Kimberly Brock
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock
Author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The Fabled Earth
About The Fabled Earth:
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.
1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.
Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.
Watch or listen to my interview with Kimberly Brock for the Best of Women’s Fiction podcast.
About The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare:
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.
In the waning days of World War II, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.
In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock
Author I draw inspiration from:
So many! An eclectic bunch! Madeline Miller, Lee Smith, Kaye Gibbons, Alice Hoffman, V.E. Schwab. I love writers who create atmosphere through language and dialogue. I love stories where settings are characters. I love metaphor beyond reason.
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
Is this a trick question? But I do prefer a cozy chair and a fire. I've often said I wish I could secretly live in Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC, and spend my evenings reading in front of the fire at the Grove Park Inn.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Circe. No question.
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I knew the first time I walked into the library! I was forever in trouble for talking too much and I took one look at all those books and realized this was how to do it and not get into trouble!
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Hardback. I love the heft, the thick paper, the deckled edges, all the goldleaf. I just love a big heavy book.
The last book I read:
An early copy of The Grand Design by Joy Callaway that comes out in May!
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
Both! I fill so many notebooks when I'm working on a novel - prewriting, notes, false starts, lists of names. I love to write with a Bic pen or a pencil. And then I hammer things out and get down to edits on my MacBook.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
A lunatic. And a recluse. No kidding.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
I love gothic victorian fashion, but I wouldn't necessarily want to wear it. I just like the storybook vibe. I like the creepy jewelry and all the ambiance. It whispers. It seems full of implications and questions and secrets. The person wearing it interests me.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Shetland. I may never get there because I get so terribly seasick and I can't imagine the plane ride would be much better. But I do dream about it.
My signature drink:
Jack & Diet Coke
Favorite artist:
Brandi Carlisle. She such a mirror.
Number one on my bucket list:
Finishing our house remodel!
Anything else you'd like to add:
There's nothing better than leaning close and telling stories together, whispering, hold our breath, falling in love, running away, solving the mystery, coming home -- and publishing a book feels like all those things. Like I felt the first time I walked into a library. Magic!
Find more from the author:
https://www.facebook.com/kimberlybrockauthor/
https://www.instagram.com/kimberlydbrock/
https://twitter.com/kimberlydbrock
About Kimberly Brock:
Author Interview - Kimberly Brock
Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.
