"Without the emotion, it’s just a museum exhibit."

An interview with Elizabeth Sowden

I first stumbled across Elizabeth Sowden on Notes, which led me down the rabbit hole of reading Adventures in Historical Fiction, Sowden’s thoughtful, fascinating, and always-surprising Substack inspired by her historical research.

We talked about her short stories and essays, how she learned to conduct research, and the secret to writing historical fiction that resonates with contemporary readers.

Several of Cold Caller’s interviews have been with people I first ran across on Substack, which is one of my favorite things about this platform. As a writer, how have you found it to be for finding and building your audience?

I originally launched my newsletter as a way to publish short stories. I’ve had stories published in literary magazines, but I never made submitting to them a consistent habit. It felt like a chore, like applying for jobs. I would try to read a few pieces in each magazine to see if my stories were a fit, but often found there was no obvious through-line from one to the next. People never want to admit this, but I strongly suspect that people don’t know what they want until they see it. Ever notice how vague lit mag submission guidelines often are? For copywriters, project owners not knowing what they want until they see it is a known occupational hazard. Why would it be any different with literary magazines? So I decided I’d see what would happen if I posted them on Substack instead.

The trouble is, I ran out of stories. I had a large backlog of unpublished work, and I decided that what to do when I ran out was a problem for future me. Well, the future came and I had to figure out what I was going to do. What niche could I fit into? I think I’ve found one, finally, and my audience has been growing since I implemented my new strategy of publishing a bit of forgotten local history every week. The real question is: will I be able to keep it up? I’m not so sure, but I’m going to try.

Have you always wanted to write fiction? When did you decide you wanted to pursue it seriously?

My second-grade teacher, Ms. Anderson, gave us all spiral bound notebooks to use as journals. The ‘91 World Series took up a lot of space in mine, which meant I had to spell names like Gaetti, Aguilera and Hrbek. I wrote my first short story in that notebook, about a lonely fish who makes a friend. I illustrated it using neon crayons. By my senior year in high school, I knew where I wanted to go in life.

Is there anything you’ve learned in your research that you haven’t yet found a place for on Substack?

I researched a novel on the women’s baseball leagues, and I visited a museum in South Bend, Indiana, that has an exhibit of women’s baseball memorabilia. While I was there, the museum staff let me into the archive, and I was able to find an answer to a question that came up during my research.

Everyone knows about the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League. It’s the one A League of Their Own was based on. But there was a different women’s league — the National Girls Baseball League — that operated in the Chicago area. It was a direct competitor to the AAGPBL and supposedly offered higher salaries. I wondered why all the players didn’t just defect from the AAGPBL, and in South Bend, I found the answer. It was right there in a news clipping in a dusty old scrapbook: the AAGPBL commissioner got tired of players switching back and forth between leagues, and decreed that anyone playing for the Chicago league would be banned for life from the AAGPBL.

I haven’t written about that experience for Substack because the novel I wrote about women’s baseball was a total disaster. Finding that clipping felt like a sign that I was supposed to write that book, like it was meant to be, but the end product was a mess. I knew what I wanted the novel to be about, but not a great one about what should happen. I do plan to revisit it at some point.

I did write about a hotel in Honolulu that I used for a setting in a novel I recently completed. I would have had a much better story for Substack if I’d actually stayed at that hotel; according to reviews, it is a total fleabag. First-hand experience could have made for the kind of yarn that attracts subscribers. But who wants to fly all that way for cockroaches and insomnia?

After I published that essay, I questioned whether the whole behind-the-scenes thing was that interesting to a wider audience. So, now I’m going in the other direction: researching and writing about things that I will probably eventually use in fiction.

What’s the most useful lesson you’ve learned so far about conducting historical research?

I learned how to do research when I was in high school and went to debate camp. I remember the lab leader (that’s what they called counselors at debate camp for some reason) saying I was too critical. It was sort of embarrassing, actually. He said, “I would like for you to, just once, cut as many cards as the rest of the team.” He said if a card (the term debaters use for newspaper clippings) didn’t perfectly align with what I was looking for, I would throw it away. From that, I learned to chase down every lead, even ones that were only tangentially relevant. I know this is where I’m supposed to say I’m grateful to that lab leader, but that would be a cliche. Besides, he was kind of an ass.

I started researching local history in 2015 when I moved to the Loring Park neighborhood, an area full of historic brownstones. I wanted to know more about the building I was living in at the time, which had been built in 1919 and renovated in the 70s after nearly facing demolition. I wanted to know what my apartment might’ve looked like initially. Through newspaper archives and old classifieds, I discovered that the room I was using as a bedroom was originally a dressing room, and that the apartment would’ve had a Murphy bed.

It’s a goofy hobby. It’s what I do instead of swiping on Tinder.

As a writer, how do you translate research into good storytelling? Is there any tension between the facts you discover and the things you want or need to happen within a particular story?

I think the emotional content, the part that makes the story compelling, is the same in any time period. Take, for example, the scene in Mad Men when Don and Peggy are arguing in the office after hours, and he shouts that iconic line, “That’s what the money is for!” An argument like that could take place in any time period, even today. Research informed the details in that episode: Peggy’s hairstyle, the Sonny Liston fight, even the way Don says, “Stay and visit” when they’re done arguing. When you have the emotional core down, then you can pull in the historic details and bring it all to life. But without the emotion, it’s just a museum exhibit.

There is tension sometimes, and that’s when you have to make choices about whether you’re going to take license or not. When I was researching the women’s baseball leagues, I found out that Buck Weaver, the White Sox third baseman who was banned for life after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, coached a team for the National Girls Baseball League — the Bluebirds. My story was set in 1954, but as far as I could tell, Buck only coached the Bluebirds during the 1944 season. But I wanted to tell a story about women’s baseball coming to an end, and I wanted Buck in it, so I was willing to sacrifice a bit of historical accuracy to tell the story I wanted.

The novel I recently finished and am currently revising is set in 1957. One of the characters is an amphetamine-popping lunatic who drives around in a ‘54 Chevy Bel Air and wears her hair in an unkempt beehive. The question came up as to whether beehives were in style in 1957. That’s an area where I have no qualms about taking license. Any reader who does that level of archeology just to find a “gotcha” needs a hobby.

Tell me about your novel Tough Love at Mystic Bay. Where did the idea for that book come from?

When I was a teen, I had to go to church camp as a requirement to get confirmed. Getting confirmed meant I could quit going to church, so for three summers I spent a week at Decision Hills Camp in Spicer, Minnesota. (One year, the mosquitoes were so bad I turned the curtains in my bunk gray with all the bugs I crushed.) Throughout the week, they would ratchet up the emotional intensity, until the second-to-last night when we had to do “stations of the cross,” which involved things like washing feet, baptisms in the lake, writing secrets on paper and nailing them to a little wooden cross and burning them. Everyone would be crying by the end of it.

When I was sixteen, I was starting to grow disillusioned with it all. I remember the counselor saying, “today, we’re going to talk about death,” and I remember thinking, “what the fuck for?” It wasn’t as if someone had died and they needed to address it. They actively chose to make death the issue of the day. It felt like they were trying to manufacture emotional intensity to knock a bunch of kids off balance and get us to say we loved God. It was manipulative and creepy. In the wrong hands, those tactics are extremely dangerous. (I would go as far as to argue that they’re dangerous enough that they shouldn’t be in anyone’s hands.)

I started a novel about a church camp gone wrong. As I was working on it, I learned about the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a network of incredibly abusive boarding schools for “troubled teens” which had its heyday in the 90s and early 2000s. The Netflix documentary, “The Program,” covers the WWASP programs and is well worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. I realized that these places were exactly what you would get if you put my church camp’s tactics in the worst hands.

In college, I took a course called “The Final Solution: Psychological Perspectives on Inhumanity.” It was the study of the Holocaust from a psychological perspective. My professor told me that you can’t study atrocities without being a bit of a voyeur; it’s something you have to be aware of. But you can’t look away, either. I was concerned about how the survivor community would take it, but most of them were supportive of my project. Most people who have been through these programs want to see the troubled teen industry exposed for the scam that it is.

I couldn’t help noticing Tough Love published April 1, 2020. What was it like launching a novel at the start of the pandemic?

I chose April 1 because April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Troubled teen programs are child abuse for hire, so aligning the release with Child Abuse Prevention Month made sense. It just turned out to be very unlucky. I didn’t do a launch for it until two years later.

What is it about historical fiction that appeals to your imagination as a writer? Do you consider it to be your primary genre?

I just really love old things. Classic cars. Vintage clothes. Rotary phones. Historic houses. There’s a guy in Northern Minnesota whose Instagram I follow. He restores vintage fridges. I’m not one for sliding into someone’s DMs, but if I were, I’d be all up in his messages.

The modern aesthetic is so bland. In the 90s, McDonald's restaurants had whimsical hamburger-shaped barstools. Today, they’re gray boxes. Who decided Soviet chic was in, and how long must we endure it? I hate it. I once quit reading a novel when the main character noticed some people had unfollowed him on Twitter. I just find that sort of thing so boring.

Historical fiction is definitely where I’d like to go in life, even if it isn’t all I do. I have an idea for a novel about the U.S.O. It would be split into three sections: World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I think it could be fascinating to see those wars through the eyes of performers who are there to entertain the troops.

I also came up with an idea for how to make my women’s baseball novel work with the information I uncovered in my research. It would focus on one character, who is flighty, not so good at getting along with people. She’s a talented shortstop but keeps switching between leagues and teams, until the AAGBPL commissioner’s edict means she’s permanently exiled to the Chicago league, where she’s forced to find out how to make long-term connections. And I think I’ll keep Buck Weaver in it, even if he wouldn’t have been in real life.

What are you working on now that you’re most excited about?

I’ve mentioned it a bit already, but I’m very excited about The Beef Trust Chorus, the novel I’ve recently completed. It’s based on a troupe of plus-size dancers who performed on Skid Row in Minneapolis in the 1950s. In my novel, Maxine is the captain of the dance troupe, and an amphetamine-addicted stalker tries to run her over with her car. Maxine flees to Honolulu, where her husband, a jazz musician, takes up a five-week residency at a local club. Meanwhile, the stalker starts terrorizing the rest of the dancers. I won’t spoil the rest, but I will say it is an action-packed story that explores the way beauty standards follow us around when we’re just trying to live.

I’m cautiously optimistic about finding a publisher for it; most likely an indie.

If people would like to learn more about you or follow your work, what’s the best way to connect with you?

Substack is the best way to reach me. I’m not on Twitter anymore, and I created a Bluesky account but lost the password and don’t really care to reset it. Folks can also follow me on Instagram if they want to see pictures of my dog: @sonotsnow.