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: