Suzanne Matson

Suzanne Matson's new novel is Ultraviolet.

From her Q&A with Caroline Leavitt:

I always always ask every writer—because I believe this is true—what was haunting you into writing this particular book? What was the question that you wanted answered? And did the answer surprise you?

Family histories from both my father and my mother always struck me as powerful source material for writing, and yet for a long time I wasn’t sure how to use this legacy. I first wrote two novel drafts from the Finnish immigrant, coal-mining side of the family (my dad’s). Then I set those aside to begin a story that imagined my mother’s young life in India as the daughter of Mennonite missionaries. It occurred to me that what I really wanted to write was the story of a marriage, because the fact that my mother and father had ended up together had always seemed like one of life’s great mysteries. I sometimes think that my childhood spent trying to get to the bottom of that strange match is what prompted me to become a writer. It got me into the habit of asking questions about people’s inner lives and what drives them to their actions. My mother was the more verbal and self-examining person of the two, often speculating about her mother’s situation as a missionary wife, as well as the constraints she felt born into, so that’s where the eventual book came from: women’s lives threaded down across decades, and how the woman in the middle generation—Kathryn—negotiated her choices, limits, and consequences. It’s Kathryn we follow from...[read on]

Visit Suzanne Matson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue