A Difficult Boy FAQ

It took about ten years from the day I wrote the first scene to the day I had the published book in my hand, but the book went through at least five drafts in that time, and I didn’t write all day every day (I had to work for a living, too!). The first draft took about two years to write, and it was about 700 pages long. That was much too big, so it took me about two more years to whittle that down to a mere 500 pages. The next two drafts brought it down to about 350 pages. Meanwhile, I was trying to find an agent or a publisher; that took even longer than writing the book! After Holiday House bought the book, I worked with Regina Griffin and Leanna Petronella, my wonderful editors there, to tighten the story up some more, and took another 50 or so pages off it. Whew!

No. Both the story and the setting are fictional. I couldn’t find a real town that was exactly the way I imagined Farmington, so I invented a town on the western edge of Hampden County, Massachusetts, near the Farmington River.

Although Ethan isn’t a real person, his story was inspired by a document that I discovered in the archives of the Museum of Springfield [Massachusetts] History. The document was a bill that a man sent to an indentured boy’s mother, charging her for the cost of catching the boy when he ran away. That got me thinking: What kind of man was that master? Why did the boy run away? What would happen if his mother couldn’t pay the bill?

Before I knew it, the characters of Mr. Lyman and Ethan began to take shape. After that, Daniel made his appearance. Irish immigrants like Daniel came to New England in large numbers in the 1820s and 1830s to build canals and mills. So I used that information to help me imagine why Daniel’s family might have come from Ireland.

Jonathan Stocking, the peddler, was based on research I did at Old Sturbridge Village about peddlers in New England. I’d originally intended Mr. Stocking to make a very brief appearance, but he insisted on developing into a more prominent character. He also insisted on being quite different from the character I’d originally intended. I’d envisioned a tall, thin fellow in his twenties as the peddler. But when I started writing the scene, Mr. Stocking turned into a short, round, older man with a checkered past and a variety of talents. Mr. Stocking continued to pester me to tell his story; you’ll find more adventures involving Mr. Stocking and Daniel in Mending Horses.

My training at Old Sturbridge Village involved learning about almost every detail of life in a New England town of the 1830s. When I worked there, I did many of the chores Ethan and Daniel do, like milking cows, mucking out the barn, planting crops, turning the manure pile, etc. So I used that experience when I described the way things looked and sounded and felt and smelled in the story (especially the smells!).

At Sturbridge Village, I also learned about the opinions and beliefs of people from the time period. It was interesting to see the ways in which people have changed since then—and the ways they haven’t!

Sturbridge Village has a fabulous research library, which provided a wealth of information. I also did a lot of research at the Museum of Springfield History in Massachusetts and Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. I searched through reference books, old newspapers, indenture agreements, account books, and diaries and reminiscences of people who’d lived in the time period. For example, when Mr. Pease, the hired man, tells anti-Irish stories to aggravate Daniel, I adapted the tales from some jokes that were published in newspapers from the 1830s.

I also relied on several former co-workers from the Village for advice and fact-checking. I’m especially grateful to Dennis Picard, historian and former Director of Storrowton Village Museum in West Springfield, Massachusetts, for going over the manuscript to root out any historically inaccurate situations. He’s an amazing guy—I swear he has a photographic memory! 

No. I did consider learning Irish, but it’s such a complicated language that I found the prospect a bit intimidating. So I called on a couple of experts to help me out. Thomas Moriarty, a professor from Elms College (my alma mater) in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and George Bresnahan graciously translated all the Irish bits for me.

I’ve loved horses ever since I was a kid. I read all Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books, and probably drove my mom crazy cutting pictures of horses out of magazines and newspapers. But my family couldn’t afford a horse or riding lessons, so I didn’t get the chance to learn to ride until I was in my twenties. Although I never owned a horse, I took riding lessons for several years and helped take care of a couple of horses at the stable where I took my lessons. I don’t know that I was ever much good, but I had fun!

The best teacher I had was a red-haired girl named Kathy, who taught me to ride much the same way that Daniel teaches Ethan. No, we didn’t ride the horse together the way Ethan and Daniel do in the book, but Kathy described how to sit in the saddle and hold my posture just the way Daniel does, and she showed me how to get a feel for the horse’s motion. She also recommended a book called Centered Riding by Sally Swift, which was a real eye-opener. From that point, everything just started to click for me, and my riding improved immensely.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to ride for many years. But I hope I will be able to do it again someday. 

Ivy is based on a combination of real horses I’ve observed and fictitious ones that I’ve read about. When I took riding lessons, there was a girl who had taken care of one of the stable horses for so long that the two of them had formed a strong bond. She would run around the pasture and play with this horse the way Daniel plays with Ivy in the book–although Daniel and Ivy play a bit rougher!

When I worked at Old Sturbridge Village, I became friends with a lovely gentleman named Gil Barons, who drove a horse and carriage around the village. Gil was in his seventies when I met him. He’d been around horses all his life and told me lots of stories about the horses he’d known. He had a wonderful bond with his horse Monty, whom he’d owned for more than twenty-five years. I’m sure I picked up a lot just watching Gil and Monty work together.

Well, that’s an unsolved mystery! Marc Tauss, who created the cover, used a photo that he found in an antique store. There was nothing to identify the boys in the photo, which probably dates from the late 1800s. He collaged the picture with a 19th-century account book and a horse silhouette to create the stunning cover image. 

You’ll find lots of good information at the following websites:

• Old Sturbridge Village
• The Library of Congress U.S. History Primary Source Timeline
• Teacher Oz’s list of 19th-century weblinks
• US History Scene

You might also take a look at some of the books that I used for my research:

Daily Life in New England

• Carson, Gerald. Country Stores in Early New England. Sturbridge, Massachusetts: Old Sturbridge Village, 1955.
• Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988.
• Rorabaugh, W. J. The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Peddlers

• Benes, Peter, editor. Itinerancy in New England and New York. Boston University: Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings, 1984.
• Wright, Richardson. Hawkers & Walkers in Early America. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1927.

Horse Whispering

• Bowker, Nancy. John Rarey: Horse Tamer. London: J.A. Allen, 1996.
• Brown, Sara Lowe. Rarey: The Horse’s Master and Friend. Columbus, Ohio: The F.J. Heer Printing Co., 1916.
• Rarey, John S. The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses. (reprint) Watertown, Minnesota: Nath Thoroughbreds, 1998.

The Irish in New England

• Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995.