Today we have a great interview to share with you from one of our historical fiction authors! Ellie Rose Mattoon’s debut novel THE MAVERICK’S MIDWIFE releases November 10th in print and November 24th in audio. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:
“Vienna, 1847.
Childbirth is a dangerous affair, especially for women laboring in the doctor’s ward at Vienna’s maternity hospital rather than its midwifery clinic. Even midwifery student Anna Maier wants nothing to do with medical men after losing her sister to the mysterious, rampant doctor's plague known as childbed fever.
But when Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a maverick obstetrician, opens an investigation on childbed fever, Anna sees a chance to find answers to her sister's death. The two begin a discrete partnership—verboten in its crossing of gender lines and direct insubordination to hospital rules—and Anna soon finds herself in anatomy theatres where the only other woman in the room is the cadaver.
With women delivering and dying every day, Anna must choose between the safety of her own compassionate profession and the danger of stepping beyond it for a greater good. If she fails, she risks losing her sister a thousand times over again. And if she succeeds, what does that make her—a traitor, a medical man, or a maverick herself?
A pivotal time in history told with the clear-eyed determination of a young woman in science, The Maverick’s Midwife is the story of what it means to try when the barriers are high and the outcome is uncertain—but it just might all be worth it.”
Thanks, Ellie Rose, for sitting down to answer some of our questions about your work!
1. You’re a medical student at Johns Hopkins by day and an author by night! Which love came first? Medicine or writing?
I’ve been writing stories since my Rainbow Magic fanfiction back in kindergarten, so I’d have to say that medicine was a love that came much later. However, what primarily attracts me to medicine are the stories that every patient brings with them to the hospital or examination room. Not only do I get to learn my patients’ stories and share them with my colleagues, but I also get to have a part in changing those stories for the better.
2. Do you know which medical discipline you’ll focus on long term yet?
While I’ve loved all of my rotations, I have a special love for infectious disease medicine because there’s so much detective work required to make a diagnosis or track down the cause of an outbreak, much like the characters in The Maverick’s Midwife have to do when solving their childbed fever epidemic. While doctors can enter infectious disease through a lot of different pathways, I haven’t officially decided which path I want to take but watching some of the characters in The Maverick’s Midwife decide their paths helped get me closer to an answer.
3. Can you tell our readers about the opportunity you received through grant funding that enabled you to research and write this book, please?
Of course! My college had a special program graduates could apply to called the Meg Walsh Fellowship, which funds one senior to travel abroad and complete a project of their own design after graduation. Coincidentally, it’s named after an incredible female alum of my school who unfortunately passed of peripartum sepsis in 1998.
Thanks to the fellowship, I got to spend three months in Vienna to research this novel, poring through the city’s archives and walking through the old hospital campus. I also spent a week at the Semmelweis Museum and Library in Budapest, where I visited the famous obstetrician’s birthplace and learned more about his life after he left Vienna. And when I wasn’t doing research, I was making lifelong friends from around the world and growing mountains in my confidence as a 21-year-old who had barely ever been outside North America.
The time and space to be creative and complete the project the way I wanted to was an absolute blessing, and I can’t imagine this story coming together so beautifully otherwise!
4. What is a cause you care about? And does your story relate to it in any way?
I think a big part of my draw into medicine was wanting to work with mothers and families, especially families that are struggling to get by. A really rewarding part of the work I do is reminding moms that they are great moms, and that they should never feel bad asking for help. Motherhood, after all, was never meant to be done alone.
While I didn’t do it intentionally, I do think The Maverick’s Midwife touches on this. Even though our main character Anna is not a mother, she interacts with so many different kinds of mothers throughout the story, many of whom are struggling in some way or another.
5. Which authors have inspired you?
I love revisiting a lot of Flannery O’Connor’s writing on craft, especially when I’m feeling blocked. The way she frames writing as a process of discovery more than a process of creation especially resonates with the medical side of my brain. A lot of my work as a medical student is putting processes of cause and effect together to figure out why someone is sick, and I do the exact same thing when putting a story together on the page.
6. What does your working space look like? What do you need in order to be productive?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I’ll never finish a project if I’m too picky with my workspace. I’ve had to learn to be comfortable writing from my desk, from the backseat of a car, or from a Panera. Regardless, I do notice that I work best while standing, whether at a standing desk or the bar of a café/library. I’ve stood while working since elementary school, and it’s a hard habit to break!
7. Talk to us about music. What are your favorite songs for writing? How do you switch it up? Do you have a theme song for yourself as a writing professional?
I don’t typically listen to music when I write, but if I’m working on a long project, I’ll make a “Brainstorming Playlist” on Spotify with songs I find related to the themes or characters I want to pull into the story. Then I can pull it out whenever I need to walk off some writer’s block. Now I have so many fun playlists to remind me of my stories, but I also have many oddly-named playlists on my Spotify account.
8. What has your experience been like working with Dunham Literary, Third Rail Press, and Podium Audio? Have there been surprises?
I never expected what a cool community I’d be able to meet through my fellow authors at all three of these outlets. While I haven’t met many in person (besides a few chance encounters at AWP this year), it’s amazing to go on Instagram and learn about all the amazing projects Anjanette represents with Meg Hunter Kilmer, Tasha Kazanjian, Jessica Iwanski, and others! It’s filled my TBR with so many great recommendations, and I feel like I’m part of this community with some amazing like-minded women.
9. Do you have a favorite quote from your upcoming book?
I can’t believe that this line did not make it until the final draft of The Maverick’s Midwife, but that goes to show how much I loved the editorial feedback I got from Alle Mudrick at Third Rail Press while working with her.
“But then I thought of people like Hugo and wondered whether they counted as men at all.”
OR
I really love a conversation that two of the students in the book have between each other after a really long day at the hospital together, and I think it encapsulates some of the story’s themes.
“Do you really think you can care for a person who isn’t like you? Who you’ll never completely understand?” … “That’s what all caring is.”
10. What advice for do you have for aspiring authors?
I’d encourage folks as much as they can to write about the things that they find interesting, not the things others are telling them to write or what they think they should write. While early on in your writing career you might have to be more willing to take assignments as you build your craft (something I myself am still doing), your best work is ultimately going to be that passion project you’re cheating on everything else with.
11. How will you celebrate a book release?
I’m having my launch party at Bird in Hand -- the same coffee shop/bookstore where my writing professor and mentor encouraged me to apply to the Meg Walsh Fellowship. It’ll be an amazing full circle moment! Afterwards, I plan on celebrating Vienna-style with some coffee, cake, and Austrian wine!
12. Anything else that might be interesting or fun?
A really cool fun fact about Vienna General Hospital that did not make it into the book:
If you visit the hospital campus today, it’s being used as a university campus. In the main courtyard there’s this small hexagonal hut that is currently a biergarten. In the 19th century, that hut was actually the entryway for an underground tunnel system that religious sisters used to commute between the convent and the hospital for nursing shifts at strange hours of the night. Unfortunately I could not get that into the book, but maybe someone else can write a fascinating story about Vienna’s underground nun tunnels!