Q&A: Veronica Chambers, Author of ‘Ida, in Love and in Trouble’

We chat with author Veronica Chambers about Ida, in Love and in Trouble, which follows  the courageous (and flirtatious) Ida B. Wells as she navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader.

Hi, Veronica! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I always describe myself as a reader first and a writer second. But I think three of the most defining things about me are:

1. I grew up a Third Space, first generation American, and the first books I loved were mysteries.  My mother loved books by authors like Agatha Christie. And I did, and I do. It’s not a book but I think the BBC Sherlock Holmes series is such perfection. I love the idea of a brain palace and I love the satisfying feeling of getting to the bottom of a mystery.
2. I am also an editor at the New York Times which is its own kind of professional heaven.
3. I live in London, which is a city I’ve long loved. It’s such a great city for book lovers. Rainy days, the fog, lots of bookstores and lots of reasons to stay inside and read. Also it’s the land of Austen. And I love Jane Austen.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I think being first generation made me a very voracious reader. I was intensely interested in what it meant to be American and what other families, towns, friendships, romances, were like.

But I started reading my moms’ mysteries that she borrowed from the library and I took it from there.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: I remember distinctly reading the Beatrix Potter books when I was very small.
• The one that made you want to become an author: I think this is a tie between Nikki Giovanni’s Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, Toni Morrison’s Sula and A.S. Byatt’s Possession.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I love the back and forth between the past and present in Possession, I think it’s one of the things that really drew me to historical fiction. How does the past impact our now? I felt that constantly in writing Ida.

Your latest novel, Ida, in Love and in Trouble, is out September 10^th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

How about 5 words/phrases?

1. Brave
2. Romantic
3. Justice-driven
4. Surprising
5. Inspiring

What can readers expect?

I think readers can expect a story of becoming. It’s about how a young woman, who moved to a big city with no connections and nobody backing her, became a force in journalism and American politics, and left an imprint in the world that has lasted more than a hundred years.

We tell kids all the time, “dreams can come true.”  This book is really intricate about Ida’s dreams, how they were shaped, how they were thwarted and how she went above, under and beyond the obstacles that were placed in front of her.

Where did the inspiration for Ida, in Love and in Trouble come from?

Journalism is my life blood, so I knew Ida as a pioneer of what we now call investigative journalism. How she investigated the crimes of lynching would be a riveting true crime podcast. (There were Pinkerton detectives involved!)

But when I read the diaries she kept in her early twenties, I found a young woman falling in and out of love. It made me think of books I loved by Jane Austen as well as books like The Age of Innocence and I realized “Wow, Ida wasn’t just a social justice hero. She was a young Victorian woman, she was courted and dated in the Gilded Age.”

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

Oooh, I loved writing the love letters. And the fashions. But there are two moments I really loved. Writing about Ida’s friendship/mentorship with Frederick Douglass and a scene I constructed where she hears Lewis Latimer speak. Latimer worked for Edison and was a scientist and an inventor. And I’m a bit of a science geek. So that was heaven.

Can you tell us a bit about your research process?

Well, I write every draft by hand. And I read everything I could. I just had dozens of notebooks with notes about dialogue, maps that I drew, quotes that I pulled in, how love letters began and end… Oh, and this was fun—when reading about how Ida met Mary Church Terrell, who had studied classics at Oberlin, I had a really fun WhatsApp conversation with a friend who is Greek about just what Mary Church Terrell might have said in Greek back then. It was just endless amounts of geeky fun.

What do you hope readers take away from Ida, in Love and in Trouble?

I hope readers take away the idea that it’s okay to feel lost on your path to your own great thing. Ida did, again and again. But that’s why history, and historical fiction, is so vital. We need reminders that mistakes, mishaps and misfortune are not only inevitable, they are necessary plot twists on the path. The mistake isn’t the mistake. It’s not learning from the lesson.

I also thought a lot about something Ava Duvernay once said, which is something I think Ida believed deeply: if your dream is just about you, you’re dreaming too small.

What’s next for you?

Another historical novel, with my amazing editor, Margaret Raymo. This one is about Josephine Baker. And believe me, as Mademoiselle Baker might have said, c’est si bon!

Will you be picking up Ida, in Love and in Trouble? Tell us in the comments below!