‘Under the Stars’ author Beatriz Williams talks shipwrecks, poetry and football

by Olivia Petty

By design, Beatriz Williams lives mostly in the past.

“I feel more comfortable in the past than in the present day,” the New York Times bestselling-author said, speaking in August from the lush backyard of her Connecticut home.

Author Beatriz Williams will discuss her new novel "Under the Stars" Sept. 15 and 16 at two events hosted by Warwick's bookstore in La Jolla. (Sydney Williams) — Author Beatriz Williams will discuss her new novel “Under the Stars” Sept. 15 and 16 at two events hosted by Warwick’s bookstore in La Jolla. (Sydney Williams)

She’s now in the midst cross-country tour forher latest book “Under the Stars,” which will bring her to the Coronado Public Library on Monday and a lunch event with Warwick’s bookstore on Tuesday.

Williams has written dozens of historical fiction novels, featuring characters from America’s Gilded Age in the late 1800s to the tumultuous Cold War in the late 1940s.

“Under the Stars,” published July 29, follows two timelines: one in 1846, the other in 2024. It is set on the fictional Winthrop Island in New England, and features a disgruntled daughter and her famous mother who are connected to a young woman on a steamboat from 200 years in the past. The island in the novel was inspired by Fishers Island in New York, where the very real steamship Atlantic went adrift and veered into the rocky shore in 1846, resulting in an estimated loss of 50 lives — which is the central event in Williams’ novel.

Williams recently answered several questions about “Under the Stars” and other projects. These are excerpts from that conversation.

Q: Where did the initial idea for this novel come from?

A: This is my fourth novel that I’ve set on Winthrop Island, loosely inspired by the real-life Fishers Island. It’s a very discreet island. I like to say that it’s a bit like “Fight Club” — the first rule of Fishers Island is, we don’t talk about Fishers Island. There’s a theme that runs through all of my books, which is this dialogue between past and present. I’m a history nerd, a history native. Most people would probably agree I feel more comfortable in the past than in the present day. What really interests me is how the choices and the mistakes, the actions that our earlier generations took, kind of reverberate down the generations to affect us in ways seen and unseen. So I was like, OK, if we’re going to return to Winthrop in the modern day, we need to find an interesting historical incident that happened that reverberated down a generation. I discovered this long forgotten but very dramatic steamship accident, the wreck of the steamship Atlantic.

Q: In part one, you introduce one of the main characters, writing: “You will not find my name on any list of passengers aboard the final voyage of the steamship Atlantic, either among the survivors or those who perished. No trace of a woman called Providence Dare exists beyond Thanksgiving of 1846. Nor shall it, except for these pages you now hold in your hands.” So, who is Providence? Is she a real person?

A: She’s a fictional figure. I have a rather large imagination. In the case of Providence Dare, she is a housemaid employed by a very prominent yet fictional artist. He is kind of loosely inspired by this wonderful biography I read about Longfellow, the poet, who is now very, very much forgotten. But I decided I needed some tension on board this ship. So, Providence has fled her household after her employer, the artist, has been found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. She’s going to start a new life elsewhere, under a new name. But also on board the ship that night is this detective who is charged with apprehending Providence. So there’s this kind of cat and mouse game that goes on.

Q: Why do you write historical fiction?

A: It was always historical fiction for me. My father is British, and I grew up with, you know, the canon. We bought our clothes in the Sears catalog and saved our money to go to the opera and to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (Oregon) every year. I was really steeped in these stories about the past. I love trying to understand what made us tick then, and how much of that shared humanity we still hold on to.

Q: Do you have any current reads that are keeping you motivated?

A: My current read is actually a re-read. It’s from Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, which is an extraordinary series of 20 books about a Royal Navy captain and his best friend, who’s the ship surgeon. I foolishly have it on my bedside table, thinking I’ll just read a couple chapters before I go to bed, but it’s so compelling.

Q: Is there anything that you can tease about your book coming out next year?

A: It is also set in the present day on Winthrop Island. The historical part of it — this is why I was re-reading Patrick O’Brian — is a pirate story. It’s a buried treasure story taking place during the Great Snow in New England in the winter of 1717, their biggest snowfall ever. The present-day part is inspired by the time I was a football manager (as an undergrad) at Stanford. I happened to be a football manager during the years that Bill Walsh came out of retirement. So I have a story about a football player who commits a shocking act on the field and needs somewhere to hide. I’m very excited for that one.

Q: Do you have any places on your book tour that you’re particularly excited to visit?

A: There’s definitely places that I love to return to every year. There’s a hotel in Watch Hill, R.I., that overlooks Napatree Beach, which is this point that I loosely based my book “A Hundred Summers” on. It came out 10 or 12 years ago, based during the hurricane of 1938. You can see that from the hotel. You can also see the tip of Fishers Island. But I’m also really excited to return west. I don’t usually go out west on book tour, maybe once every couple of years, so it’s neat to do that. I grew up near Seattle and my mother is from Southern California, like my grandpa was. I went to college in California, so it’s always a pleasure to return. That whole I-5 corridor is like home.