Amazon Q&A for EVERGREEN with author Rebecca Rasmussen

Q1.: EVERGREENâ??s epigraph is a quote from Jose Ortega y Gassett, â??Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.â?? How does this connection to place resonate throughout the novel?

Rebecca Rasmussen: As a person who has lived in eight different states so far in my life, Iâ??ve had the fortunate experience of witnessing how place changes people. In Massachusetts, I used to snowshoe down my street. I was moodier then. After a long winter, there was nothing more enlivening than seeing the first magnolia blossoms in the spring. In Los Angeles, Iâ??m a hundred feet from the 405. Iâ??m so close I can give a traffic report. But the sun is always shining and the winds are always warm. Iâ??m softer here. Less alone.

In EVERGREEN, the changes the characters go through are more pronounced than mine, perhaps because there are no modern conveniences to soften the transition when they move from an established town to the wilds of northern Minnesota in 1938. Electricity changes people. Running water. But so do swiftly moving rivers and old growth forests, night skies unmarred by city lights, industry. To my mind, this novel couldnâ??t take place anywhere else in the world but Evergreen.

Q2.: Do you ever dream of running off and living in the wilderness yourself?

RR: Oh, yesâ??ever since I was a girl and spent eight glorious summers at a rustic camp in northern Wisconsin. The lake was full of leeches, the cabins overrun with wolf spiders, and because nothing would ever dry there was a pervasive smell of mold. â??Lâ??eau de Camp,â?? my mother used to say. But it was also a magical place with towering pines and climax forests, frosty mornings and northern lights, a place where for the first time in my life I felt truly free. I learned how to build fires and navigate canoes through narrow sloughs. I learned how to swim and sail and shoot a rifle. I learned what I could do with my hands. What I could do with my heart. The northwoods is always with me when I sit down to write.

Q3.: Eveline, newly pregnant, moves into a small cabin in Minnesota with her taxidermist husband, Emil. How does she justify leaving her family, job, and hometown behind?

RR: Eveline is young and inexperienced at the beginning of the novel. Sheâ??s so newly married that she still gets a little thrill every time she says the words my husband. Emil is unlike any other man sheâ??s met in the northwoods. Heâ??s capable, but gentle. Determined, but kind. Other men try to woo her by leaving buckets of fish on her doorstep. Emil woos her with a butterfly. Even though sheâ??s frightened to leave her family, love is what brings Eveline to the wilderness. Love is what gets her through her first winter.

Q4.: Evelineâ??s neighbor, Lulu, was â??a tall, solid woman, made larger by her booming voice and the vigor of her coat.â?? How does this quirky woman become so important to Eveline? Even though theyâ??re such opposites, how do they ultimately save each other, over and over again?

RR: When Lulu enters the novel, light enters with her. Sheâ??s a woman who knows who she is and what sheâ??s worth. Eveline doesnâ??t know these things yet. Sheâ??s a new wife and mother. Sheâ??s still figuring out if she even belongs in the wilderness. After surviving a difficult winter alone with Emil, Lulu is a welcome guest the day she comes striding up to their cabin wearing a pair of menâ??s trousers and a ratty old fur coat. Lulu is feisty from the start. Unlike Eveline, she always says what she thinks. Sheâ??s tougher than any of the men in Evergreen put together. Sheâ??s got a heart the size of the forest.

The women become like sisters. They argue with each other. They laugh at each other. They save each other over and over again no matter what it costs them. In many ways, they are the true soul mates of the novel.

Q56.: Hopewell Orphanage is a terrifying place ruled by a fearsome nun, Sister Cordelia. What was your inspiration for this character and place? Why did you feel that Naamah needed to grow up there?

RR: Sadly, my inspiration for the orphanage in the novel was the way manyâ??too manyâ??orphans were treated at orphanages in both the US and abroad during the first half of the twentieth century. While I was working on this section, I read hundreds of heartbreaking accounts of men and women whoâ??d grown up in places ruled by cruel nuns and priests and were still trying to survive those early experiences in their adult lives. In the accounts, so many of them were struggling to find happiness, peace, but couldnâ??t because of the abuse they suffered, often in the name of God. Naamah is one of these people. In the novel, she wants to be loved so much, and I wanted so much to give that to her.

Q6.: When Naamah, as an orphan at Hopewell Orphanage, sees a mother and daughter in town, she thinks, â??The mother kissed the girlâ??s forehead in a way Naamah had always dreamed of being kissed. First by her mother, then by any mother, then anyone.â?? How does this passage explain so much about Naamahâ??s character?

RR: Naamah covets love, but she doesnâ??t understand it. Because of her experience with Sister Cordelia, who does love her in her own broken way, Naamah often puts herself in demeaning situations as an adult because she doesnâ??t have a sense of her real worth, only the one Sister Cordelia has shown her. Sheâ??ll let a roughneck man at a bar use her terribly, for instance, but at the same time be thinking of the blanket her mother left her with at the orphanageâ??the one with little ducks on it, the name Hux stitched into the corner.

Q7.: Even though the women in EVERGREEN are fiercely loyal to each other, two moms abandon their daughters in spiteâ??or maybe becauseâ??of their love for them. What does EVERGREEN teach us about the struggle between committing and letting go?

RR: The women in EVERGREEN are the heart of this novelâ??almost everything that happens depends on them. Itâ??s an enormous weight to have to bear and for the most part they bear it gracefully, with great love and compassion. The women in EVERGREEN are survivors. Theyâ??ve learned, oftentimes through events beyond their control, when to hold on with all theyâ??ve got and when to let go. Theyâ??ve taught me a great many lessons, one of which is this: the world is still a hard place for women, but we are its lifeblood, we keep not giving up.