Exploring themes of immigration, family, and fractured dreams, The Mill of Lost Dreams was inspired by the Lori Rohda’s grandmother, who began working in a textile mill when she was only 11. Lori wanted to better understand what life was like for her grandmother before she knew her, so the research commenced!
With the current state of the world, what are you doing to cope with the changes we’ve had to make with our day-to-day?
I am very fortunate. My husband and I have a home in the mountains of British Columbia where there are only a few cases. We can be outdoors on hiking trails or golfing by ourselves. I am also using the time to learn tai chi and how to zoom with family and friends.
When did you discover your love for writing?
I don’t think I discovered a love of writing per se. I did discover that I loved the diversity of the challenges faced in great story-telling.
Your novel, The Mill of Lost Dreams, is out now. If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Relevant, insightful, disillusioning, inspirational and timely
Now tell us a little more! What can readers expect?
Twelve million people immigrated to America between 1870 and 1900; hundreds of thousands came to work in the textile mills of Fall River, Massachusetts. Readers can expect to learn more about an industry and an historical period that transformed the Northeast. But more importantly, and unlike most stories about immigration, The Mill of Lost Dreams explores not only the exploitation of people, but what happens to people emotionally when they cannot build the lives they’ve dreamed about and how the consequence s of this disappointment impacts and shapes the lives of their children and their children’s children
What inspired you to write this novel?
When I began, I just wanted to write about Annie (my grandmother who raised me) as a way to remember and honor her; not simply to describe our relationship but to learn about her life before me since she was thirty when I was born. I was curious about the people and events that shaped her life – as she had shaped mine.
Did you face any difficulties while writing, such as writing a scene or conducting research?
The research was most difficult. I already knew that as an infant, Annie was left on the steps of an orphanage and that she ran away just after her eleventh birthday to find a job at one of the textile mills along the river. The Fall River that Annie grew up in was the largest textile manufacturing center in the entire country but, years later, I walked to school in the shadow of those same mills – now abandoned, covered in graffiti, with shards of glass from hundreds of broken windows littering the ground.
Because I knew absolutely nothing about textile manufacturing, I started reading historical accounts about that industry and the circumstances that drew it to Fall River, Massachusetts. The next step, and the most difficult, was to learn about the actual processes and the machinery required to turn 450-pound bales of cotton of cotton into cloth and, finally, to understand what it was like to be a ‘mill girl’.
In the end, I was most curious about the people who toiled in these mills – the expressionless men, women, and children in the historical photographs I’d viewed. Who were they? Where did they come from? What were their lives like? What was Annie’s life like as a mill girl? It was what I learned about them that changed the story I would later write and became The Mill of Lost Dreams.
Without spoiling too much, is there a favorite moment that you absolutely loved writing?
Yes. The pivotal scene when the most damning secret is accidentally exposed. A secret so revolting and lethal that marriages dissolve, families splinter, and long-term friendships disintegrate.
What do you hope readers take away from your novel?
I hope readers will challenge the pervasive misperception that immigrants are a danger to our society, our democracy and our identity and instead consider that for the most part, immigrants are desperate human beings trying to escape horrendous circumstances, willing to risk everything, even their lives, to find safety and opportunity
It is utterly shameful that the treatment of immigrants during the time period described in my book and how they are treated today continues to be indecent and inhumane. For example, in 2019, we witnessed television coverage of masses of people desperately trying to escape their homelands. We saw heart-wrenching photos of people crammed into or clinging onto small boats begging for help; we turned our faces away from the photographs of the dead bodies of children washing up on beaches and inconsolable toddlers being forcefully separated from their parents at the US border.
I want readers to understand that this is our legacy – as a country and as a people – and we need to start paying attention. I hope readers will be inspired to raise their voices in protest against the current climate of intolerance and the continued humiliating, degrading treatment of immigrants.
Can you tell us about your publishing journey for The Mill of Lost Dreams?
Frankly, it was a rocky start! My original draft was nearly 177K words. but when told that She Writes Press prefers manuscripts to be closer to 110K, I was speechless. Of course, I couldn’t imagine removing 67,000 words was even possible without impacting the flow of the story and the credibility of its characters. As a rookie author, I naively and egotistically thought every page, every chapter, every scene was incredibly vital and, if I may say so myself, brilliant … but, as it turned out, I was wrong.
Lastly, are you currently reading anything and do you have a book recommendation for our readers?
The Choice – Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger (a memoir of an Auschwitz survivor pulled from a pile of corpses when the camp was liberated)
