St. Paul writer Heather Bouwman’s ‘Scattergood’ hits shelves, two decades after she started it

Heather Bouwman has two children in their 20s and a new book — “Scattergood,” out Jan. 21 — that is technically older than both of them.

The University of St. Thomas creative writing professor, who publishes middle-grade books under the name H.M. Bouwman, has worked on and abandoned the book multiple times but it’s finally hitting shelves with its story set in and around Scattergood, the West Branch, Iowa, Quaker school that housed hundreds of people who fled Nazi Germany in the 1940s. That’s when the book takes place, telling the story of a farm girl named Peggy who is grappling with the impending death of cousin Delia, who has leukemia, and the melancholy of a refugee professor she befriends.

We chatted with Bouwman about the book’s journey and about taking it from “terrible” to available soon at a store or library near you.

On why she uses pen name H.M. Bouwman:

When my first book was coming out, I was trained with a Ph.D. in early American literature, and I was still writing in that area as Heather Bouwman. I thought I should separate that out in case it’s confusing — as if any child would look up my writing on [Native writer] Samson Occom’s sermons and get them confused.

On why she wrote “Scattergood”:

I was really grabbed by the story of what happened at Scattergood during World War II. But another reason was my own cousin died. We were the same age. She was older than Delia was when she died but it was very sudden. She was murdered. It was a shooting and — it’s hard to talk about. It was something I wanted to write about but didn’t want to write about. Part of the reason I started with Peggy as I did was that I had been so angry at how there was no chance to say goodbye to my cousin, for any of us. I thought, “What if the cousin in the book has a much longer period of time? What if she had a chance to say goodbye?”

On whether having time makes it any easier:

Honestly, it doesn’t make it better. I don’t think it was easier for Peggy and the family in the book. And, at the time I was revising this, my mom was dying and she had dementia, so it was a long, slow death as well.

On the long gestation of “Scattergood”:

I started drafting this when I was pregnant with my now 21-year-old. My goal was to complete it before I gave birth and I did complete a draft but it was a terrible draft. I had another kid. I had a toddler and a baby and didn’t write for a while. Then I went back to my first book and that got picked up and came out, “[The Remarkable & Very True Story of] Lucy & Snowcap.” The next year, 2009, I went back to “Scattergood” and sent it to my editor and a couple other people and nobody liked it. It wasn’t very good then, so it’s understandable. My agent tried to sell it for three years and it was substantially the way it is now. I did a lot of revisions with my editor, Taylor [Norman], but you would recognize it. My next book sold in six weeks, so I thought, “I guess I’m only going to write fantasy. This is what people want.” And I love fantasy, to be clear. So when my agent asked if she should keep sending it out, I said, “You know what? We can be done with it.”

On her reaction when an editor asked to see it again, in 2022:

My agent and I were cackling like witches on the phone. I said, “I’ll see if I can dig it up,” but we didn’t really expect anything because that’s what we always got: “Oh, never mind.” I hadn’t read it in years. I had probably last read it in 2014, 2015. I didn’t remember some of the stuff. I got to the point where [spoiler about violent incident] and I was like, “What was I thinking?” Then, I realized how much revising I had to do. It turns out after 20 years you actually do become a different writer.

On looking at it with fresh eyes and realizing she knew what needed to be fixed:

That was the exciting part, really. Taylor gave great feedback, too. She was able to point out, “I don’t know why this character is making this decision” and I was, “Oh, you’re right. That’s not on the page.” But I had built this story in my mind about why it hadn’t gotten picked up earlier. The story I built was it was a terrible book and the writing must have been really bad. So when I did go back to it and started reading it over the holiday break in 2022, the first 80 pages or so I was like, “This is pretty good.” And then, after 80 pages, I realized, “Crap, this needs a lot of work.” The character depth wasn’t there, later in the book. They were a little more cardboard-y, to me, anyway.

On Facebook coming in handy during the writing of “Scattergood,” when Delia calls Peggy a “stinking rat” for lying to her:

I could not come up with the right phrase for the longest time and I wanted to echo it later in the book, when Peggy herself is really mad at God and calls God the same name, so it had to work in both contexts. I actually outsourced that question to my friends on Facebook. I don’t remember if I got “stinking rat” there or not but that helped me think more broadly about what to do.

On how much the world has changed during the 20-year process of writing “Scattergood”:

I had an author’s note at the end, which I still do. When I wrote that in 2009 or whenever I wrote it, I was writing about the type of leukemia Delia has and the fact that it is over 80% curable [as opposed to the ‘40s, when the book is set and when it was inevitably fatal]. I was going back to fact-check to make sure the details were correct and it’s actually 90% curable now. It made me tear up. In the amount of time it took me to write and publish the book, it became that much more curable.

On how teaching affects when she can write:

It depends what I’m working on. I try to plan drafting of big new projects for summer or semesters when I’m not quite as heavily loaded. Drafting like that, I like to really get into it for a few hours a day. But revision and spitballing ideas, the pre-planning of stuff, can happen during semesters even when I’m really busy.

On the importance of Delia telling Peggy, “I know you feel like you don’t fit in”:

I think a lot of kids feel like they don’t fit in and that they uniquely don’t fit in. I did want to acknowledge that Peggy feels like she doesn’t fit in and it’s obvious that there are ways she doesn’t think the same ways as everyone. She is younger than her classmates. She and [frenemy] Ida Jean are not exactly soulmates, but they’re stuck together. But she’s not thinking about the fact that Delia does not fit in, also. She’s learning that this is true of all of us, that we have tunnel vision so we see our own issues and don’t see that other people are feeling analogous things.

On the value of sad books for young people:

I think it’s valuable for them to know it’s not just them, that they aren’t totally unique in experiencing whatever sadness they’ve been through, that there are people they can turn to, even if they’re just characters in fictional books. If you’re a kid who hasn’t experienced that kind of loss yet, I think it’s also useful. You know people who have. It helps you become more empathetic to the people around you because sadness, we are all going to experience it.

On who the book is for:

My ideal reader would be an adult and a child who read it together and talk about it together. There are so many big issues in the book that are worth talking about.

Scattergood

By: H.M. Bouwman.

Publisher: Neal Porter Books, 308 pages, $18.99.

Event: Book launch, 6 p.m. Tue., Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Av., St. Paul. Free but registration available. 7 p.m. Jan. 30, Content Bookstore, 314 Division St., Northfield. Free.