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Hannah Tinti discusses her first novel, The Good Thief
Why did you decide to set your novel in New England?
I wanted The Good Thief to take place in America in the 1800s, and New
England felt like the perfect place. I grew up in Salem, Massachusetts—famous
for the witch trials and as the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne—so stepping
into the time period was actually quite natural for me. Most of the houses in
the neighborhood where I grew up were built in the 1700s and 1800s, and it was
not unusual to have a back staircase, or fireplaces in nearly every room, low
ceilings or small latched pantry doors. Whenever my family worked outside in our
small garden, we were constantly digging up things from the past—fragments of
blue and white china plates, broken clay pipes, or crushed shells that used to
line the path to a neighboring carriage house. Once, my grandmother found a
Spanish Reale from the 1700s. This unearthing of tangible history, and being
conscious every day of the people who have lived in places before you is
something common in Europe and other parts of the world, but in America it is
more unusual. In any event, it made a lasting impression on me, and has
certainly wound its way throughout The Good Thief.
How did you come up with the title The Good Thief?
Originally I had planned to call the book Resurrection Men. Then,
for a number of reasons, I had to change it. I was at a loss for a long time,
and nothing seemed appropriate. Finally, I gave an early draft of the novel to
my mother, who worked for many years as a librarian and has read more books than
anyone else I know. She came up with The Good Thief, and as soon as she
said it I knew it was the right title. There is a lot of stealing going on
throughout the book, with mixed intentions and results. I also liked the
biblical reference of the Good Thief (also known as Saint Dismas), who was one
of the men crucified with Jesus Christ on Golgotha. His story is one of
redemption, at the very last minute, and that suits this novel perfectly.
What are ‘Resurrection Men'?
A number of years ago I was given a copy of Jeffrey Kacirk's Forgotten
English, a collection of words that have fallen out of use in the English
language. One of the words was "Resurrection Men," and it included a brief
description of what the word meant:
"Body-snatchers, those who broke open the coffins of the newly buried to supply
the demands of the surgical and medical schools. The first recorded instance of
the practice was in 1742, and it flourished particularly until the passing of
the Anatomy Act in 1832. The resurrectionist took the corpse naked, this being
in law a misdemeanor, as opposed to a felony if garments were taken as
well…First applied to Burke and Hare in 1829, who rifled graves to sell the
bodies for dissection, and sometimes even murdered people for the same
purpose."—Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, excerpted by
Jeffrey Kacirk in Forgotten English.
I was drawn to the moral murkiness of these resurrection men. They were doing
something terrible—desecrating graves—but with the knowledge of the medical
schools and partial acceptance from the law. These thieves did it for the money,
but they also inadvertently saved others from dying by providing the test
subjects doctors needed to further their science. I tore out the definition of
"Resurrection Men," and pasted it into my journal with a note—possible novel?
That was six years ago.
How did you come up with the character of Ren, and why does he have only one
hand?
After learning the definition of Resurrection Men, a scene began to form in
my head. It was a moonlit night, and a small boy was holding the reins of a
horse and wagon outside a graveyard. I didn't know anything about the boy, only
that he was waiting for the resurrection men to bring the bodies, and that he
was terrified. This was the first chapter I wrote of The Good Thief, and
it became the center of the book.
Writing for me has always been an intuitive and mysterious process. As I
expanded the scene, I began to describe the boy, and wrote that he was holding
the reins of the horse with his right hand. But when I tried to say what he was
doing with his left I faltered. Then I realized—he didn't have a left hand. And
suddenly the boy was alive. This is how I discovered Ren's secret, and I used it
to unlock his character. It answered so many questions about him—why he was
alone, and how he might have fallen in with these dangerous men.
The Good Thief has been compared to the work of Robert Louis Stevenson
and Charles Dickens. Did you set out to write an adventure tale?
It's humbling to be compared with these master storytellers. Stevenson and
Dickens were my heroes growing up, along with James Fenimore Cooper. I'm not
sure if I set out purposely to write an adventure story, but I was certainly
influenced by these great writers. Who could forget the scene in Kidnapped
where David Balfour climbs the empty staircase and nearly falls? Or when
Magwitch appears on the moor in Great Expectations? Whenever I felt
daunted by the task before me (The Good Thief is my first novel), I went
back to this important lesson—write something that you would like to read
yourself—and tried to put it in motion on the page. Once I started it was
hard to stop. I like to fall into books; to read about strange places and about
characters who make me care deeply. I also like to be surprised at what's going
to happen next.
What is a wishing stone?
A wishing stone is a rock, usually found near water, with an unbroken white line
circling it completely. It is good for one wish to come true. When I was a child
I would collect them. Later, I was reintroduced to them at an important time in
my life. At the beginning of The Good Thief, Ren comes into possession of
one. It is his golden ticket, and this wish reverberates throughout the rest of
the book, as do the stones themselves. Several people have asked me what a
wishing stone looks like, and so I'm attaching a photo, below, of a few that
I've held on to.
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