Jane Hamilton uses Wisconsin as a setting for parts of every book she writes.
She writes from her orchard farmhouse in southeastern Wisconsin, where she draws inspiration from her surroundings.
Her new novel “The Phoebe Variations” took nine years to write, and Hamilton said she couldn’t get the story right until she brought the main character back to her home state.
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“I kept taking her to New York City and other places, but really, she just had to be in Wisconsin,” Hamilton told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “That was the answer. She had to click her ruby slippers and end up in Wisconsin. I had to keep the focus tight.”
The book tells the story of a teenage girl through the perspective of her older self reflecting on her formative experiences, exploring themes of motherhood, friendship and adoption in the 1970s.
Hamilton shared her new story and looked back on her writing career in the state.
The following was edited for clarity and brevity.
Rob Ferrett: Introduce us to Phoebe.
Jane Hamilton: When the book opens, Phoebe is almost 18. She has recently had a shattering experience encountering her birth family. She’s been adopted. She lives in a suburb — not unlike Oak Park, Illinois, where I happened to have grown up — in the 1970s. This encounter with her birth family propels her to run away from her mother and to hide in the basement of a household that has 14 children, as many households did in those days in Oak Park, Illinois, in the ’70s.
RF: The book explores motherhood in a few different forms as Phoebe reflects back on the experiences of her life. Why did you choose that approach?
JH: I was really interested in the mothers of that time because, as I said, so many of them had so many children. Yet, it was the ’70s, so probably some of them had read (“The Feminine Mystique.”) Probably some of them wondered, “Wait, why did I have 11 children?” Probably some of them had decided to take matters into their own hands and take the birth control pill. Some of them did go back to work. So I think that, although those tensions still exist now, and there’s this “tradwife” movement and all of that — I think that there probably was a lot of tension in the psyches of those mothers of the 1970s, and I was interested in exploring that.
The Phoebe Variations, by Jane Hamilton (Zibby Publishing)
RF: Much of the book takes place in different parts of Wisconsin. Why do you like this area as a setting for your story?
JH: Why wouldn’t you set your novel in Wisconsin? (Phoebe’s friend) Luna has a summer place in Lake Geneva, which is called Lilac Hill. And I don’t know if you have ever walked around Lake Geneva. It’s 22 miles — and a little bit more if you get lost in the golf course. But those houses, many of them are just remarkable, with long lawns down to the lakefront.
And then the family of 14 children has a farmhouse near Viroqua, and there actually is a town in Wisconsin called Romance, which I mentioned in the novel. And I love that so. The farm is beautiful and run down, and the house is a shack with dry wall falling apart and carpet squares. So Wisconsin is a rich state for narrative possibilities.
RF: You went nine years in between publishing novels and had some back and forth with publishers before putting this one out. What was the process like for you?
JH: I’m very grateful for my publishers through the years who have saved me from myself. I was writing iteration after iteration of this book, and my agent kept saying, “No, no, no.” As painful as that failure was, I just kept thinking, “If I can’t make a book work that’s about a girl who runs away and hides out in a basement of 14 children, 12 of whom are boys, then really, I need to find another career path.” Because that’s got so many possibilities, but I just couldn’t see it through to the end.
It’s very painful to me to look at the stacks of boxes in my study that are the printed out copies of those failures. I can’t really look at them, but I think there’s some good writing in there. Some of the plots were very amusing to write, and I enjoyed them. I always enjoyed being with Phoebe. She was always a pleasure to be with. It just sometimes takes a long time for the thing to take its proper shape.