N O I S S U C S I D S N O I T S QUE 1. Eagle & Crane is a novel that explores the lives and relationships of three young people: Ava Brooks, Louis Thorn, and Harry Yamada. In what ways do each of them surprise or disappoint the others? Have you had someone come into your life and change it unexpectedly for good or bad?
2. Louis and Harry grew up in an era where they were expected to behave a certain way. How difficult do you think it must have been at that time to go against the beliefs of your family or culture? How did the characters’ origins affect their ambitions?
3. Ava lives in a world where she and her mother are forced to rely on an undependable man to take care of them. How might that have affected Ava growing up? What do you think of Ava’s mother? Is she an opportunist, a victim, or something else? How difficult do you think it would be to escape from such a life?
4. Eagle & Crane follows a stunt-flying troupe—a flying circus—during the early days of aviation and at a time when there was little outside entertainment. If you were a spectator, what do you think would be the most appealing part of this experience? What surprised you about the author’s depiction of this kind of life?
5. Eagle & Crane explores the role that truth plays in people’s lives. In your opinion, which one of the characters made the biggest sacrifices? Would you have made the same decisions that the characters made? Do you think they were right to make the choices they did?
6. The author drew inspiration for this novel from the backgrounds of family friends who experienced the privations of World War II. Were you aware of the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese-American citizens before you read the novel?
Š Elizabeth Romanski
A conve r sat ion with
SUZ ANNE RINDELL Your new novel, Eagle & Crane, takes place in California in the 1930s and 40s. What is it about? Eagle & Crane follows the story of three young people involved in a flying circus, and how their act is essentially interrupted by the United States’ entry into World War II. Louis Thorn and Harry Yamada grow up on neighboring ranches in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Northern Cali-
fornia. When a small group of “barnstormers” come to town, they wind up joining on as daredevil wing-walkers. Despite the fact that Louis’s family, the Thorns, have held a long-standing grudge against Harry’s family, the Yamadas, the two boys begin to form a tentative friendship. However, this budding relationship is further complicated by the fact that they are both drawn to Ava Brooks, stepdaughter to the man who runs the flying circus.
Each of these characters faces a different challenge. Harry must endure the racism that leaves him and the Yamada family trapped in an internment camp. Ava must find a way to get her and her shy, passive mother out from under her crooked stepfather’s control, while navigating her complicated feelings for Louis and Harry. Louis must overcome the temptation to give into easy racism and the vitriol of an old family grudge against the Yamadas.
Working together, Louis and Harry’s daredevil act is very successful—even attracting attention from Hollywood. But when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, the flying circus is suspended, and Harry Yamada is sent to an internment camp along with his father, mother,
The novel opens at the end of their journey, with a plane crash and possible murder mystery—and then goes back in time to show how the three arrived at this crucial juncture.
and little sister. The Yamadas ask Louis Thorn to act as the legal guardian of their land—land that the Thorn family always coveted and felt was rightfully theirs.
You grew up in the area where the novel is set and have a family connection to aviation. Are any aspects of the story drawn from your own family history? Yes. My grandfather was a World War II flight instructor, and used to tell me stories about wing-walkers and other aviator daredevils. My father flew for the Air Force, and my mother got her wings (probably just to prove she could, really!). I caught myself doing lots of little things, like making the two biplanes in the story red and blue, after a pair of planes my parents once flew cross-country (incidentally, the planes my parents used for that adventure were named Romeo and Juliet). Both sides of my grandparents have a family history with the region where this book is set. Like Louis, my grandfather grew up one of twelve kids on a ranch in the area, and used to pick fruit for neighboring orchards (including a few Japanese-American-owned ones). My great-grandmother (a woman I got to know, as she managed to live to one hundred) owned an orchard in the same area and employed a Japanese-American foreman who lived with his family on the property until Executive Order 9066. So these three threads of family stories came together in helping me write the book: aviation, the importance of land and agriculture in Northern California, and the legacy of California’s multicultural yet oftentimes very racially explosive history.
Photograph of Rindell's grandfather, Norbert, who worked as a flight instructor in California training WWII pilots.
A pivotal theme in the novel is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Did your family have any personal connection to what we now view as a historical injustice? My great-grandmother spoke of how quickly her foreman and his family had to pack up in the wake of Executive Order 9066. In their hurry, they left things behind in their cabin— for instance, a pretty little enameled tea set. My great-grandmother held onto these things, thinking perhaps they might come back, but they never did. Now that she’s gone, the tea set waits at my mother’s house. No one has used it, and it’s the kind of thing you can’t sell or throw away. I’ve often thought about trying to track down the family (or their decedents, really) who once owned it. On a more directly personal note, one of my mother’s best friends from college was a woman named Barbara Matsui. I spent time with her as a child and really liked her. She was legally blind, and when I asked my mother why, my mother explained that Barbara had been born in an internment camp and her mother had gotten German measles while pregnant—a happenstance that was likely due to the densely packed and unhealthy conditions the camps (often exacerbated by a lack of all medical care). The fact that this happened in California, and the way Barbara was permanently affected, was on my mind for a long time during my formative years.
Are any of the characters in the novel based on real-life people? I tried to make this about totally fictional people so the story could go wherever it needed to go. I was inspired somewhat by having known Barbara—her family name, Matsui, is a well-known one in Sacramento, as her (now late) brother, Bob Matsui, served as our Congressman and can be seen in the famous photograph of Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (which agreed to acknowledge the injustice and pay reparations to former internees). And I suppose I was also inspired by my grandfather’s accounts of farming the land in this region of California, and what it was like to be a flight instructor for World War II pilots.
Barbara Matsui
Your novels have been set at key cultural moments in twentieth century history: the 1920s era of Prohibition, New York City in the Mad Men era of the late 1950s, and now the Depression and World War II. How do you find your stories and what drew you in particular to these cultural crossroads? Each of these eras reflects an element of our own time, and writing historical fiction can sometimes be a way to make observations about our present era but with the advantage of some distance/estrangement. I definitely think the 1920s hit a nerve in recent years—perhaps because we felt our own world and economy was on the brink of a cycle of boom-and-bust? (The downturn of 2008 might be considered persuasive evidence to back this up . . . ). And then the Mad Men era . . . I was interested in how more current “hipsters” exhibited a kind of nostalgia for the 1950s. This nostalgia struck me as dangerous, given the conservative politics of the 1950s and the fact that this era pre-dates the Civil Rights Movement—would we really want to go back? (And if we would, the motivations behind that desire should be seriously questioned!) And now, with Eagle & Crane, I feel like we’ve arrived at an important moment to revisit the history of the Japanese-American internment, especially in context of current politics… the suggestion of a “travel ban,” the sudden outcry to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, etc.
Eagle & Crane has a trio of friends at its center, and Three-Martini Lunch also had three key protagonists. Is this a coincidence? Or is there something about weaving three characters’ stories that works for you as a novelist? I’ve been thinking lately that I’m actually hung up on stories that allude to “twins” or “twinning”! (SPOILER ALERTS!)—The Other Typist revolves around one young woman’s obsession with another young woman who appears to be her opposite. In Three-Martini Lunch, Cliff seeks to plagiarize Miles’s story, while at a metanarrative level, Miles steals the show and claims more of the reader’s attention/sympathy. Eagle & Crane is about a love triangle, to a certain extent, but more than that, it is a fox-and-hound story, the story of two young men working through their differences and connecting over their similarities. And not to spoil anything, but the idea
Eagle & Crane is about a love triangle, to a certain extent, but more than that, it is a fox-andhound story, the story of two young men working through their differences and connecting over their similarities.
of “twins” functions as a factor in unlocking the overall mystery! I’m just saying, there’s a reason those planes are named Castor and Pollux.
Who are these three characters in Eagle & Crane? Can you tell us a bit about each of them? In a lot of ways, Ava is the heart of the novel. She is a plucky tomboy, and while she falls for these two young men, she certainly has a mind of her own. She also (and somewhat ironically) has a fear of flying that she tries to keep secret. Louis Thorn is an all-American farm boy, one of twelve kids. The Thorn family has a long history of being down on their luck, and Louis’s father has passed away, leaving Louis’s mother and siblings responsible for making ends meet on the Thorn ranch. Louis is smart but stubborn—he is not a natural daredevil but his competitive feelings towards Harry draw him into attempting all kinds of crazy stunts. Harry Yamada is the true daredevil. It turns out he is talented and agile, and willing to try anything. Harry is handsome and charismatic, but he is also used to being overlooked/treated like a second-class citizen, and has developed a bit of a roguish demeanor in reaction. He challenges both Ava and Louis, in different ways. Harry has a soft spot for his family and especially his father, whom he respects very much.
Even though you grew up in California’s Central Valley, did you need to do special research for this book? Watching reels of barnstorming acts was probably the most harrowing—I actually have a fear of flying, and it made my palms sweat just to watch! There was a lot to learn about flying and airplanes (I was lucky to have two parents who know how to fly), and then there was a lot to learn about the internment camps. There are some moving memoirs that California kids (sometimes) get to read in school, like Farewell to Manzanar (Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston), but I also found some unusual perspectives I hadn’t encountered before—for instance, a memoir from the point of view of one of the guards
and his family at Tule Lake. And during the period I was writing/editing, I returned to the area where the book is set—Placer County—to make sure I was getting the setting right, and to have direct access to local historical accounts (thanks, Placer County Library system!).
Like The Other Typist, Eagle & Crane is propelled by an underlying sense of mystery, but it wouldn’t really be shelved in the mystery section. Would you call it a mystery? I don’t know! It opens with an unexplained plane crash and a couple of dead bodies, and in a lot of ways these details propel the plot… so I guess it could be called a mystery. But it also has elements of a larger, somewhat generational saga, along with a bit of a love story. I know when I sat down to write it, I wanted to write a real “California” book, and I grew up reading a lot of Steinbeck and loving East of Eden in particular, so that may have been an influence.
There is a lot of plainspoken racism in the story—a reflection of a dark time in American history. Do you feel that the novel in any way speaks to some contemporary issues that still plague our society? Yes. It was kind of surreal— I wrote parts of this book while living in New York, and parts of this book while living in California. I remember when I started writing the book I was worried that people wouldn’t connect with the gritty reality of the internment camps, that Executive Order 9066 would feel too distant to be very real or immediate for the reader. But then, as I was working on the book, all this post-election stuff started happening, and the next thing I knew all my friends were racing to the JFK airport to protest the proposed travel ban! Muslim-Americans felt their passports were abruptly invalidated, DACA Dreamers who’d lived in America all their lives suddenly
I feel like we’ve arrived at an important moment to revisit the history of the Japanese-American internment, especially in context of current politics. felt in immediate jeopardy of deportation, transgender troops worried about being banned from the military . . . and it seemed to me that my original worry—that people wouldn’t be able to believe or relate to the existence of internment camps in America— was unfounded. Now I’m more worried that history might be repeating itself too closely!
What’s next for you? I’m working on a new book that takes place in San Francisco around the time of the 1906 earthquake! A group of women in a boardinghouse who share a dark secret that is literally buried in the rubble of the earthquake restart their lives anew after the catastrophic event… each of them with a sudden new fortune. So far it’s girly and dark and mysterious and a lot of fun.
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Fold the paper in half vertically.
Unfold the paper and fold each of the top corners into the center line.
Fold the wings down, matching the top edges up with the bottom edge of the body. Add double stick tape to the inside of the body.
Fold the top edges into the center line.
Fold the plane in half toward you.
Use the next page to make your own airplane!