Photo credit: Beth Gwinn
Describe your latest book.
I think of
Spinning Silver as a conversation with Rumpelstiltskin — not a retelling of the fairy tale, but the fairy tale was the grain of sand in my oyster, and the book formed around it.
Spinning Silver begins with the story of Miryem, a moneylender’s daughter, who lives in a kingdom called Lithvas, loosely inspired by a mix of Lithuania and Poland and Russia — not so much the real places, but those places as they existed in my imagination as a child, growing up with the fairy tales and family stories my parents told me.
Miryem isn’t the only narrator, but the story follows her as she gains the power to turn silver into gold, and then uses that power to save first her family, then her people, then her nation...