Interview with Danielle Teller

As noted below, I first encountered Danielle Teller in 2018, when she had just published All the Ever Afters, a retelling of the Cinderella story from the perspective of the “evil” stepmother. When I learned she had a second book, set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States, I was more than happy to give it a look. And indeed, I’m glad I did. I was even happier when Danielle Teller agreed to this written interview.

The new novel, Forged, opens with the attempted arrest of one Mrs. Catherine Warren, a known jewel thief and forger. But the novel is not only about “forged” in the sense of falsified signatures; it traces the forging (formation) of its heroine, Fanny, as she escapes poverty and brutality and makes a place of herself in the world. The connection between Mrs. Warren and Fanny becomes obvious only late in the book, but read on to find out more about this novel and its predecessor.

We talked on the New Books Network when your first novel, All the Ever Afters, came out. Could you give readers a brief summary of that novel?

All the Ever Afters is a re-imagining of the life of Cinderella’s stepmother, Agnes. Agnes endures a life of hardship in medieval England, where she is forced into servitude as a child, has unplanned pregnancies as a young woman, and eventually marries Ella’s widowed father for security. Agnes struggles to protect her own daughters and to be a good stepmother to her beautiful, cosseted, and unusual stepdaughter. As Ella’s “fairy tale” unfolds, Agnes’s actions, though often harsh, are shown to be rooted in a desperate attempt to ensure her family’s survival, ultimately challenging the simplistic “good versus evil” dichotomy of the original fairy tale.

Forged, too, focuses on the life of a young woman who finds a way out of dire economic circumstances. What attracts you about this theme?

Rags-to-riches stories are generally satisfying, and they present great opportunities for moral ambiguity. My characters behave in some reprehensible but understandable ways, giving readers room to question whether the ends justify the means, or whether past trauma makes bad behavior excusable. I also object to the passivity of the women in the classic rags-to-riches stories like Cinderella; I like a female protagonist who can take care of her own problems.

The new novel opens with a scene between Special Agent Madden of the US Treasury Department and Mrs. Catherine Warren. What’s happening here?

Catherine (Kitty) Warren has become a successful con artist, defrauding banks, manipulating the stock market, and smuggling jewelry into the United States from France. Agents from the Treasury Department have been trying for years to catch her red-handed with undeclared jewels, and Madden is thrilled at the prospect of being the one to apprehend her. Sadly for him, she slips through his fingers with a smile and a wave.

We then move back in time and northward, to the Canadian wilderness. Introduce us, please, to Fanny, your main character. Where is she, at this point in her life?

Fanny is the teenage daughter of a subsistence farmer who has carved his land from the Canadian wilderness. Her mother is dead, and her older sister has left the country, so she has been forced to leave school to take care of the house for her alcoholic, abusive father and two brothers. She misses school, where she had excelled, and she feels lonely and resentful of her treatment by her remaining family.

What makes Fanny decide to follow her older sister, Betsy, and run away from home? How does she succeed?

Fanny’s life on the farm is miserable, and she sees no future for herself there. Though she hasn’t heard from her sister, Betsy, since she left, she imagines Betsy enjoying a comfortable life full of opportunity with her new husband in Cleveland. Fanny thinks that she can run to her sister, using the safety of her home as a springboard to a new life.

Since Fanny has no money of her own and very little autonomy, she has to plan her escape carefully. She teaches herself how to imitate her father’s signature and waits until her father and brothers are sick with the flu to hitch a ride into the nearest town. There she commits her first criminal act, cashing a forged check to buy her train ticket to Cleveland and a new beginning.

Cleveland, perhaps not surprisingly, isn’t quite what Fanny expects. How does she wind up in the Garth household?

On the train to Cleveland, Fanny meets an older man from Toledo who feels sorry for her, as he can tell that she is a naif wandering into a lion’s den. He writes his brother’s Cleveland address on the back of his business card and hands it to Fanny. In the traumatic events that follow, Fanny loses the card, but fortunately she has an excellent memory, and she remembers the address. She makes her way to the Garth mansion, where she manages eventually to secure a position as a maid.

There Fanny develops a relationship with Mae Garth that proves essential to her transformation. What should potential readers know about that?

Mae is beautiful, flighty, and charismatic, qualities that attract Fanny like a moth to a flame and keep her always slightly unbalanced. Her attraction is romantic in both senses of the word; Fanny has an idealized view of Mae and desires closeness with her more than anything. Mae’s feelings about Fanny are more ambiguous; she is volatile and changeable, and I want readers to be able to make up their own minds about the relationship.

Are you already working on another book?

Yes, I’m working on a new novel that is set in Pittsburgh in the 1980s. As with my other novels, there is a literary inspiration, this time Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s still in early stages, but I’m having fun trying out some new approaches to storytelling.

Thank you so much for answering my questions!

Danielle Teller, a doctor, is the author of two novels, All the Ever Afters and Forged, as well as nonfiction, only about half of which describe unpronounceable molecules. Find out more about her and her books at https://www.danielleteller.com.

Drawing of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1877, public domain via Wikimedia Commons; photograph of Danielle Teller © Amy Drake Photography (reproduced with permission).