jane’s life. She finds herself in Maine in a very small town where things seem pretty humdrum, but trouble follows her. They’re murder mysteries, and Shiver Hitch is no exception. Shiver Hitch takes her to Acadia Island, which is somewhere she hasn’t returned to since she was like six years old. I don’t know.
I like to write a lot about some current events so I talk about…. In all of the mysteries, I talk about the issues of loss of working waterfront. I’m really getting pretty deep into the drug problems in Maine, so that part’s interesting for me. I’ll tell you, the toughest part of writing the mysteries, for me, is the plot. It’s very difficult. My nonfiction that I wrote, they’re basically memoirs. I never needed an outline. You’re writing your own story. My first mystery that I wrote, I didn’t start with an outline, and that proved to be kind of a huge issue. I was like three-quarters of the way through the book and I still didn’t know who had committed the murder, so I’m like, “Oh, my God. I’ve got to wrap this thing up. Just choose, you know, a suspect.” I’ve learned. Book number three I started with an outline and I feel that it’s…. The more you do things, the better you get. I like to think that, anyway, so I think this is probably the best of the three mysteries. You learn some tricks of the trade, I guess.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Were you always interested in mysteries?
Linda Greenlaw: Not always interested in mysteries. I enjoy anything that’s well-written, and there’s no particular genre that I say, “Oh, you know, I’ve got to read every bit of science fiction I can get my hands on.” That’s not me. I have read mysteries, and the mysteries that I have enjoyed really…. When I was swordfishing, I read a lot of Sue Grafton, A is for Alibi on through. I liked the sort of, I guess you would call it the cozier mystery, not super-scary, because I don’t like things that stay with me when I go to sleep at night, so the cozier mystery. I love the length, page-wise, of the book. I could read it on the way to the fishing grounds. Five days, a couple hours a day be done with the book, put it to bed, start my fishing trip, and then maybe have a second one to read on the way home, that’s the type of mystery that I like.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Why were you an English major at Colby? What was the background on that?
Linda Greenlaw: I basically majored in English because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I knew I did not love math and science. I enjoyed reading. I took mostly literature courses. I didn’t take any creative writing courses. I figured if I majored in English, I’d get through college.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I think you’re correct about writing. Having been a writer for a while myself, and mostly at this point doing magazine work for Maine Magazine and Old Port Magazine, it is always work. It’s not that it’s not enjoyable, but it is always work. It’s a different work for me than being a doctor, the way that being a writer is a different work for you than being a swordfishing captain. There’s this strange thing that I think some people believe that it… because we can all do it, we can all type words into a document, that somehow we’re all capable of creating great works. Really, anybody can write, but it doesn’t mean everybody’s going to be able to figure out the craft of it or be able to be persistent enough to complete a work.
Linda Greenlaw: Yeah. I really strongly agree with the last part of what you just said, and that’s the persistence of actually sitting down every day. I know when I sign a contract, I set a date. This is my start date. Of course, I’m going to have a deadline. I need to sit down every single day seven days a week and totally commit myself. I treat it like I do my fishing. It’s all in. Now, having said that, three or four hours a day is about all I can take. After that, I mean, I can push it and sit there longer. Believe me, I could sit there for eight hours, but after three or four hours, it’s garbage.
I’ve learned that three or four hours a day and then I can do something else, go haul some lobster traps, go paint some buoys, get out on a boat, take a walk, take a hike, cross-country ski, ice skate, whatever, just to get away from it. I’m still writing in my head when I’m doing this other, what I like to think more of a mindless activity, to the point of hauling lobster traps and actually composing and polishing a paragraph in my head. The next day, I sit down first thing in the morning and I don’t wonder where I’m starting. I know. I’ve already got it in my head where I’m starting.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You’ve also had to learn something about the structure of these different genres being a nonfiction writer versus a cookbook writer versus a mystery writer. There is something different about each of those structures and the craft of them is probably slightly different as well.
Linda Greenlaw: Yes. The writing itself is the same. No matter what you’re writing, it’s personal on some level. Now, obviously, you think, “Well, a mystery…. This Jane Bunker, that’s not personal,” but it is. I mean, every thought…. I write in the first person. Every thought had to have originated in my head. I work very hard to make Jane Bunker not Linda Greenlaw, but it’s nearly impossible to keep everything out, if that makes sense.
The three different crafts, yeah, they’re all Linda Greenlaw. My head notes in the cookbook… I co-authored both books with my mom and that’s been fun for me, but yeah, a totally different writing process, I guess. I’ve been very fortunate to have good editors and people to work with who…. I knew going into my first book that I knew nothing about putting a book together. I felt confident in my ability to write, but that’s far different from putting a book together. I think you mentioned that. Anyone has the ability to write. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone’s story is worthy of being told. But boy, getting from there to having it in a book, it’s sheer work. That’s all it is. It’s just work.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: It does require being on a team, because people can self-publish and do everything themselves, but that’s increasingly rare. Even people who self-publish, they still have line editors and they still have beta readers. I mean, there’s still stuff that you really are better off asking other people who have some expertise to help you with. If you’re actually publishing for a major house, then you have that team working with you.
Linda Greenlaw: Absolutely. It is a team. It is a team. I know that everyone has the same goal. They want this book to be as good as it can be whether, as you mentioned, the line editor… There’s a legal edit that my books go through, all these different edits and proofreads. Then there’s marketing and publicity. I have a publicist who puts a tour together, very little input from me, right? I’ve always been of the attitude, “Well, they know more than I do how to sell this damn thing,” right? Here it is. It’s a book, right? It’s great. I love it. They know how to sell it, so I go where they tell me go. I do what they tell me to do, and I do the best job I can when I’m on book tour.
I don’t despise book tour the way some authors do. It’s so funny. Very early on in my book touring career, I was on a 60-city book tour, 60 cities in 60 days. I was on the same track right before and right after certain authors. I heard two different things. One, the authors that say, “You’re kidding me. They’re sending you on the road for 60 days? You tell them, ‘No.’ That’s ridiculous.” Then there’s the other extreme, “Wow, your publishers are promoting your book like that? Oh, you’re so lucky. Look, I’ve got books in the trunk of my car, and I’m driving around begging stores to take a couple of them. Maybe I could do a signing.” Balancing those two things, yeah, I think I’m very fortunate that the publishers have been behind promoting the books. They don’t sell themselves, unless you’re Stephen King and at some point in your career that happens. I’m not there yet.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: It does speak well of you that ten books in, even the last time, they were willing to put you onto a 60-city tour.
Linda Greenlaw: Right. I’m not doing the 60-city tours now, and it’s not because I wouldn’t. It’s because publishing has changed that much since my first book, second book, third book. Those were all huge book tours. Now, it’s pretty minimal. I’m doing a three-week tour, mostly New England. I’m not jumping on an airplane every day. I know it’s budget for publishing. Things have changed. More people are buying books online or listening to books on tape. The whole marketing thing, promoting of books, has changed in a big way.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You also have other interests. I mean, you have a daughter, you have a husband. You’re very connected with your community. How do all of these things fit together with the writing life, and the book-promoting life, and the swordfish-captaining life?
Linda Greenlaw: I’ve never been very good at juggling things or straddling things. When I am working on a book, I really need to concentrate really hard every morning. I have everyone around me trained that, if I’m working on a book, they’re probably not going to see me until lunchtime, and if they do see me, I’m not going to be very friendly. Everyone kind of knows that about me now, and they know not to invite me to do things because whatever you have going on is a lot more fun than what I’m doing, and so I’m very quick to, “Yeah, okay,” drop everything and, “Sure, I’ll go do that with you because I don’t feel like writing.” I never feel like writing, so it works that way. Because I do write early in the morning, during the lobster season I can go later in the day and haul some lobster traps. I’m very self-employed, so I am in control of my own schedule in that way.
My daughter is 26 today. It’s her birthday. She’s going to be married in September. Love the fiancée, he’s a great guy. She’s doing well, so everything’s good there. My husband and I have a 14-year-old boy living with us now, a kid from Isle au Haut. After eighth grade, they have to come to the mainland to go to school for high school. Great kid. I’m 56, my husband is 65, and we have a 14-year-old boy in the house, so it’s interesting. This kid’s a challenge, but I think it’s as good for us as it is for him, but it’s work. It’s like everything.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: When we went to Isle au Haut to write the story about the Sunbeam, it was interesting to hear the people…. I think it’s the mail boat that you go out on. They had a lot to say about the community, but it wasn’t just Linda Greenlaw and Linda Greenlaw’s books, even though you’ve brought some notoriety, some fame to Isle au Haut. It was also about your husband and his business. I love that about the fact that everybody gets to be their own person and everybody is equally respected.
Linda Greenlaw: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I couldn’t be happier about Isle au Haut’s welcoming of my husband. They love my husband. He’s a Maine guy. He talks like them. He’s a worker. He builds boats. He’s successful. He’s very good at what he does. He builds the nicest boat built in Maine. Wesmac, little plug for Wesmac. It’s the Cadillac, I mean, hands down. Yeah, it’s been really nice. My husband loves the island. He loves the islanders, and he is loved in return, so that has worked out really nicely. My family loves my husband. My parents love my husband, which is important because that’s a deal breaker. It is. I mean, I got married at the age of 51. My parents really need to like the guy, right?
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I think it is interesting because it just is another example of how none of us exist in a vacuum. I mean, you have your close family. You have your extended family. You have your community. You have all the people who read your books. I mean, so this really is all woven into the person that has become who you are.
Linda Greenlaw: Absolutely, yeah. I’m really family and community-oriented, and the older I get, the more I realize that. I know that I always have been, but I guess it’s something that you don’t think about too much when you’re a lot younger. I really felt like I was in a bubble all my years of swordfishing. I didn’t think too much, talked to my family once a month between trips, at the dock for two days and might not even go home, might stay aboard the boat. Perspective changes, I guess, with maturity, for sure. Thoughts about everything change.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I look forward to reading all of your future books because I’m just intrigued with the fact that you hate writing, or at least it’s very difficult…
Linda Greenlaw: It is.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: … and that you keep doing it. I’m sure that deep down inside of you, there is something burning that causes you to keep doing it. It can’t just be because they pay you, I’m guessing.
Linda Greenlaw: No. It’s not just because they pay me because, you know what? It’s like fishing. I’ve had years where I was quite sure I was going to be a millionaire, and I’ve had other years when I’ve probably qualified for free oil and food stamps. Usually end up somewhere in the middle, but it’s not about the money. I don’t write for money. I don’t fish for money. It’s not about numbers of books sold. It’s not about pounds of fish caught. It’s something more, and I know what it is with fishing, and I haven’t discovered what it is with writing yet.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I appreciate your honesty. As someone who writes, it is very difficult, and I give you a lot of credit for, as we said, being persistent.
I’ve been speaking with Linda Greenlaw who is a best-selling author and the only female swordfishing boat captain on the East Coast of the United States. Her latest book Shiver Hitch will be published on June 6. Congratulations. Keep up the good work, and thank you so much for coming in today.
Linda Greenlaw: Thank you so much, and thanks for having me back.
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Dr. Lisa Belisle: My next guest is Jane Goodrich who is the author of The House at Lobster Cove, which is a novel about George Nixon Black, Jr., the owner of the now-demolished Kragsyde in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Goodrich and her husband built a replica of Kragsyde on Swan’s Island. Nice to have you in today.
Jane Goodrich: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I’m very impressed with all the effort that you have put, not only into the house, but in researching this novel. I mean, this was really a long time coming.
Jane Goodrich: Yes, it was. 20 years for the house and ten years of research on the novel, so they’re both similar tasks.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Tell me why you first became interested in Kragsyde.
Jane Goodrich: Kragsyde is a well-known shingle-style house. It’s considered the masterpiece of the style. I saw it in a book when I was a child, and then later saw it years later when I was in college when I was beginning to think about wanting to build a house of my own. I went back to see the house, thinking it still existed, and found it was torn down. My husband and I, almost on a whim, said, “We should rebuild it. Someone should do things like this. Someone should take these old plans of houses that no longer exist and just rebuild them.” It was almost a whim, really. It’s odd to say, but it was. We thought we could do it, “We can do that,” and we could. We were able to, and so we did that.
Then in that process, of course, when you’re wandering around what, essentially, were someone else’s rooms in a house that belonged to someone else’s life in many ways…. It’s a completely livable house for modern day, but you begin to wonder, “Who was this? What went on here? Who lived here? Why is this room this way or that room? What was the taste of the person who lived here?” So I began to become interested in Mr. Black, and as I did some cursory research on him, found out how fascinating he was.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: His is a name that doesn’t immediately pop up in the history books, but there is something very fascinating about his interplay with the times in which he lived.
Jane Goodrich: Yes.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Tell me a little bit about him.
Jane Goodrich: He’s not anyone that anyone knows about, which makes him all the more beguiling. He was a Maine resident. He was born in Maine, which I didn’t know when I bought land in Maine or when I moved here. I went to a small museum in Ellsworth, and I was shocked to find out that that was the home he had grown up in. I had no idea. That made him all the more interesting to me.
He was a person who was born in Maine whose family left Maine when he was young, and so he really was a Bostonian, actually. I’m sure he considers himself a resident of Boston or a Bostonian. He lived there most of his life, but he always kept his roots here in Maine. He always maintained the house in Ellsworth, the Woodlawn Museum it is today, as, I think, a memento of his past and of his family’s history in Maine. His family’s history in Maine goes back some generations and was influential in the growth of the state, particularly in the area in which he lived.
Once he was in Boston, he was a great philanthropist. Again, people in Boston don’t even know about him. I hope my book will introduce him to people in Boston to realize that he was a massive philanthropist at both the Museum of Fine Arts and a collector of antiques and antiquities, which he loved, animal charities, children charities, hospitals. Very modest man, but he had a great impact on philanthropy at the time. He was Boston’s largest taxpayer in 1890. No one knows his name.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Is that because he never had children?
Jane Goodrich: Some of it is that. Some of it that he was intentionally incredibly modest. He didn’t join clubs or groups of people, that’s largely why. I mean, he was just a quiet person. His personality was such that way. As I’ve always been told by the few people that remained, no one remains today, but the few people who remained 20 years ago who ever spoke with him said he was soft-spoken, modest. He wasn’t a very boastful or proud person.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: The Ellsworth of the time that you describe in the novel was pretty rough-and-tumble.
Jane Goodrich: Yes, it was. Ellsworth was a frontier. People can’t imagine that. In 1842, we hadn’t even settled the northern border of Maine with Canada when Mr. Black was born, when he was just born, so it really was a frontier town. It was on the edge of this vast forest that was really uninhabited in every way. It was difficult to live there. Farming, as nearly everyone knows, is not a prime thing in Maine. The land is difficult to farm. It’s rocky and not very productive, and so it was not an area that people settled in easily because you couldn’t live on the land that you…. The weather was rough.
Mr. Black’s grandfather was really an early person in understanding that the timber was an asset. He wouldn’t even try to farm the land. He thought we needed to cultivate the timber and sell it, and that’s how he became a very early timber tycoon, which coincided entirely with the need for timber in cities to the south. He became very wealthy by timber.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You describe in the novel some friction that occurred when his grandfather married for a second time and a family split that took place. Is that something that happened in real life?
Jane Goodrich: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. The grandfather, whose name was John Black, who was the timber tycoon, had eight children and he was married for a long time to his first wife. She died and very shortly after, he remarried a second woman who was his wife’s niece. She was much younger than him, and not all the family was on board with that. Interestingly, it nearly split the family in two. There were eight of the children. Four of them were fine with it, four weren’t. That changed very much the dynamic of the family. It also changed the way in which the Woodlawn Museum became here for us, because the last wife was allowed to live there until she lived out her life, and she did live there alone. Had that not happened, had the house been broken up amongst the eight children, it probably wouldn’t be a museum in Maine today. We have her to thank for that.
Our Mr. Black, George Nixon Black, Jr., who I’ve written about, was very, very good friends with the second wife, so much so that she named him as the executor of her will. They remained on very good terms and, to some extent, he carried the flag for her for the rest of her life. He was supportive of her and not as friendly with the side of the family that didn’t support her. That happened. It’s classic. You don’t hear these great stories, but this happens in every family, no change from 100 years ago, 200 years ago. We all have the same family issues.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: He also dealt with some amount of tragedy. In his small family, he lost a sister much earlier than he would have wanted, and then another sister at a fairly young age as well.
Jane Goodrich: Yes. He outlived nearly everyone he loved. He did lose both sisters, the first to a heart condition and the second to an appendicitis. Sadly, the year she had the appendicitis and she died was the same year that they realized at a school in Boston that appendicitis probably ought to be operated on in order to cure it. Had she had the thing ten years later, she probably would have lived. Just the time in which she lived, 1886, they still weren’t operating on appendicitis when you had it.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: That is one of the things that I really enjoyed about the book was the historical perspective that…. Of course, appendicitis now, people usually survive because we diagnose it early….
Jane Goodrich: Exactly, yes.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: … but there are many things that you brought up in the book itself that caused me to really think, “Oh, this is… The times that he was living in are so very different than where we are now.”
Jane Goodrich: They are. I tried to include much of that in my book so that it would be interesting. People don’t realize how disease-stalked, and death, and tuberculosis, and how uncertain even the world was for very wealthy people. You weren’t guaranteed to live out the week. Those things are very important, childbirth, disease, war, the way a woman was treated with a disease as opposed to the way a man was treated. A man was expected to behave differently than a woman when they had certain diseases, which is fascinating, but it was just the period of time that it was and how much it changed and affected their lives.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: How did you learn about these things? What type of research were you engaged in?
Jane Goodrich: Once I found out that my characters…. They were characters in my novel, but they were real people. Once I found out what it was that they suffered from, I did a lot of research on 19th-century tuberculosis, 19th-century heart conditions, also injuries from war wounds and how they were treated, so that I could write that accurately within the novel, because there’s Civil War wounds to be discussed as well. Yeah.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: There is a sense of, for a big part of the novel, of great loneliness on his part. Part of it is outliving his relatives, but part of it was also that he was gay.
Jane Goodrich: He was gay and in a time in which there was absolutely no template for how to behave. You didn’t see someone else gay on television and say, “Oh, well gee, maybe that’s the way it should be.” It was completely known by just secret signals or maybe suspecting someone else was like you. Given the fact that he was gay, he live a incredibly happy and successful life. His long-time partner he lived with for 34 years and they were completely…. It was just endearing fidelity the way that they lived with one another. He didn’t misstep in the way of Oscar Wilde or others. It was also important me to write in my book this fact that the lives of gay men are always written as tragedies nearly so you end up with disease, or death, or in jail. It wasn’t that way for every gay man, and so in some ways, I say it’s wonderful to write about this man who had this happy, successful life.
It took him a long time to come out, which is not a surprise. I don’t know how, really, when he understood his difference, but I can make guesses when that was. Once he did that, he chose carefully. He didn’t engage with people who would hurt him in any way or blackmail him. People think, “Oh, he was wealthy, so it was easy.” Well, maybe not. If you’re wealthy, you could be blackmailed or any number of things befall you because of that. He stepped carefully and was successful and well-loved by his friends and remained friends with people for a lifetime. He had lifelong friends. He was a happy, successful person, and you just don’t read that story. It’s just never told, so I think that’s good.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: There’s an intersection between his character and the character of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Jane Goodrich: Yes.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: In real life?
Jane Goodrich: Yes.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: They knew each other.
Jane Goodrich: Yes. They would have had to because they certainly…. They gave money to the same charities. I’ve read letters in which they were somewhat rivalrous in the quality of their horses. The two finest horse carriage teams in Boston were known to be him and her, and so they may have been somewhat rivalrous in that way. The both left money to the Nevins Farm, which cared for city horses in their retirement. That was an early MSCPA or ASPCA effort which they both gave money to.
Isabella, however, was incredibly different. She was very flamboyant. She didn’t care what people thought of her. She had a huge group of gay male men that were her friends and her associates. George Nixon Black would have avoided that like the plague. He didn’t really want to be called attention to. He didn’t require a patron, so although they moved in the same circle and knew one another, there would be no real reason for him to be around her, and he might be frightened to be. I always believed that he would think, “This would only put a neon sign on me as to what I am, and I don’t need that kind of publicity.” They behaved differently.
They were both, interestingly, outsiders in Boston. Mr. Black was always a Mainer no matter of the fact that he was wealthy. He was not a Boston Brahmin. Isabella Stewart Gardner was from New York, so terrible, terrible in Boston society. They were both outsiders, and I think they both understood that with each other and, perhaps, admired it.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Most people, of course, know her now because her name is on a museum, but you’re describing someone who has a very interesting life before she came kind of institutionalized, the name became institutionalized.
Jane Goodrich: Yes. I took care to introduce her in my book when Mr. Black would have first met her. They had a mutual friend in Carolyn Crowninshield, who was the mother of Frank Crowninshield, who was essentially the man who Mr. Black first had a crush on. They had a mutual friend in her, so he would have met her at that time. Isabella Stuart Gardner is never shown or written about as a young pregnant woman, which indeed she was. She did give birth to a child who died during the Civil War, and she seemed so vulnerable at that time in her life compared to the way people see her as all the myths about her. I mean, you’ve heard everything, her walking down the street with a cheetah on a leash and all these sort of fake things, but she was very flamboyant. When George Nixon Black, Jr. first met her, she would have been unsure of her way in Boston society, somewhat uncomfortable, also young and pregnant and all that goes with that. I wanted to write her at a time in which people might not have known her so well. I think that’s interesting.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Tell me about Kragsyde and the way that he got interested in building this house for himself in the town of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Jane Goodrich: He and his family had vacationed in Manchester, so they were aware of the land that was there. Why he wanted to be in Manchester as opposed to coming to Ellsworth in the summers, I’m not … Certainly, Ellsworth was far. It was a distance to get up to Maine. This was closer. You could get there more easily. He was friends with Robert Swain Peabody, the architect who designed the building for him. What particularly led him to actually want this, I’m not sure. I don’t know. It was certainly something that was done by people of his time.
Today, Kragsyde looks like a architectural icon. At the time, it was a fairly avant-garde piece of architecture. He was someone who was willing to try building something strange and new, which was…. It doesn’t look that way to our eyes, but it was at the time. More example, I think, of his interest in art and architecture and also because he had given stained glass windows to Trinity Church, he was interested, I think, in art as actual craft as opposed to just painting or the fine arts. He was interested in art at all levels. I think he just built it as a retreat for his family in a fashionable neighborhood, and he hired his friend who would give him a piece of this new avant-garde architecture, although it also did contain elements of the Colonial Revival which was just beginning to become popular. He would have been interested in that because he was interested in historical things. They did see it somewhat as a slightly historical architectural style in some ways.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: For you, choosing to build a replica of this on Swan’s Island was really an enormous undertaking.
Jane Goodrich: Yes.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: If you build on an island that’s accessible only by boat, no causeways, no bridges, everything needs to be brought over, all the people, all the materials. Did this ever seem daunting to you?
Jane Goodrich: It does now that I’m 57 years old, but when I was 25, I thought it was just great. No, it didn’t. It always seemed within the possible realm. We were able to do it all, you see. We understood how to build. My husband was a builder. We knew what that entailed. It didn’t seem daunting at the time. It wasn’t really daunting at the time. The finances seemed maybe insurmountable at times, and neither of us had money or family money in any way. We would build it until we ran out of money, and then live in it as it was, and build some more, and build some more, and so it was unfinished for years, in many ways. That was fine, too. We would only build when we had money. It was something that was never, “Oh, this is going to be done this week or this is going to be done within a year or two years.” We never thought that, so it never felt like there was a rush. We just worked on it as we were able. It’s sort of like eating a meal slowly.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Why Swan’s Island?
Jane Goodrich: The land was inexpensive. It was what we could afford. It was topographically correct for the house, similar to what Manchester would have been in the 19th century, but also because it was island property it was less expensive and we, as I said, didn’t have any money to start with, very little actually. It was what we could afford.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Having put so many years into researching the house and the man who built the house, what was it like to finally come to an end, to have first the house and then the book be complete?
Jane Goodrich: That’s a question I’m still digesting because it still feels like it’s not quite at the end until my book is off the shelves and I’m no longer doing promotions like this, but it feels like I’m done with both of them and in a good way. I wanted to write about him once I finished the house and I wanted to tell his story, which I thought was incredibly interesting, but I’m done with it. I guess it’s like having a child grow up, perhaps, and go off. You’re done, and you hope you’ve done a good job, and something new will come.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What is the next thing for you? What’s the new thing? I know you like to travel.
Jane Goodrich: I like to travel, so travel is always…. I’ve always traveled. In between everything, I would save money for trips. I don’t know. People are asking me to write something else, so maybe I will.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: The way you describe it, this kind of came to you…. It was almost on a whim that you built this house. Are there other things that seem to be catching your interest in a similar way?
Jane Goodrich: It’s different when you’re older because you don’t have as much time, so you don’t think you can…. I can’t take on another 30-year project, clearly, but yeah, there are other things. As I said, people have been asking me to write more things now that people have read the book. Literary agents, people call you and they say, “You should write more. You should write more.” I do have ideas about other stories that I might like to write, and so perhaps that’s what I’ll do. I think I might.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: How did your husband react when you said, “Let’s build this house on this island”?
Jane Goodrich: Well, it really wasn’t me that said, “Let’s build this house on this island.” It was more we were just astounded that it was gone. I don’t think we expected to find that it had been torn down. It felt somewhat like a body blow like, “This is terrible. This shouldn’t be.” We felt that way. We actually walked across the street from the historical society where we had been and went into a restaurant and commiserated, “Life is terrible, and all the good things are gone.” That was how we were. We said, “Somebody should rebuild these things.” I mean, it was that. It was kind of a mutual thing. It wasn’t, “Hi, honey. Can you build me a house?” It wasn’t that way. It was sort of almost a reaction to finding out it was gone. If it hadn’t been gone, it wouldn’t have happened at all. We wouldn’t have rebuilt it. We would have just said, “Wow, that’s a wonderful house,” and we would have designed our own, which was our intent. It was because it was gone. It seemed wrong that it was gone.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: This was a mutual interest, really, from the beginning.
Jane Goodrich: Yes. My husband was a builder, so yeah.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I encourage people to read your book The House at Lobster Cove. I found it very interesting, and the fact that you spent so much time researching this and being as thorough as you have been with the details makes it just a fascinating read.
I’ve been speaking with Jane Goodrich who is the author of The House at Lobster Cove, which is a novel about George Nixon Black, Jr., the owner of the now-demolished Kragsyde in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Goodrich and her husband built a replica of Kragsyde on Swan’s Island.
Thanks so much for coming in. I appreciate all the work you’ve put into the book and also in being here today.
Jane Goodrich: Thank you, Lisa.
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Dr. Lisa Belisle: With summer now upon us, I invite you to join us at the Kennebunkport Festival, five days of celebration centered around food, wine, art, music and, of course, community. This year’s festival is June 5 through 10, and we’re especially excited to note that Love Maine Radio’s producer, Spencer Albee, and his band are headlining the Maine Craft Music Festival with special guests the Ghost of Paul Revere. For tickets to the Maine Craft Music Festival and details about all the good times waiting for you at the festival, go to kennebunkportfestival.com. All of us at Maine Media Collective look forward to seeing you there.
You have been listening to Love Maine Radio show number 297, Island Authors. Our guests have included Linda Greenlaw and Jane Goodrich. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Main Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as @drlisa, and see our Love Maine Radio Photos on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week.
This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Island Authors show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelby Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano, and Lisa Belisle. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit is at lovemaineradio.com.