I first heard about Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky by Connie Lapallo right here on homeschooljournal. With a head full of colonial America, and on the recommendation of two different bloggers here, I bought it. Published following years of research, Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky is  based on the true story of the women and children at Jamestown. Women in Jamestown? Children at Jamestown? True, they are mentioned infrequently - if at all - in most of the history books, but they were indeed there. Connie Lapallo (another homeschooling mom!) has pieced together bits of history to create Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky. I have been in contact with Connie, and she graciously agreed to answer some interview questions.

Connie has answered my interview questions as thoroughly as she researched her book. Her answers are detailed and compelling. Because it’s so much text, I’m going to break it up and post it in several parts. Today, we’ll hear from Connie about the birth of this book and the research involved in getting the story right, and we’ll learn some facts that didn’t make it into the book. Enjoy!

Where did you find the original impulse to write this novel? Did your genealogical research lead you to think that this story was worth telling? Or did you have the idea to write a story after learning about Joan?

I grew up with four generations under one roof, so I began researching my family tree at 11, writing down the stories my great-grandmother told me.

Twenty years later, in 1994, I found Cecily in a mystical way. I felt drawn to a certain library book, though its cover gave no clue it was relevant. To my amazement, it traced my line back to Jamestown and 11-year-old Cecily—whom I promptly forgot while searching other lines.

But Cecily did not forget me. Over the next four years, I’d find references to her while looking up other family lines. I began to feel that she was calling me somehow—that she wanted her story told—but why?

I decided to read more about the women and children of Jamestown—and discovered little to read!

Then I understood: they had been mostly forgotten. As I began to track their ships and arrival dates from the 1625 muster, I saw that these women and children must have endured the hurricane at sea, must have survived the Starving Time, must have even made it through the Indian Uprising of 1622, and I wondered how their story had never been told? I began to feel for them. How had we overlooked these first Englishwomen to settle the New World permanently? What of the children who died during the Starving Time?

As I continued to piece information together, I was astounded that, of the little that had been written about these women and children, much was inaccurate, flippant, and even irreverent. This was all very troubling to me.

Perhaps, I reasoned, it was troubling to Cecily too.

At first, I had only felt Cecily’s voice whispering to me, but slowly Joan’s voice joined it: “You are my granddaughter. Remember me. You are our grandchild. Remember us.” It was nearly a plea.

The project, however, was daunting and, some said, impossible. The only way I could reconstruct the women’s story was by pulling snippets of facts from many, many documents. Yet, I felt that if Cecily wanted her story told and had gotten me this far, perhaps she would continue to help me. I often felt this was the case, as strange pieces of information would surface at just the right time in unusual places.

When I first began reading Dark Enough to see the Stars in a Jamestown Sky, I struggled to keep the characters’ history straight – there’s a ton of information packed into the book! How did you manage to keep track of all of the connections between the characters?

For family trees, I drew charts, marked with arrows and color-coded. Key characters had several charts—showing them as a child, a sibling, an ancestor, etc.

I outlined original and secondary sources, rephrasing them in modern language. l merged smaller outlines (like three first-hand accounts of the hurricane at sea) into one master timeline. Some first-hand accounts conflicted, forcing me to gauge which was likely to be more accurate, or if there were political or personal reasons for the information to be skewed.

The master timeline was a table with dates, characters’ ages, and personal events alongside historical events. This is how I merged family history with English and Virginia history. It was amazing how connections came together by this juxtaposition.

As it fleshed out, the master timeline grew so intricate that I could see nearly week-by-week what happened during the Starving Time.

I linked the master timeline to Word files of compiled research, which I could reach with a click! These included my conclusions and reasoning, highlighted points, sources, outlines, images, charts, and websites links. (For library data, I had physical files for each topic.).

Finally, for the story line itself, I used Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” (If anyone is doing a study of that, they’ll find Campbell’s classic elements embedded in Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky—the Ordinary World, the Call, the Refusal of the Call, etc.)

I then merged the timeline of Joan’s actual family events (genealogy) and surrounding political events (history) with the steps in the hero’s journey (story line). This consolidated timeline became the framework of the book.

Gosh, reading it now, it all sounds complex. But it was like solving a giant puzzle. I’ve been calling it “the original Sudoku”!

Were there any interesting people or stories that you learned about in your research that didn’t make it into the book?

Strange as it sounds, I researched the history of Britain back to its beginnings. Events kept leading me back further in time and I was trying to understand the people. Who they were, what they thought and felt, and why. Their entire heritage as a people contributed to who they were at the dawn of the 17^th century.

One thing I found fascinating was that most Virginia settlers trace back to Viking warriors. The Vikings settled Normandy, and the Normans conquered Saxon England in 1066, taking control and mixing with the Saxon population.

As for the Saxons, some believe they’re part of the Lost Tribes of Israel—“Isaac’s Sons,” which became “Saxons.” Their ancient course can be traced through Turkey and into the British Isles. Some theorize that when the lost tribes finally made their way to the New World, this may have been the Canaan described in the Bible. Some Jamestown Adventurers did feel the New World was their “Canaan”—but they wouldn’t have known that they themselves may have been literally “Isaac’s sons.”

Another interesting story is that Chief Powhatan’s (Wahunsonacock’s) shamans had warned him, before the settlers’ arrival, that men would rise up from the Chesapeake—“conquerors from the East”—and destroy his kingdom. In response, it seems, Powhatan destroyed the Chesapeake Indians.