Tina May Hall's new novel is The Snow Collectors.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Snow Collectors, and for your character Henna?--Marshal Zeringue
A: The idea for the book came from research I was doing on Lady Jane Franklin, who was the wife of Sir John Franklin (whose 1845 expedition is referenced below). I really thought the book would mainly be about Lady Jane.
Then the idea of a present-day or slightly futuristic plotline came to mind, and I thought it would be a rather evenly-split dual narrative in the vein of A.S. Byatt’s Possession.
But as I wrote, I got more and more interested in Henna’s world, which is our world set very slightly in the future and is a landscape on the precipice of environmental collapse. I was really captivated by the idea of Henna navigating an eco-gothic world that is suffused with loss even as she tries to make sense of the smaller losses she is mourning.
Q: Why did you decide to include the 1845 Franklin expedition of the Arctic in the novel, and how did you research it?
A: When I happened on...[read on]