Author Julie Gilbert Discusses the Writing of Her New Book ‘Giant Love’
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
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Research is the foundation on which all historical fiction novels are built, but sometimes the story guides the research and, as I discovered while writing my second novel, The Trade Off , sometimes it’s the other way around. When I first came up with the idea to write a novel about the complex morality of wealth, set in the roaring ‘20s, I thought my protagonist might be a man. I even had a historical figure in mind to loosely base him on: Jesse Livermore, a famous stock operator who notably shorted the great crash and made nearly $100 million dollars. ( Writing Dark Fiction .) As I began my research about Livermore, I soon learned that by the 1920s he was the archetype of a Wall Street bad guy, part of the cadre of wealthy insiders who colluded to move the market in the direction they wanted it to go, usually at the expense of the average investor. This wasn’t my hero. I wanted an investor the reader could root for, someone who challenged the idea that rich equaled bad and poor equaled good. I like to write about strong women taking their place in a man’s world so I made my protagonist a woman: Bea Abramowitz. Bea is an underdog, a young Jewish woman with a gift for numbers, who wants to be a stockbroker. I knew creating her path would be hard, but I didn’t think it was that unusual for a woman to be investing on Wall Street in the ‘20s. After all, this was a liberated moment in women’s history with the suffragists finally succeeding in getting women the vote and flappers living independent lives. This was also the first “egalitarian” moment in the stock market. The whole country had gone stock crazy and more average American people were investing than ever, particularly in the years leading up to the crash. So, while I knew it might not be typical for an “everywoman” to succeed on Wall Street, I didn’t think it would be nearly impossible. Turns out I was wrong. I love research. The […]
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Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
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