Katherine Scott Crawford
You all know how much I love the concept of time travel, hell, I ask all my authors to answer a time travel question at the end of every interview! I honestly did not know Katie Crawford's book included traveling back in time until I started to read it. Well, obviously I was hooked, and not just because her story includes time travel, it's because she's just such a great writer! Her details put the reader exactly where the scene is taking place. The reader feels what it is like to live in Charleston, South Carolina and not just today, but in 1804. I absolutely loved this book. I also don't think I have ever read love-making scenes so beautifully described (plus they are also really hot!).
So Katie, tell us about your book.
The Miniaturist’s Assistant is the story of Gamble Vance, a recently-divorced art conservator in historic Charleston, South Carolina who in 2004 discovers a familiar face in a 200 year-old miniature portrait, meets a ghost in old alley—what she thinks is a ghost—and realizes she’s lived more than one life. She enlists the help of her best friend, African American Studies scholar Tolliver Jackson, a former foster kid with secrets of his own, and together they embark on an art mystery/scavenger hunt adventure to figure out who the ghost is and why she keeps begging Gamble for help. Meanwhile, in 1804 Charleston, lauded artist Daniel Petigru is painting miniature portraits of Charleston’s high society, acting as guardian for his much-younger sister, and managing a Bohemian household which includes a free Black family—a family with whom he shares a long and complicated history. Everything changes when Gamble arrives from the future and turns Daniel’s world, and her own, upside down. The Miniaturist’s Assistant explores the mystery of time, how our choices ripple throughout history, and what it means to be a fully realized woman—in any century.
Now, tell us about where you live and why you love it so much.
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| Brevard |
Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?
At 7 years old we’d not been long in our new house in Greenville, South Carolina.
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| Greenville |
I lived in a leafy, wide-streeted neighborhood with a neighborhood pool and a summer swim team, lots of big old trees to climb, creeks to slosh around in, countless friends whose houses I could enter at will, a house full of books, and my beloved aunt, uncle, and cousins just up the street. Our house backed up to a small set of woods that felt like a wonderland.
Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?
I’ve been lucky to have had many books change the way I look at life. The first one, however, was Anne of Green Gables, by the great Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery.
I was a spirited, insatiably curious child whose mouth often moved too fast for her brain, much like Anne Shirley. I often felt very different from my peers—as if I walked through the world with my skin turned inside out—and meeting Anne felt like coming face to face with a version of myself. Her magical thinking, her absolute unfettered embrace of life, her countless mistakes, made me feel as if I wasn’t alone or odd… that there was a place for me. Too, L.M. Montgomery made me want to be a writer: I decided then and there that I wanted to do what she did.
Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?
Two children’s books I could barely get through reading to my own children without welling up with all the emotions are Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen,
and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.
Each book captures the wonder, beauty, and uncertainty of life; the fragile nature of childhood, the magic of books and nature, the power in listening to the animals and the natural world, the native intellect of children, and the humanity inherent in their grown-ups. They’re a study in the parental dichotomy in which we parents exist: the calling to guide these unique souls along the way—and then the call to let them go. I am in awe of children’s book authors.
What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?
I am an almanac of embarrassing moments and funny stories. I’ve been known to leap without looking. I was surrounded by aunts and uncles growing up, and one of my aunts loves to tell the story of taking me to the public library in Greenville, South Carolina, as a child, and losing me there—only to find that I’d climbed to the top of the tallest bookshelf in the place like a monkey.
My mom loves to tell the story of when I was obsessed with Pippi Longstocking, and I showed up to elementary school with my hair in messy braids into which I’d stuffed a clothes hanger trying to get them to stick out, wearing two different shoes and two different socks, with red permanent marker dots painted on my face as freckles. She was a teacher, and insists I’d hidden these things from her, but in reality, she’d probably barely had a chance to get me into the car on time that morning. I’ll never forget her twisting around in the driver’s seat in the carpool drop-off line, licking her thumb and trying to swipe at those red spots.
As the sole bridesmaid in my friend’s outdoor wedding, I forgot her husband-to-be’s ring. I’ll never forget standing pond-side in the heat, the minister waiting with an open Bible where we’d rehearsed that I would place the ring atop. I looked at my friend in horror. All I could think to do was to slide the tiny gold ring from my own finger—it had a heart-shaped turquoise stone in it—and set it there. Just like in a sitcom, every one of us—the bride, groom, minister, and me—leaned forward to look at my ring sitting atop the Bible. The minister’s eyebrows went up, and my friend took the ring and tried to muscle it onto her fiancée’s finger. (I think she managed to get it to the first knuckle of his pinkie finger.) No one in the congregation had a clue—they just thought we’d gotten a case of the giggles.
How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?
I met my husband, Stuart, two weeks after I graduated from college, at a summer camp in the North Carolina mountains where we both worked. I was a lifeguard and swim instructor, and I was knee-deep in the lake mucking leaves from the water basketball area. He ambled up, all tall and lean with a great smile and broad shoulders, a delicious ten years older than me—and told me he was from my hometown. We proceeded to make connections. Turns out my uncle had been his church basketball coach, and one of my family friends his Sunday school teacher.
Our first date was a hike in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. We found a great spot at the top of Black Balsam Knob,
back when it wasn’t as overrun with tourists as it is now. We snacked on fresh bread, cheese, and pepperoni, and then made out for hours. It was great.
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| Katie and Stuart |
Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?
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| Otis Redding |
My parents and their friends loved early R&B and South Carolina “beach music”: that music was the soundtrack of my childhood. So the voice of Otis Redding, and especially “Try a Little Tenderness,” roots me in a feeling of love and safety. But also, it’s just the perfect song, because it tells the truth.
How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?
I still thought I was an extrovert when I was in my 20s. I ran myself a bit ragged trying to be all things for all people. I was myself, as authentically as possible at the time, but I wasn’t every part of myself. I didn’t know how to rest. Now, I know I’m a bit label-less, and I’m comfortable with that. I still have an infernal urge to think I can be everything to everyone, though I’m well aware that just isn’t possible. Now, I do what I can, and I try to rest when I can.
Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?
For better or for worse, I have a glass face: everything I feel shows there. If you know me, you probably really know me. I often write, or post, about the people and places I love, the way I long for the world to be. But, then again, I do believe it’s also true that most of us humans are inherently unknowable. No one has ever asked me about what’s something I did as a child to keep myself safe, or to keep myself capital-T true—and whether I still do it. My answer is, I welcome the dark, figuratively and literally, and have since I was a child. I used to purposefully walk outside the family cabin, which was at the edge of a lake surrounded by a national forest. I always let my eyes adjust to the dark, and I concentrated—really concentrated—on feeling it: the crunch of leaves underfoot, the way the air moved against my skin, how my body reacted if I heard a wild animal in the woods. I still do this now, even inside my house: I keep the lights off, and walk to the bathroom, or anywhere else, in the darkness. I wait as long as possible to turn on artificial lights. I let my body adjust to the dark, rather than forcing it to adjust to me.
It's one small way I remain wild inside; one small way I remain free.
We all have or can point to a certain experience where, because of this experience, it shifted our lives in a way that led to where we are today, it could be a person you encountered or you were in a certain place or you had a certain experience or all three, but it was so pivotal that you can say that because of this experience, I am where I am today as a writer or in a greater sense as the person I am now.
I’ve had many seminal experiences, but I have to talk about my father teaching me to drive a boat. My dad taught me how to do many things, often much earlier than was prudent, or even legal (like build a fire, drive a car, use a lawn mower, throw a knife, shoot a bow and arrow, etc.). When I was very young, younger than 10, he taught me how to drive an old jon boat we had at the lake house my family owned with their best friends in South Carolina. The boat had an early 1960s Johnson outboard motor, a 10 horsepower with a pull start and a steering handle, which had at one time belonged to the father of my dad’s best friend—a man who was like a second dad to me. All the parents let me drive that little boat wherever I wanted to on the lake, all by myself. It was like I’d been gifted the world.
I’d had tastes of freedom before then—my parents were people who almost always said “yes”—but nothing, and I mean nothing, even to this day, felt like cranking that motor, shifting the gears on the handle, whipping that boat in and out of coves and right up to docks like a seasoned pro. I let that motor out full-bore in middle of the lake, the wind in my hair and the water slapping the metal bow, feeling like I could fly.
I’m sure, many times over the years, people chastised or rolled their eyes at my dad for letting me do some of the things he did. But learning how to drive that boat? It met something fearless inside me, showed me what I was capable of, and because of that opened the doors to a great many experiences to follow. That moment was one of many which taught me that I had inherent autonomy inside me. Realizing that autonomy at such a young age changed my life, and absolutely made me who I am today.
Can you remember a particular random act of kindness from a stranger?
In the middle of a busy intersection, during rush hour, my truck stalled out. I’d driven down the mountains to visit my college roommate and her first baby in the hospital. I was alone, cars were honking, and my truck blocked multiple lanes of traffic. Suddenly, there was a knock at my window, and a man stood there. “I see you’re a Clemson fan,” he said (I had a Clemson Tiger paw sticker on my bumper), “and I’m a Carolina fan, but I’m gonna help you anyway. Put ‘er in drive, and I’ll push you to the side.” And he did! He pushed my car over into the grass and out of the way of oncoming cars. Later, after the engine had stopped flooding, I was able to start the truck again and make it to see my friend and her new baby. What that stranger couldn’t have known was that I’d had a miscarriage only weeks before, and while normally capable in situations like that, I’d been barely holding it together in order to be there for my friend that day.
What would you say is the biggest joy and hardest challenge in your life?
My biggest joy and hardest challenge in life has been being the mother of my two daughters. Hand in hand with mothering my girls exists also the challenge of trying my darnedest to parent well alongside being an artist who deals with sensory issues. I am uber-feeling. All my senses run at full blast, nearly all the time. This aspect of my personality is my greatest struggle and my greatest superpower, and being a mother is both agony and ecstasy.
Were there parts in your book that your editor cut that you hated to see go? If so, what were they?
My editors at Regal House Publishing didn’t cut anything that needed to stay. How great is that?!
How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success?
Independent Bookstores, and independent booksellers, are the reason I have a career as a writer. Thus far I’ve had two books published by small, independent publishers, and so I especially rely on booksellers to hand sell my books—to talk about my work with their patrons, their local book clubs, their book-selling friends. Indies host events and welcome me into their folds. They get to know me. They really, really know books, and writing, and storytelling—they are vast treasure-troves of knowledge, and they’re happy to share. Independent Bookstores are ambassadors of story. I adore them with every fiber of my being. They are the beating hearts of communities.
And in a short essay…………………………
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME
to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,
be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,
actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,
meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.
When would you go?
Where would you go?
Who would you want to meet?
And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?
This has to be the most difficult question ever asked of a historical novelist. History is our catnip: I think about time travel every day. How in the world are we supposed to choose?
I wrote my critical thesis in graduate school on the theories of epigenetics and ancestral memory, so I pretty much believe we’ve all been here before. Because I am a child of the American South, and I’ve explored it for years with my research and with my body—on foot, on horseback, in a canoe, etc.—I’d like to return to the Carolinas pre-colonization, pre- maybe even the Woodland Period. I long to see our marshes and rivers, flatlands and piedmont, mountains and forests as they were before industrialization. I’d love to see the gargantuan trees—so thick that ten men touching hands would barely encircle their trunks—undammed, wild whitewater and slyly moving blackwater rivers full of alligators and snakes, dense forests with wolves and bison and elk and panthers.
The air so pure and clean you could stand on a mountaintop and see for miles.
A very close second would likely be Elizabethan London, in the time of that glorious, infuriating queen and of Shakespeare, when we were shifting between known and unknown worlds: When so many discoveries were being made in the arts and sciences, and writing meant being wild and sly, deeply intellectual, and open.
I’d want to sidle up to Sir Walter Raleigh, or Elizabeth herself, save a Scottish witch condemned to burning, or discover that Shakespeare really was a woman.
Of course, I’d like to also do this with access to hot baths, a nose which could endure the odors of the time, and universal suffrage for women and minorities. Ha!
I’d choose to travel to both of these—wild America and Elizabethan London—because they each feel wild, and free, and shackling, and mysterious, and difficult, in utterly different ways. I’ve always been addicted to experience, and adventuring in those places, then, would be an experience indeed.
Thank you Katie, it has indeed been a pleasure. I loved your book (oh, have I already said that?) 😌
Readers, be sure to pre-order The Miniaturist's Assistant from your favorite independent bookstore today!
Illustrations by the great Man Martin.
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