Deborah Hufford
Author Interview - Deborah Hufford
Author of The Fire Born
THE FIRE BORN
The untold story of the deadliest fire in American history.
In 1871, the Lake Michigan shoreline is a tinderbox of ambition and drought. Delia, a Swedish orphan, now lives in a rugged Wisconsin lumber-camp brothel. Her only solace is Big Mo, a verse-quoting lumberjack fleeing his own violent past who sees the soul beneath her hardship.
Their fates are inextricably bound to William Butler Ogden, the "Richest Man in the West" and Chicago's first mayor, whose empire of rail and timber unknowingly provides the tinder for the coming inferno. Zelda, an enigmatic circus lion tamer, becomes a haunting muse to William and a link between his high-society empire and the struggles of frontier folk like Delia and Mo.
As the deadliest firestorm in American history consumes Peshtigo and levels Chicago, Delia, Mo, and Zelda are thrust into a harrowing fight for survival, while William must reckon with his part in the apocalypse that threatens to swallow his empires and everyone he loves.
The Fire Born recounts the forgotten Peshtigo catastrophe and the Chicago fire the same night through the eyes of those who lived it, tracing the journey of resilient spirits who find their true strength in the flames and rise from the ashes of disaster.
Author Interview - Deborah Hufford
Author I draw inspiration from:
One of my favorites is Richard Powers, Pulitzer, National Book Award, MacArthur Award winner. When writing The Fire Born, I concentrated especially on The Overstory, because our books are about North America's old growth forests, the decimation of the continent's natural resources, and how our characters' lives intertwined with trees and the zeitgeist of American capitalism. The Fire Born is set in the 1870s, when the continent's massive forests were building America at a breathless pace and were stripped to 10% of their original footprint. The Overstory and The Fire Born make the same point: insatiable is not sustainable.
Author Interview - Deborah Hufford | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
I love to read in my study where I write, surrounded by all my books. I have a big stuffed chair with a big ottoman and my two English Setter rescues squeeze in with me on the chair and ottoman and sleep while I read. We're like one organism spilled into the chair. It's a ritual that brings me such comfort and pleasure, surrounded by the things I love dearly: great books and great dogs.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Zelda The Lion Queen in my new book THE FIRE BORN. She is a young Turkish girl who comes with her Baba and her three pet lions to America to join P.T. Barnum's circus. Zelda raised the orphan lion cubs from birth. She becomes famous in America (there were actually a number of female lion "tamers" in America in the late 1860s/early 1870s ) and performs with her lions without gun, whip or chair but with kindness and trust. Her fascinating character serves as a foil against many of the male lion tamers in the circus world who used cruelty, starvation and beatings to control their animals. Consequently, those male lion tamers suffered high rates of death and maulings.
I would meet Zelda in the elevator of P.T. Barnum's Great American Circus Museum on Broadway in NYC, where Zelda performed with her lions and also lived, as did most of Barnum's circus performers. We would meet before 1865, because the massive structure burned to the ground that year, and killed thousands of animals, including two beluga whales in the basement.
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
When I was about 11 and riding my horse Sundance bareback on a dirt road by the Des Moines River. We found an old stagecoach trail and remnants of a ghost town and abandoned coal mine and I knew I wanted to write.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
I still love to have a book in my hands, especially a hardcover--it seems so extravagant and like a treasure chest full of words. Whenever I read fiction or poetry, I underline phrases that l love. So, when I go back to that book, I re-experience those words again, which makes the book a treasure trove of memory too. They become a part of me.
I love audiobooks too, if they are narrated by a talented narrator.
I like ebook least but because it seems the least interactive or intimate way of enjoying a story.
The last book I read:
I usually read historical fiction and poetry but I recently read aloud to my 93-year-old mother The Well-Lived Life, written by a 102-year-old holistic doctor named Gladys McGarey. My mother and I enjoyed it immensely, since mortality has been foremost in our consciousness. I became a debut novelist at age 70. And my mother passed away several weeks ago.
Author Interview - Deborah Hufford | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
All the above and also recording on my phone, when I wake up with an inspiration. I still love to write in longhand and feel my adrenaline revving up in my veins when I'm writing something I think is good. There are numerous studies now that indicate that writing longhand activates the brain much more than typing and that sensory feedback loops much more deeply with writing than typing. Writing activates broader neural networks, boosts memory retention, and enriches cognitive processing. I actually remember the written scrawled words, which helps me write on an emotional and visceral level.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Karen Blixen (pseudonym Isak Dinesen), Danish author of Out of Africa. I can tell by her writing that I would like her and I would hope she would like me too. She moved to Africa to marry a philandering baron and was left to run a coffee plantation by herself. She was tough, determined, and loved the land and the African tribes whom she befriended. She had an open mind and open heart and struggled mightily against tremendous odds. I too struggled mightily against life-threatening health conditions, maybe not as dramatically as she did with a bull whip and a torch against marauding lions, but every bit as desperate.
Author Interview - Deborah Hufford | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
A volunteer to help save and nurture elephants at an ethically-run sanctuary in Africa or SE Asia.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
I love all historical eras but the Gilded Age era is one of my favorites. The fashions of the rich were exceedingly extravagant. But the women were so strenuously corseted, an apt metaphor for the social strictures imposed upon them in that era.
Both my debut novel, BLOOD TO RUBIES, and my second book, THE FIRE BORN, take place in the 1870s; BLOOD TO RUBIES, in the West; and THE FIRE BORN, in the old-growth forests of the Peshtigo Wisconsin Northwoods that built Chicago and the Midwest. Oddly, the events of the time reflected the fashions of the time: grand opulence of a few versus ghastly strictures of the many.
Place I’d most like to travel:
I'd love to travel to Kenya, Sri Lanka or Nepal to volunteer at an ethical elephant orphanage.
My signature drink:
I had the most magical Moscow Mule at the La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. I'm sure it was partly the exotic atmosphere so steeped in history that helped make the drink seem so magical. Paul McCartney wrote a song about it. There, Josephine Baker passed on top secret documents in indelible ink for the Allies. For a writer, it was like a sacred place of history and the entire time I was enjoying my drink, I was thinking of all the famous people who had enjoyed cocktails there, from Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt, Alfred Hitchcock to Nelson Mandela!
Favorite artist:
Freida Kahlo. She was a firebrand, a pioneer, a feminist, a champion for her people, and a magnificently strong woman who battled against excruciating physical maladies and pain, as well as crushing misogyny in the art world. She refused to change her artistic style, despite art galleries rejecting her work because it was "too radical." She was a true bohemian known for her shocking paintings, joie de vivre, and exuberant fashion style (she appeared on the cover of Vogue Paris and began a new fashion trend).
Number one on my bucket list:
Honestly, my #1 bucket list dream since I was eleven has always been getting my debut novel published. I finally made it at age 70, after fighting off years of kidney failure and a related heart attack. My husband saved my novel and my life by donating his left kidney!
I've written a second novel, The Fire Born. I never would have imagined such a dream coming true. Now I hope I have enough years and a sound mind to write all the novels in me in my old age!
Anything else you'd like to add:
The Fire Born is about one of history's greatest mysteries––America's fieriest night, October 6, 1871–the night of the Great Chicago Fire and another fire in the Peshtigo Northwoods of Wisconsin, overshadowed by Chicago and lost in history. Yet it remains the worst fire in American history, ten times more deadly than the Chicago fire. And one overlooked link: the first mayor of Chicago, who bound both cataclysms together.
Find more from the author:
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/deborah.hufford.3
My blog FB site: www.facebook.com/AuthorDeborahHufford
Instagram: www.instagram.com/deborahhufford.author/
My author website: www.DeborahHufford.com
My popular historical blog, Notes from the Frontier (with more than 100,000 readers & nearly 400 posts): www.NotesfromtheFrontier.com
My YouTube Channel: www.YouTube.com/@BloodtoRubies
My publisher's website: www.KoehlerBooks.com
About Deborah Hufford:
Deborah Hufford
Deborah Hufford is an award-winning writer, historian, and former magazine editor. She began her career at Better Homes & Gardens and has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and Connoisseur, later serving as publisher of The Writer‘s Handbook. She grew up an Iowa farm girl, rodeo queen, lover of history, and voracious reader. While completing her Master's at the University of Iowa, she taught Iowa Writer's Workshop students, then taught graduate writing at Northwestern and Marquette universities. She is the creator of the popular history blog Notes from the Frontier, now with more than 100,000 readers. After a long battle with kidney failure and a resulting heart attack, Deborah's life and debut novel were saved by her husband donating his kidney. Blood to Rubies was published in 2024 and became an Amazon #1 national bestseller, Book of the Year, Ben Franklin Gold Medal Winner for Historical Fiction, and was short-listed for the prestigious Reading the West Award. Her second novel, The Fire Born, takes place in Chicago and the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Deborah lives on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin in a historical area with her husband, Evan, and her English Setter rescues.
