Kelly Moore | AMBER HOUSE Blog stop

The roots of Amber House run back to my youth, nearly forty years ago now. As the story was first conceived, I am ashamed to admit, it was full of the stereotypes of two generations ago: a house built on the remnants of Native American holy ground; a sage African American woman who functioned to help the main characters — the white characters — find their way. A lot can happen in two generations. Awareness can happen.

But awareness is a process and progress in it is painfully achieved.

We all three of us — my daughters and I — have become caught up in the women's movement, and through it, other movements that shine a light on othering. I find I am, very belatedly, a feminist. I was one of those women who thought the time of feminism was past. I went to law school, I worked in a man's world as a man's equal, or so I told myself. I didn't understand until my daughter was raped that women are still "other," that our lives are not as free and robust and unconstrained as men's. I was never a man's equal. I walked in fear everywhere I went, keeping to the "safe" zones, gripping my keys so they protruded through my fingers in the futile hope they would be a weapon if I needed it. Knowing that any man could take everything from me unless I kept within the lines. I have learned that until women are free to walk the world with the same confidence as men, they will continue to be other. And in finding out about women's still persistent otherness, I began to see otherness everywhere.

The privilege of being the "norm" is a way of disproportionately owning the world that is almost impossible to see from within the norm. And when we stand in the place of privilege, we see no reason to change the norm. We hear complaints as whining; we look upon persistent difference as failure. Instead of reforming our own views, we think others should change, to conform to the pattern that is the most lucrative and the most powerful. To be like we are. But the world that does not celebrate and embrace difference is fundamentally unjust and rotten in its very core.

In founding a novel in American history, we were able to highlight some of the threads of otherness that were woven into the fabric of our country and that continue to warp it to greater or lesser degrees. We touch on issues of nationality and religion in our protagonist's distant Irish-Catholic first-generation immigrant ancestors, observe divisions of class in the English sea captain's relationships to his American in-laws, explore sexism and its intersections with racism and judgments about psychiatric and emotional norms — Deirdre and Nyangu, Maeve and Fiona, Ida and Anne. We were even able to touch on some of the othering born of the differences in neural wiring, by introducing a character with "high-functioning" autism.

In writing Amber House, we have striven to incorporate an accurate reflection of America's history when it comes to issues of otherness. With this in mind, our very clever editor, Cheryl Klein, has helped us when we committed oversights. But one of the things we are satisfied with, in our writing of this series, is that some readers reached the end of the first book and never realized that Jackson is black, because we never thought to call him "black" in the same way we never thought to call Richard "white." He is only Jackson, as free to be who he is as any other character in the book. And that may be the best we can wish for any of us.

In NEVERWAS, Sarah must piece together the mystery of her forgotten past with the help of clues left behind by her great-grandmother, Fiona Warren. For readers interested in the chance to win a signed first-edition hardback of NEVERWAS -- with an exclusive hint for what's in story for Sarah in the final book, OTHERWHEN, hidden inside -- visit each blog on the tour for the month of December, collect the various lines from the poem, arrange them in the proper order, and submit the final sonnet by January 10th for a chance to win the special copy of NEVERWAS!

About the authors

KELLY MOORE is a New York Times best-selling author, former litigator, and single mother of three. Her latest project, the young adult fiction series THE AMBER HOUSE TRILOGY, co-written with her two daughters and based loosely upon her own family history, examines fourteen generations of Maryland women and their ties to the past, present, and future. The first book in the series was nominated for the 2014 Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award for its realistic portrayal of characters with autism; Moore is outspoken about her inclusion in the autism spectrum, and is dedicated to autism awareness.

TUCKER REED is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer. She has been recognized on the national level for her short stories, essays and poetry. She is also a notable political blogger and has appeared on CNN, CBS, ABC and HuffPost Live, as well as featured in articles published by TIME magazine, Marie Claire magazine, Ms. magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among numerous others.

LARKIN REED is a professional photographer, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in filmmaking. In 2013, Reed established her own multimedia production company, and has subsequently produced and directed several short films.