We chat with author Christina Baker Kline about The Foursome, which is a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina — Kline’s own distant relatives — who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.
What role does your own family history play in the book?
Sarah and Adelaide are my distant cousins; I grew up hearing about them and our family connection to the world-famous “Siamese Twins.” Writing this book was like uncovering a hidden branch of my family tree.
Why did you center Sarah and Adelaide rather than Chang and Eng?
Much of my writing focuses on stories told through the eyes of those whom history tends to marginalize or forget. The Bunker twins’ lives have been extensively documented, but their
wives are virtually absent from the historical record. I wanted to imagine the emotional reality behind the facts – the inner lives that history overlooked.
How did you navigate writing about slavery, especially from the perspective of a white woman whose family owned enslaved people?
I approached it with care, humility, and a deep sense of responsibility. One of the central challenges of this novel was confronting the pervasive, often unseen ways white complicity sustained the institution of slavery. I wanted to examine not only overt cruelty, but the more insidious forms of oppression: silence, rationalization, willful ignorance.
What do you hope readers take away from The Foursome?
Above all, I hope readers feel the weight of these characters’ choices – the daily negotiations between love and duty, the moments when they chose to speak rather than stay silent, to resist rather than comply. History isn’t fixed; it’s shaped by ordinary people making difficult decisions in complicated moments.
