THE SECRET PRICE OF
HISTORY combines historical saga with a modern detective
story. Set both in the 1800s during the American Civil War and Italian
Risorgimento and in the summer of 2008 during the breaking economic crisis, it
is linked together by a mysterious medallion inherited by Angie, a TV weather-girl who
is shot in the arm while attending a Gettysburg re-enactment.
Last year I had the pleasure of working with the authors:
Gayle Ridinger is an American who
teaches English and translation at a university near Milan, an award-winning
translator of modern Italian poetry whose children’s book A Star at the Bottom of the Sea was
published in five languages; and Paolo Pochettino is a native of Milan who worked for years as an industrial manager in various
countries.
The book has just been published and is available on
Amazon.com, and their website, still under construction, is well worth a look: www.secretpriceofhistory.com
It's interesting that you decided to write this
book together, being a couple, one of you American and the other Italian. Can you
tell us a little about that?
Well, first
of all, we are both international types who know each other’s culture very
well. I’m of Italian origin on my mother’s side and have lived in Italy for 30
years. Paolo has worked and traveled in America. But in some ways we are
fundamentally ‘marked’ by our native countries, and we wanted that to resonate
in the book. Above all, we wanted the parts about America to emerge in an
American voice and the parts about Italy to emerge from an authentically
Italian point of view. Some playful irony perhaps, but no false nostalgia.
And
then there was the realization that we counter-balanced each other in terms of
our passionate interest in history. I had devoured Civil War novels as a
teenager and knew Gettysburg well for family reasons; now here in Italy I was
enjoying Paolo’s readiness to narrate at the drop of a hat all the battles that
had taken place for Italian unification; he’d point out the car window at the
countryside and I could see it all happening before my eyes. The realization
that the Risorgimento and the Civil War occurred around the same time started
our minds going. The fact that President Lincoln asked Garibaldi, the hero of
the Italian Risorgimento, to lead Union troops in the Civil War whetted our
imagination.
Where did the whole idea begin - when did you
first think you wanted to write this book?
One day in
2007, when I was enjoying summer vacation at my parents’ place in America and
not in any ‘book-writing phase’, Paolo wrote me an email about his idea. There
was already a young American reporter reporting on the Italians who fought in
the American Civil War. There was the old suitcase full of relics connected to a treasure, which put her life in
danger. In short, the start was similar to that of our final book. The ending,
however, was a battle between the occult powers within the Catholic Church and some
other secret forces. Fortunately this Dan Brown sort of thing got dropped immediately.
In any case, Paolo was launching a proposal and a sort of challenge. A novel
about Italians and Americans not done in the usual way and under the guise of
a best-seller whodunit. I found it interesting.
What was the process of writing the book
together - how did you go about it?
Generally
speaking, Paolo was the ‘imaginator’ (l’imaginatore),
as we termed it. Certainly, there were parts
that I wrote independently (especially regarding the ending) and in
general it was my job to flesh out the characters, but usually he wrote a first
draft (or summary) of each chapter in Italian, which I expanded on in English. I
had to really work at the historical parts, whereas the action in the modern
plot was often fine already. To make it all come to live, however, I obviously
had to imagine my way into the events. “In my mind are other people’s thoughts;
in my heart are other people’s emotions.” That’s what I wrote in my diary; it
was how I spent many a day. One other thing: I would never have been able to write these
crime or battle scenes on my own!
Are there any interesting stories about the
writing of the book? How long did it take? What was the biggest challenge in
the editing process?
If we count
from the very beginning to now and include the re-writes and editing, it took
about seven years! The biggest challenge in the editing process was figuring
out how not to get bogged down in detail and yet not skip over too many years
at one time. Also, we had to deal with the complicated nature of the Italian Risorgimento—it really did take place
over twenty-some years in three separate wars. And if on the one hand it was
astonishing to realize how so many men and women rushed back to fighting for
the cause of liberty and unification even after years had passed, on the other
hand, the daily experience of one war tended to resemble that of another (as
wars do), and that was a writing challenge. Still another challenge was how to
stitch invented characters into scenes with real historical ones and then make
the whole come alive.
As for
interesting stories, the best has to be the adventure we had while visiting
Montiglio Monferrato, the little hill-top town with the castle from where the
Marquis of Monferrato, Boniface I, briefly and literally ruled the world. Our
car broke down and the block on the alarm system (which had already been
damaged by thieves) was such that it couldn’t be restarted in any way. We were
so helped and cared for by the townspeople, especially in the person of Signor Francesco from the Tourist Office, that
we will never forget it. And this affection for the town is why Paolo and I
have chosen it for our wedding in July.
Would you call it a historical novel? How much
of the story is fact and how much fiction?
It does
tend towards a historical novel but it isn’t one completely. It’s a “genre mix”,
as much as publishers and agents would like to pretend such a thing doesn’t
exist. Thanks to this mix, certain parallels between those times in the 1800s
and our world today are bound to stand out to readers—striking chords that
wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Without
taking back what I’ve just said. I have to admit that others are as intrigued
as we are by the historical figures in the book. We have had many a dinner with
friends full of lively questions and comments about the ones we mention…like
the great French writer Alexandre Dumas on his yacht with his teenage mistress
in the port of Naples, having hired an army of tailors to come on board to make
more red shirts for Garibaldi’s volunteers.
How did you piece together all the stories -
was there a great deal of research involved?
We had to
keep Excel sheets of all the dates to make sure we weren’t altering history or suggesting
the impossible. As for the research, oh yes, there was quite a lot involved and
it was utterly enjoyable. In Rome we toured the battle sites up on the Janiculum as
well as the underground mithraeums. We spent a day out at Ostia Antica,
We explored the Monferrato area and Asti where the casane were located. We went to the chalk mines in Gesso and over
to see Bassignana, where Paolo’s great-grandmother was from. We visited the
Risorgimento museums of numerous cities. There was the national celebration of
the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification in course and we took
advantage of the many events planned. We went back to the fabulous Gettysburg
Battlefield Museum. And then there was also the sort of research one does
reading books or articles online. We spent a lot of time putting together the part about Mithraism as well as the story
of Alexander the Great’s ‘third treasure’. It is very very plausible!
What are your biggest literary influences?
Certain
books I’ve read over the last few years—for the tone of voice, irony, or way of
dealing with criminal minds. PURE by Andrew Miller, THE ORPHAN MASTER’S Son by
Adam Johnson, THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold, and THE GOOD HUSBAND OF ZEBRA
DRIVE by Alexander McCall Smith. And then all the films, thrillers, and graphic
novels Paolo has seen or read over the years.
What are your hopes for the book?
That lots
of people for lots of reasons buy and enjoy the book. We also hope they will be
intrigued by our website, where old pictures and photos of sites connect the
characters and events in the book with real history. We’d like to see it
translated into Italian and French at the very least. And of course, given its
plot, we think it’d be perfect as a film!
