Category: Q&A

Colorado author pays tribute to New Hampshire

Colorado author Christina Holbrook discussed her debut novel All the Flowers of the Mountain, which is set in New Hampshire and was inspired, she said, by the times she spent in the Granite State during her childhood.

What is your connection to New Hampshire?

I grew up in New York, and my parents owned a house in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, where we spent all of our summers and winter vacations. Also, my grandparents had farms in New Hampshire. At that time in my life New Hampshire made such a deep impression on me. I felt like my heart was in the White Mountains. I’ve had that feeling through most of my life. As an adult I lived in New York City, and now I’m in Colorado, but I always found a way, especially in the summers, to get back to New Hampshire for a visit. I feel like it’s the home of my imagination.

What is All the Flowers of the Mountain about?

It’s a love story and a coming-of-age story about growing up in New Hampshire. It begins in the present and then moves back to this particular summer when these two main characters meet each other, impact each other’s lives and eventually go their separate ways. It ends in the present again, with the open question as to what will finally happen with this relationship that was so important to these two characters.

What is the significance of New Hampshire in the story?

… The setting is extremely important to the story. It has a big impact on the characters, how they interact with each other and the choices they make and is part of how the story comes together in the end.

What made you want to write this novel at this time in your life?

I’ve been a writer all my life … but I’ve spent my professional life in publishing. … I feel like I’ve always been in sort of a supporting role to other creative people, and I felt like it was finally time for me to put myself in more of a center role as a creative person. … [Another reason was] becoming older. I’m 61 years old now, and in your late 50s and early 60s you start to reflect back on all the things that made you who you are. … New Hampshire is a place that means so much to me in my life. I have a really deep nostalgia for this period of time when I grew up in this particular place, and I really wanted to write about it. … Many of the places that were part of my life back then are included in the story. I’ve described [the book] to my publisher as ‘my love song to New Hampshire.’

What has the writing and publishing process been like?

I started putting the pen to paper on a draft about five years ago. About six months later I had my first draft, and I spent the next year revising it. Then I started to send it out to literary agents to try to get representation. By the beginning of 2020 I had an agent who wanted me to do more revisions … and I ended up rewriting the entire novel. … It took me until this past March to finish that draft. I turned it in to my agent, and she was thrilled because it was such a departure [from] and quite a big improvement on the story. … Also at the end of March, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I had surgery in April, and I’ve just finished six weeks of radiation. It’s a pretty serious situation. In the world of publishing, it could easily take my agent six months to a year to find a publisher, and then it could take two more years [to publish it], and at this point, I don’t know if I have two or three years to wait. A local publisher in Colorado came to me and said, ‘We understand your situation. We will get this book out in three months for you.’ They had a team of people do the copy editing, cover design, proofing, everything, and they pulled the whole thing together in three months.

When was the last time you were in New Hampshire, and when will you be back?

The last time I was in New Hampshire was last summer, and we will be going again this summer, probably toward the end of August. I’m working on [scheduling] a book signing there. … I’m really hoping to share this story with people in New Hampshire. Two years ago, during Covid, when there were all these remote writers groups, I also ended up connecting [with] and joining the New Hampshire Writers Project … and started to join them on their monthly Zoom calls.

What would you like people to take away from your book?

I feel like Vermont and Maine get a lot of play but people don’t always know about how incredibly beautiful and magical New Hampshire is. … I hope that, for people who haven’t been to New Hampshire, this book will give them an interest and curiosity to come visit the Granite State. For people who have lived in New Hampshire, I hope it gives them a sense of pleasure to recognize the places and descriptions of New Hampshire.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Museum adds to its view of history

The American Independence Museum in Exeter was recently awarded a grant to increase its exhibition space to share a more comprehensive history of the founding of America. Jennifer Carr, the museum’s curator and collections manager and acting executive director, discussed what that will look like and the importance of inclusive storytelling in American history.

What will the grant be used for?

The Samuel P. Hunt Foundation has generously awarded us $21,250 to enhance our archival and exhibit infrastructure … [with new] archival museum cases, as well as some smaller-ticket items that will help us to tell stories about inclusive history. For the past couple years, the museum has been taking a look at how we interpret the founding of the American nation, and we’ve seen that we tell the story from really one perspective, which is the military perspective. That left a lot of people out of the equation. We’ve been doing research on local and state history and looking at our collections to see how we can bring more inclusive history into what we do with the museum. We’ve discovered that we have a collection of more than 3,000 items, and there are different stories we can tell with those items than what we’ve been telling. There are many different ways for historians to interpret the same item. … With the grant, we’ve been able to purchase five new cases, as well as labels which are ADA-compliant. With that, we can bring more of our collections out of storage and put that research to use, sharing those incredible stories with our guests.

What are some of the stories you plan on telling with the expanded exhibit space?

We’re looking to expand to as many different underrepresented groups as we can. We’ve been working with Black history, women’s history, indigenous history, and we even have one story that covers LGBTQ history. We have a military order book written by General von Steuben, who helped General Washington whip the Continental Army into shape and start winning battles, and it turns out there’s an interesting LGBTQ history related to General von Steuben, so we’re able to bring that book out and talk not only about military strategy but also about the contributions of the LGBTQ community to the founding of our nation. We also have indigenous artifacts uncovered during the 2019 archeological dig at the Ladd-Gilman House … so we’re able to tell the pre-contact history of indigenous peoples right in our own backyard.

When will these updates be ready to view?

The company that manufactures these museum cases actually has a pretty long lead time at this point, so we won’t be able to get them out on exhibit until next season. In the meantime, we’re going to continue working on research to dive deeper into our collections and see how many more stories from different perspectives we can uncover to prepare for getting those museum cases in place to share with our guests in 2023.

Who does this historical research, and what does that process look like?

It’s primarily me. Before I began serving as acting executive director, I was primarily focused on curatorial work. I was taking the lead on all the research and interpretation. We also had a couple fantastic volunteers who helped us with research and going to the historical societies and digging through deeds and archives. It’s been a team effort.

What led the museum to pursue these updates?

It’s something happening industry-wide. I think America has realized so much of its history has gone untold. There’s a reckoning right now with that. We’re looking at everyone who has gone underrepresented in this nation. We feel it’s important to tell a balanced story of the founding of the nation, not just from the military perspective, not just the grand stories of the founding fathers, but of everything the people of this nation went through to gain independence. … Independence wasn’t won only on the battlefield; it was about boycotts women were engaged in to fight the taxes Britain was levying on the colonies; it was about the enslaved people who left their families to go off to fight in a war they believed would lead to freedom for them, only to come home and remain enslaved. There are a lot of stories, good and bad, that led to the founding of this nation.

Has there been an interest from the public in learning about these stories?

Yes. I’ve personally led some tours over the past couple years that included these new stories we’ve uncovered, and I’ve heard people making comments like, ‘Wow, I had no idea that happened here. I’m glad you’re telling these stories, because it’s something I didn’t hear in school.” That has been great to hear. Overwhelmingly, the feedback has been positive. I think people enjoy hearing stories that are different from what they learned in school. We’ve all heard the story of the Boston Tea Party; it’s a great story, but it’s nothing new. I think people are interested in hearing new things and learning on a deeper level.

Featured photo: Jennifer Carr. Courtesy photo.