“I did my physical-therapy exercises religiously! My doctor predicted I might have 75 percent recovery, but I had 85 percent within a year.” It only took two of those 12 months, however, to complete Maisie Dobbs (Soho Press, 2003), which went on to win the Macavity Award, the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and the Agatha Award for First Novel that year.Įven more unpredictable for Winspear was that she was writing fiction.
She now credits the frustration of one-handed typing with improving her mobility.
“My writing buddy said, ‘Well, now you can finish the book.’ I protested, ‘I can’t use my right hand!’ And she said, ‘You still have the left.’” Winspear laughs. An avid horsewoman, Winspear suffered a horrible riding accident that crushed her right shoulder and landed her in orthopedic “scaffolding” for a month. Though that beginning remained virtually unchanged, Winspear didn’t get around to finishing the book until more than a year later, when she had come to another standstill-literally. By the time the light changed, Winspear had the details of a first chapter in her head and couldn’t wait to get home to record the history of Maisie Dobbs, her housemaid turned scholar turned sleuth. But I call it my moment of artistic grace,” says the author, who has also worked as a creativity coach. “It sounds rather like meeting the apparition on the Road to Damascus. “It was like watching a movie,” Winspear says of that first “mind’s eye” vision of her imaginary investigator, who she has since taken through three post-World War I cases, including Pardonable Lies (Henry Holt), published this August. The surprise: This sighting actually occurred in spring 2000, as Winspear was stuck at a stoplight in bumper-to-bumper traffic on her way to her job in the San Francisco Bay area. Winspear saw her stop to chat with a newspaper vendor before pulling out a set of keys and entering a somewhat rundown Georgian building on Fitzroy Square. Soho Press has recently re-issued this classic novel with a new afterworld by the author.Īs Jacqueline Winspear tells it, Maisie Dobbs appeared unbidden, emerging from London’s Warren Street tube station one spring day in 1929. As the world looks to the outbreak of WWI in the summer of 1914, we are re-running this interview with Jacqueline Winspear, author of the bestselling Maisie Dobbs series which deals with the aftermath of that great conflict.
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