Reader and Book Club EXTRAS

Dear Readers,

Several years before I started writing The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, I’d read a published diary by an early settler on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, near where I live. In this diary – The James Francis Tulloch Diary 1875-1910, edited by Gordon Keith – I read of a smuggler who, it was rumored, had a boatload of Chinese people he was smuggling into the US from Canada when he saw the revenue cutter coming close. Rather than getting caught with his illegal cargo, he brought the people on deck, bashed their heads with a club and shoved their bodies overboard. Mr. Tulloch goes on to say that he knows this man, and he believes the rumors.

At the time that I read that, I didn’t know about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or why Chinese immigrants could not legally enter the country. Those questions, combined with the horror that human beings were treated like objects to be disposed of, stayed with me as I wrote other stories.

I wrote five full-length manuscripts that never got published, despite my best efforts, and I was losing confidence that publishing novels was something I could do. I tried to find another career path to pursue, but I kept coming back to writing. It was in about 2010 that I sat down to figure out my next book and I remembered this story about the smuggler and his murder of Chinese people. I dove into research and learned so much about the terribly racist policies and laws of this era, and I learned that towns all up and down the west coast actively drove out the Chinese people primarily because they saw them as “stealing” jobs (when, in actuality, they were working for the best wages offered to them, which was still incredibly lower than what any white person would accept).

I had already decided by this time that I wanted this book to be dual-timeline, meaning that it was both historical and present-day, and I knew I wanted to set the stories in places that I loved – Seattle and the San Juan Islands. I was sad to learn that the people of Seattle also tried to drive all Chinese out of town. This is when the character of Mei Lien came to life. I knew she would be brutally driven from her Seattle home, just as so many were that terrible day in 1886. But here is where I strayed from the true history. You see, in most towns such as Tacoma to the south, all Chinese people were successfully driven out and their homes and businesses destroyed. In Seattle, though, the territorial governor intervened and offered the Chinese people protection. An angry anti-Chinese mob was forcing the Chinese people to the wharf and onto a ship. Soon, however the ship’s captain was charged with illegally detaining people and ordered to appear in court the next morning. Overnight, all Chinese people on the ship and in a nearby warehouse were protected by armed guards while mobs of agitators roamed the city. In court the next morning, the Chinese people were informed that they could stay, if they chose, and they would be protected. Most chose to leave. Of those who stayed, they were escorted back to their homes by armed guards who faced a tense standoff in the street. One rioter was killed, but no Chinese people were injured. Martial law remained in the city for months.

Because Seattle was an exception, I wrote the story in The Girl Who Wrote in Silk to be more representative of what happened in other towns and cities where no one intervened on behalf of the Chinese people. I hope you forgive my use of literary license to tell the story in a way that truthfully represented the horrors of that time, even though it did not fully represent Seattle’s history.

I wrote Mei Lien’s story first, and then I had to figure out what present-day character would be impacted by this history. Thus, Inara was brought to life. She finds an intricately embroidered garment hidden away in an old family property and, while researching what it is and where it came from, learns about Mei Lien, the horror of what happened in Seattle, and how her own family was involved.

I love stories that bring history to light and show how it is still so relevant to our lives today. I hope The Girl Who Wrote in Silk does that for you, and I hope that you think of Mei Lien and her family as you look at all that is happening in the world today.

Thank you for reading this, my debut novel. It is because of your support that I get to keep doing what I love.

Happy reading!

Kelli