A Conversation With the Author
Hometown: Lewis says, "I was born and grew up in San Jose, California, a third-generation Californiano on my mom's side, an Okie on my dad's side. Tried several times to live in other places, but can't seem to quit it."
Favorite books & authors: "What a difficult question. Obviously Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath comes to mind. As does L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time. And Bradbury's books, all of them. And these books feature prominently in Steinbeck's Ghost. But I also love anything by E.L. Konigsburg, Jerry Spinelli, or Virginia Hamilton. My favorite newer book is the Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson."
Fun/interesting facts: Lewis wrote the entire novel in longhand, as Steinbeck wrote all of his novels.
Lewis says: "I did a lot of research on this book with my family in tow. We spent a lot of time-my wife Julie and my daughter Maddy, who's now ten-in Salinas and Monterey, and worked on this together. It was a blast.
During one of our trips, when we went to go search out the place where the neighborhood Bella Linda Terrace might be-it's in the book-I used an old, old map, one that showed a blank spot where I thought the neighborhood should be. We drove out there, and lo, there was the sub-division, just as I'd imagined it. It was kind of spooky. The Julie said, look at the street signs. All the streets here had literary names-Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Bradbury. Even spookier.
And on that trip, Maddy piped up from the back seat, 'Dad, the next book should be Dickens,' and sure enough, the next book, coming in 2009, is The Haunting of Charles Dickens, also from Feiwel and Friends."
