Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Overcoming adversity with ‘Grace’

Upton native earning critical acclaim with her first novel for young adults

By Pamela H. Sacks Telegram & Gazette Staff
psacks@telegram.com

Kimberly Newton Fusco (T&G Staff/CHRIS CHRISTO)

Enlarge photo

‘Tending to Grace’ discussion and signing with author Kimberly Newton Fusco

Where: Tatnuck Bookseller & Sons, 335 Chandler St., Worcester When: 6:30 p.m., Thursday How much: Free and open to the public

In May of last year, Kimberly Newton Fusco experienced the yin and yang of life.

On the 11th, her first novel, “Tending to Grace,” was published. Thirteen days later, her house burned to the ground. She, her husband, Steve, and their four children were uninjured, but they lost nearly everything. Only the scrapbooks with the children’s baby pictures could be saved.

Today, Ms. Fusco, who worked as a reporter for the Telegram & Gazette for 15 years, has reason to rejoice. She and her family are rebuilding their home in Foster, R.I., and expect to move in in March. “I just put everything into perspective,” she said. “We have each other. When everything goes so quickly, you realize how unimportant things are.”

And “Tending to Grace,” a young adult novel about overcoming adversity, has been named a Book List top 10 young adult novel of 2004.

“Tending to Grace” is 167 pages of lyrical language and magical imagery.

Cornelia, the main character, has been dropped off at her great-aunt’s ramshackle house by her mother, who is headed to Las Vegas with her boyfriend. Cornelia is exceptionally bright and bookish, but she retreats from the world in part because she stutters. Her Aunt Agatha is independent and eccentric. She has her own problems and emotional wounds. Gradually their relationship evolves, and each blossoms with the help of the other. Toward the end, as Cornelia comes into her own, she thinks, “I bloom a little more from the spot deep inside myself. I am a chrysanthemum, a late bloomer, a fall bloomer, a bloomer nonetheless.”

The book represents a sort of evolution for Ms. Fusco, both professionally and personally.

She left her job at the Telegram & Gazette in 1998 to raise her young brood. Once home, she was unhappy not writing. It had always been her dream to be a novelist, so she took small bits of time to write when her infants and preschoolers were napping

Within a few years, Ms. Fusco had joined an author’s group. At the urging of members, she sent 10 pages of a nascent novel to a national association of children’s authors. An editor from Alfred A. Knopf was stunned.

“She looked at it and said, ‘Wow, I think you can write the kind of novel we want at Knopf, but you have a plot-driven novel. We want a character-driven novel,’ ” Ms. Fusco recounted.

At first she could not figure out how to do it. Then one day she was sitting outside, and it came to her that she had written the wrong story. “I realized I had to write about something I knew,” Ms. Fusco said. “Cornelia had to stutter.”

Writing a plot based on character was challenging. In order to get to the heart of Cornelia, Ms. Fusco first had to write every chapter in verse and then convert it to prose.

“My editor was very surprised when the novel came through, but she gave me a contract right away,” Ms. Fusco said.

Ms. Fusco, who had speech therapy for 10 years, has never liked to talk about her speech impediment — and she still doesn’t. She laughed and said that when she gave Cornelia a stutter she never thought the novel would be published. She had always read that an author often had to write six or seven books before seeing one in print.

Now, she is glad she took that step; Cornelia’s shyness and struggle to speak have connected with a number of children who have read the book. Ms. Fusco received a note from a young Arizona girl who explained that she had been shy and afraid to speak up. Reading “Tending to Grace” had given her the courage to assert herself. A boy wrote that he stuttered, and he knew Ms. Fusco must have, too, because of the way she described Cornelia’s throat closing up.

“The idea that it is helping kids is the greatest gift of all,” Ms. Fusco said.

Ms. Fusco is a native of Upton. She knew even as a student at Nipmuc Regional High School that she wanted to write fiction. Her parents asked an English teacher if she had sufficient talent. The answer was, “yes,” so Ms. Fusco went on to Roger Williams University in Rhode Island to pursue a degree in creative writing.

Ms. Fusco switched to journalism part way through, believing she could not earn a living as a novelist. She attended Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, worked briefly for the Providence Journal and then in 1983 took a reporting position at the Telegram & Gazette. She covered the education beat and won two major awards.

She used several of her experiences as a reporter in developing “Tending to Grace.” She recalled being at a School Committee meeting one night when it was announced that the adult education center would close. A man stood up and said he had learned to read at the center.

“I was wondering what gave a man the courage to learn how to read,” she remembered.

She went on to spend time with the man and write about him. “He worked on a garbage truck and had to lie his way through life,” Ms. Fusco said. She used a good deal of her knowledge of him to develop the character of Aunt Agatha.

Ms. Fusco borrowed many images from her immediate surroundings. She has gotten considerable attention in literary circles for her description of a laundry line. She based it on seeing her neighbor’s clothing and sheets blowing in the breeze.

It is a passage she worked on through 100 drafts.

We pass villages with daisies at the doorsteps and laundry hung in soft rows of bleached white. I want to jump out of the car as it rushes along and wrap myself in a row of sheets hanging so low their feet tap the grass. I want to hide because my life, if it were a clothesline, would be the one with a sweater dangling by one sleeve, a blanket dragging in the mud, and a sock, unpaired and alone, tumbling to the road with the wind at its heel.

By fall, “Tending to Grace,” which costs $14.95, will be available in paperback. Ms. Fusco is now working on her second novel, this one, too, for young people ages 12 and up.

“I love writing for kids,” she said. “When I was a reporter, I always wanted to write about kids. Oftentimes, they are so powerless in our society. It just feels good to write for kids.”

The idea that it is helping kids
is the greatest gift of all.
Kimberly Newton Fusco