Biography
Kristin Hannah was born in California. After graduating with a degree in communication from the University of Washington, Hannah worked at an advertising agency in Seattle.
She graduated from the University of Puget Sound law school and practiced law in Seattle before becoming a full-time writer.
Biography
Hannah wrote her first novel with her mother, who was dying of cancer at the time; the book was never published. A former lawyer,
Hannah lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with her husband and their son.
Her novel Firefly Lane became a runaway bestseller in 2009, and The Nightingale, 2015, was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Library Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The Week, and others. Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards.
Hannah's best-selling work, The Nightingale, has sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide and has been published in 45 languages.
Publications, Standalone novels, in order
A Handful of Heaven, 1991
The Enchantment, 1992
Once in Every Life, 1992
If You Believe, 1993
When Lightning Strikes, 1994
Waiting for the Moon, 1995
Home Again, 1996
On Mystic Lake, 1999
Publications, Standalone novels, in order
Angel Falls, 2000
Summer Island, 2001
Distant Shores, 2002
Between Sisters, 2003
The Things We Do for Love, 2004
Comfort and Joy, 2005
Magic Hour, 2006, released again in 2020
True Colors, 2009
Publications, Standalone novels, in order
Winter Garden, 2010 (historical novel)
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya. . . .
As children, their only connection was the Russian fairy tale Anya told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: the fairy tale will be told one last time—all the way to the end.
Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and learn a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.
Publications, Standalone novels, in order
Night Road, 2011
Home Front, 2012
The Nightingale, 2015 (over 100K 5-star reviews on Amazon)
In a phone interview, Enderlin, president and publisher of St. Martin’s Publishing, traced Hannah’s many reinventions throughout her career—from mass-market romance writer to hardcover author to book-club best seller to spinner of historical sagas. "With The Nightingale, she went from 'women’s fiction' to a literary novelist,” Enderlin said. “She’s analytical and intuitive at the same time.”
The Great Alone, 2018
The Four Winds, 2021 (over 121K reviews, at 4.5 stars on Amazon)
Firefly Lane Books
Firefly Lane, 2008 Firefly Lane, became a runaway bestseller in 2009,
Fly Away, 2013
Interview (on her website)
How long have you been writing?
It feels as if I just got started on this career. I’m always a little bit surprised by my answer to this question: it’s almost 30 years. Honestly, I don’t know how that’s possible being as young as I am! That’s certainly the upside of a career you love. Time flies.
What’s your ideal writing day like?
Hmmm…let’s see. The perfect writing day. Well, first of all, I’ll be in a place where I can hear the waves washing along the sand and warm breezes rustling through coconut palms or evergreen trees. Then I’ll wake up early, go for a nice morning run along the beach, and come home ready to get to work. My very favorite thing is to sit in a lawn chair on my deck, notepad in hand, and lose myself in the story. It doesn’t happen every day — or even often — but when it does, it’s pure magic. And the perfect writing day.
Interview (on her website)
How long does it take you to write a book?
For the most part, each of my books has taken a year. Some — notably The Nightingale, Firefly Lane and On Mystic Lake — have taken up to two years. Generally, I spend about three months coming up with idea, researching it, and formulating a loose plan for the spine of the story and the character arcs. After a few months of research, the writing of the first draft — if I’m lucky — is about five months. This usually entails several “wrong” starts and do-overs. The final process of taking that draft and turning it into the novel I’d envisioned takes between four and six months. Normally, I do about ten drafts of the book.
Do you miss practicing law?
Wait. I have to stop laughing. I can’t see the computer keys. No. I don’t miss it. I loved the law, but writing is the best career on the planet for me. I’m truly blessed. I can’t imagine having to wear heels to work again. I’d probably fall flat on my face.
Interview (on her website)
Why do you write?
Quite simply, I write because it frees something in me. It allows me to be the wife/mother/friend I want to be, with plenty of time for the people I care about, while still giving me something that’s mine, something that defines me as an individual.
What’s a typical day like for you?
The great thing about being a writer is that there really is no typical day. When my son was home, my writing schedule was pretty much subject to the local school schedule. It gave me a lovely, if inflexible, routine. Nowadays, though, I’m much more of a gypsy with a pen and paper. My ordinary day begins with a three or four mile run, preferably along a stretch of sunny beach, then it’s back home to get started. I’ll write fairly solidly until about five o’clock. At the end of the day, I try to spend at least an hour outside, sitting on my deck and relaxing.
Interview (on her website)
How do you know when a book is over?
I’m exhausted. Or my deadline is looming. Or I have a migraine that lasts for two days. The truth is, a book never really feels “done.” I wish it did. What’s more likely is that my deadline is approaching and I’ve simply run out of time. Thankfully, I’m a disciplined writer. I actually start my books on time; no more than two weeks after the previous effort is finished. The stress of being “behind” is really not something I’d good with, so I stay on schedule.
Interview (on her website)
Do you always know the whole story, including the ending, when you begin?
I think I do. On occasion, I even turn out to be correct. Because my books are more character than plot driven, the end of my novels is wholly dependent on the characters’ arcs and growth patterns. When I was a beginning writer, I followed a strict, twenty-page outline and lengthy character biographies. I spent a lot of my research time creating characters; then I moved them through the plot as I’d conceived it. In the end, I found that this hampered my creativity somewhat and began, as I moved into the bigger, more complex books, to require more editing. So, I let go. Now I spend more of my time discovering my characters. Although it creates a lot of missteps and wrong starts and endless drafts, I find that I enjoy the process more.
Interview (on her website)
Do you have a favorite character in your own novels?
Honestly, I have a couple of characters that stay in my mind after the writing is over. They are, in no particular order — Izzy from On Mystic Lake, Alice from Magic Hour, Tully from Firefly Lane, and Anya Whitson from Winter Garden. But at the moment my very favorite character is the protagonist from the novel I’m currently writing. She may be my favorite character of all time. We’ll see.
Interview (on her website)
How do you recommend new writers get started?
This is a question that I get asked a lot, of course. The easiest and most obvious answer is also the most difficult to accomplish: it’s to sit down and keep writing. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of writers come and go — published and unpublished — and what I’ve learned is that the ones who make it keep writing no matter what. When life is tough, they write; when the kids are sick, they write; when rejections pile up, they write. Are you seeing a pattern? That’s really what this career is ultimately about. Showing up at your computer day after day to hone your craft. Of course you should take classes and read other peoples’ books and study as much as you can, but none of it can ever take the place of daily work.
Interview (from her website)
My dad is almost eighty years old and last year he hiked the Amazon to see its source. We went to Africa six years ago and believe me, if he’d gone there as a young man, I would have grown up seeing elephants in my back yard. As it was, we left California in 1968 (flower decals on the side of our VW bus, curtains on the windows and set out on a family adventure. My father tasked us all with finding the place that spoke to us. We found it in the Pacific Northwest.
Interviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKb8Vq3qeG4
Psychological fiction
Among literary genres, The Magic Hour has been classified as both psychological fiction and romance.
In literature, psychological fiction is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examines the reasons for the behaviors of the character, which propel the plot and explain the story.
Character "arc" in narrative
A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different person in response to changing developments in the story.
Since the change is often substantive and leading from one personality trait to a diametrically opposite trait, the geometric term arc is often used to describe the sweeping change.
In most stories, lead characters and protagonists are the characters most likely to experience character arcs.
Character "arc" in narrative
A driving element of the plots in many stories is that the main character seems initially unable to overcome opposing forces, possibly because they lack skills or knowledge or resources or friends.
To overcome such obstacles, the main character must change, possibly by learning new skills, to arrive at a higher sense of self-awareness or capability.
Main characters can achieve such self-awareness by interacting with their environment, by enlisting the help of mentors, by changing their viewpoint, or by some other method.
Cast of characters
Julia Cates is a successful child psychiatrist, respected by her colleagues, but has lost confidence because a patient she worked with for some time, Amber, killed four children. Julia did not see this potential for violence in her patient and did not warn family or authorities.
Legally, she has been cleared of any culpability, but she feels guilty and has been the subject of considerable negative publicity. For that reason, she has closed her practice.
Julia has always focused on her career rather than personal relationships because she is passionate about helping young people and this narrow perspective has helped her cope with painful memories.
When her sister needs her help with the recently discovered "wild child," Julia obliges, hoping at least in part to salvage her professional reputation, but more so to salvage this damaged child who needs her help.
Cast of characters
Julia Cates
" . . . she’d always needed to be accepted. As a shrink, she knew the hows and whys of her need—how her popular, in-the-spotlight family had somehow made her feel marginalized and unimportant, how her father’s withheld love had made her believe she was unlovable—but knowledge didn’t soften the need. She wasn’t even sure how it had come to matter so much. All she knew was that her profession, her ability to help people, had filled the frightened place inside of her with joy, and now she was scared again."
As a child, Julia was "the scarecrow-thin, socially awkward daughter of Big Tom Cates."
Cast of characters
Julia Cates
On the day of her mother Brenda's funeral:
"When at last her father broke down and wept, everyone except Julia rushed to comfort him. She had seen even as a child what no one else, especially Ellie, ever had: that her father’s selfishness had crushed his wife’s spirit, just as he’d crushed his younger daughter’s. Only Ellie had flourished in the white-hot light of her father’s self-absorption."
Cast of characters
Alice is the traumatized six-year-old girl who emerges from the forest in the Pacific Northwest, unable to tell her name or her story, until late in the novel when she and the wolf pup lead authorities to the site where she and her mother were held after being kidnapped.
Due to her traumatic experiences, Alice often behaves erratically, typical of the "wild child" from history. Primarily, she has to learn language, as Julia teaches her words and reminds Alice when she is upset to "use her words."
Over time, she becomes emotionally attached to "Jew lee" and later to Ellie and Max.
She doesn't know or remember her father, although she has some slight memory of her mother. The wolf pup has been her only companion.
Julia names her after Alice in Wonderland although her real name is Brittany.
Cast of characters
Ellie Barton is Julia's sister, but a notably different person until, late in the novel, the two discover their "sisterhood."
While Julia is bookish, Ellie is Rain Valley's local police chief. Married and divorced twice, she is the high school beauty queen who uses charm to her advantage.
Although she's a confident person, Alice's case shakes that surety; she has no children, has had little interest in children, and recognizes that she needs her sister's expertise to deal with this case that she hopes will prove to the townspeople that she's more than just a pretty face. It is the most difficult case she's ever tackled.
Ellie invites Julia to help rehabilitate the unpredictable Alice, because unless Alice can tell her story, it will be nearly impossible for Ellie to solve the case.
Cast of characters
Ellie Barton, Julia's sister and the "small town beauty queen"
"Ellie’s marriages—both of them—had failed because she’d married good-looking men with itchy feet and wandering eyes. Her first husband, former high school football captain Al Torees, should have been enough to turn her off men for years, but she’d had a short memory, and just a few years after the divorce she married another good-looking loser. Poor choices . . . but the divorces hadn’t dimmed her hopes. She still believed in romance and was waiting to be swept away. She knew it was possible;"
"For years people had made little remarks about her being selfish. Ellie always brushed them off with a pretty smile. It wasn’t true; whoever said it was either jealous of her or wasn’t a friend. You’re like me, Ellie, her dad had said to her once, a center stage actor. If you marry again, you’d best find someone who doesn’t mind letting you have the spotlight all the time."
Cast of characters
Max Cerrasin, mountain climber, physician who examines Alice, owns a rather sparse but beautiful lakefront property on the edge of town, begins a relationship with Julia.
"In the six years he’d lived in Rain Valley, Max had gathered quite a reputation—and it wasn’t only for his doctoring skills. . . . every woman between twenty and sixty—Ellie included—had . . . arrived at his front door in a steady, chattering stream, always bringing a casserole. They’d waited impatiently for him to choose one of them. . . . he’d made friends with almost all of the available women in town, but no one could really lay claim to him. Although he was an outrageous flirt, his attention was spread out evenly."
Late in the novel, we discover that he had a son Danny, killed by a drunk driver in a car accident. He shows Julia the last photo, a little boy in a baseball uniform. Max is divorced from Danny's mother, Susan.
Cast of characters
Max Cerrasin, mountain climber,
That was one of the things he loved about climbing: you couldn’t control it.
After he falls, escaping serious injury, he thinks:
The thing was, he didn’t feel lucky. As he stood there, beside the boulder that could have killed him, looking up at the now slick rock face of the cliff, he realized something else. He didn’t feel acutely alive, didn’t want to laugh out loud at his triumph. He felt … stupid.
No wonder he couldn’t find that old adrenaline surge from mountain climbing today.
Cast of characters
Cal—Rain Valley police, neighbor of Ellie, childhood friends, teased about reading comic books and "doodlings in his sketch pad."
Wife Lisa has a reputation for "fooling around"; she's left Cal and the children. He's in love with Ellie, everybody knows, but her.
"In high school Ellie and her friends had called him the Crow because of his black hair and sharp, pointed features. He’d always had a bony, ill-put-together look . . . At almost forty, he still had a boyish appearance. Only his eyes—dark and intense—showed the miles he’d walked in his lifetime."
When he finally confronts Ellie at the end of the novel, he says:
“We’re pushing forty, but you still act like you’re the homecoming queen, waiting to be swept off her feet by the football captain. It’s not like that. Love rips the shit out of you and puts you back together like a broken toy, with all kinds of cracks and jagged edges. It’s not about the falling in love. It’s about the landing, the staying where you said you’d be and working to keep the love strong. You never did get that.”
Cast of characters
Peanut, Penelope Nutter, the other member of the Rain Valley police force, practical, sensible, down to earth, tolerant, motherly
Ellie and Peanut "had worked side by side in this office for more than a decade and been best friends since high school. Over the years their friendship had weathered every storm, from the ruination of Ellie’s two fragile marriages to Peanut’s recent decision that smoking cigarettes was the key to weight loss."
Floyd—keeps the wolf pup accompanying Alice
Cast of characters
George Azelle, Alice's father, sent to prison for the murder of his wife and daughter
"Tall, dark, and deadly. That was how the press had characterized him, and it was easy to see why. He stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His handsome face was all sharp angles and deep hollows and bruiselike shadows; the kind of face that darkened easily into anger. Black hair, threaded with gray, hung almost to his shoulders. His was the kind of face that launched a woman’s dreams, although he looked worn."
Before the disappearance of his wife and daughter, neighbors had called the police on several occasions for domestic abuse.
Questions for discussion
Winter Garden is a novel that focuses on two very different sisters.
Nightingale, a long novel about women in the French resistance of WWII, also focuses on sisters--Vianne (Rossignol) Mauriac and Isabelle Rossignol; their mother died when both were young. One of the reasons for the novel's length is the detailed description of the two sisters' lives that consume a considerable portion of the novel's early pages. As readers, we get to know them, well, before the Nazi occupation moves enters the plot and the two sisters resist, in opposite extremes.
And that's one of the reasons the end of the novel is so horrendously wrenching. By that time, we know these women, are invested in their lives, and care about what happens to them.
Questions for discussion
Like that novel, and Kristin Hannah novels in general, this one is about carefully drawn, complex, fully realized characters. And it's about personal and family relationships. How have these characters grown up? What experiences have formed their adult personalities. What scars do they bear from previous personal relationships?
It's about the events and experiences that formed them into the people we see in the novel. And of course as the novel's plot unravels, these characters grapple with pivotal events that reshape their lives.
That's a Kristen Hannah novel. And that's a lot of women's novels.
NOTE: in Nightingale, the two Rossignol sisters have lost their mother. In this novel, Julia and Ellie's mother has died. Alice's mother is dead.
Julia considers her father a negative force in her upbringing, although Ellie doesn't. George is not the nicest guy, and Cal's father abused him.
So what is Hannah's definition of family life?
Questions for discussion
Of all the subjects that Kristin Hannah could have selected for the plot of a novel, why has she chosen the "wild child"? What specifically interests her about a child abandoned and living in the forest. What does this child represent as a theme?
Why does Kristin Hannah write this novel? What's her theme? Why is it about a "wild child"?
NOTE: when she's written historical novels, like The Nightingale and The Four Winds, she has said that she does so to recognize the impact of women on historical events. She wants to bring attention to the roles women have played that traditional history has so often ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. But Magic Hour isn't an historical novel.
Questions for discussion
Early in the novel, Alice refers to herself as Girl, or Her. Initially she calls Julia "Sun-Haired Her" and later "Jew lee."
And in a passage in the novel that records her thoughts rather than her speech, Alice hears "Comeherealis" instead of "Come here Alice."
With all the milestones Alice reaches under Julia's care, why is speech the one that everyone focuses on?
Hannah writes that "a name is integral to developing sense of self." Why? What does this mean?
Why doesn't Alice think she's real?
NOTE: one of Alice's favorite books is The Velveteen Rabbit. Another is The Secret Garden.
Questions for discussion
Is Julia wrong to try to keep Alice from George. Is she choosing what's best for Alice or for herself?
George doesn't have the skills necessary to deal with Alice, but he is her father. Did George give up on Alice too easily or was he right to realize that he couldn't take care of her in the way she needed to be?
Questions for discussion
The media comes under considerable scrutiny in this novel.
Julia is blamed for the violent action of her patient Amber. It destroys her personal confidence and her professional career, despite the fact that the law doesn't consider her culpable.
George is tried and convicted by the press and then by the jury for the murder of his wife and daughter, a crime he didn't commit.
And the press hounds Ellie after Alice is discovered, seeking updates, interviews, photos.
Hannah writes that "the modern world no longer believed in senseless tragedy." Why do people so often need to hold someone accountable when something goes wrong. Is it human nature to play the blame game? Does a guilty verdict offer parents some solace (Julia's patient). Is it better to seek justice or simply forgive?
What is Kristin Hannah saying?
Questions for discussion
What is the "magic hour"?
Even Ellie, who’d lived here all of her life, was awed by the sudden change of weather. It was Magic Hour, the moment in time when every leaf and blade of grass seemed separate, when sunlight, burnished by the rain and softened by the coming night, gave the world an impossibly beautiful glow.
Ellie drew back. “Mom and Dad would be so proud of you, Jules.” That made Julia smile. “Yeah.” She closed her eyes for just a moment, a breath, and remembered all of it—the woman she’d been less than a year ago, afraid of her own spirit and the danger of sharp emotions … the little girl named Alice she’d taken into her heart … and the man who’d dared to push past his own darkness, toward the light they’d found deep in this old-growth forest.
Questions for discussion
What is the "magic hour"?
For years to come she knew that the people of Rain Valley would talk about this special time, when a child unlike any other had walked out of the woods and into their lives and changed them all, and how it had begun in mid-October, when the trees were dressed in tangerine leaves and danced in the chilly, rain-scented breeze, and the sun was a brilliant shade of gold that illuminated everything. Magic hour. For the rest of her life she’d remember it as the time she finally came home.
Breakout Room Question
Unlike some of the novel we've read, this one has a "happy ending." More or less. Will Alice be able to live a normal life?
What do you think about the end of the novel? Are the issues raised in the book resolved?
Is this a romance after all?
Next Week:
Background on Manzanar, the WWII Japanese detention camp
Week after:
Clark and Division