Q. Where did you come up with the idea for The Turtle Catcher?Read an excerpt from The Turtle Catcher, and learn more about the book and author at Nicole Helget's website.
A. My father, the first storyteller I ever knew, told me many stories. The heart of my novel was recollected from a story he once told me about a man with unnatural ways who was run into a swamp by his neighbors and forced to drown himself. I don’t, of course, remember a lot of the details, but I remember that part, the forced drowning. I first wrote The Turtle Catcher as a short story and entered it in the Tamarack competition that has been run for many years by Minnesota Monthly magazine. They chose it as the winner, wrote me a big and generous check, and got me thinking, ‘Hmm, I think I could do more with this story.’ It wasn’t easy. In the three-plus years it took me to expand the story into a novel, I finished my MFA degree in Creative Writing here in Mankato, taught some classes, mothered my children, became pregnant with my fourth child, separated and reunited with my now-husband, gave birth, and ran a marathon. And all that stuff in-between.
Q. Your first book, The Summer of Ordinary Ways was a memoir. What made you decide to write fiction this time around?
A. I don’t know that...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Turtle Catcher.
--Marshal Zeringue