Washington D.C. native Tracy Chevalier always felt like “the outsider” growing up in the United States. Even after living in England over 25 years, she still feels like an outsider. In regards to writing she says, “…you need to be an outsider to write”
Spending more time in music than in writing, Chevalier planned to pursue a degree in music. However, with lackluster encouragement from her music teacher, it was decided to move into writing and find a career in journalism. Around the age of 20, she started writing short stories. Upon completing her bachelors degree at Oberlin College in Ohio, she moved to England to study at the University of East Anglia in Norwich England.
Upon meeting her future British husband, Chevalier moved to England permanently. She worked as an editorial assistant and a book editor. Her first book, The Virgin Blue was published in 1970. Her second novel was inspired and named after the famous painting by Johannes Vermeer – The Girl with the Pearl Earring. The work was an instant success, sold over 5 million copies world wide, and was made into a movie.
Today, Chevalier continues to write stories in England with her family – “her 1 English husband + her 1 English son + 1 tortoiseshell cat”. She also did a TED talk called – Finding the Story Inside the Painting. If you are interested in reading more of her works, check out the items below!
New boy Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, a diplomat’s son, Osei Kokote, knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again.
At the edge of the orchard / Tracy Chevalier
James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck – in the muddy, stagnant swamps of 1830s Ohio. They and their children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.
Fifteen years later, the youngest Goodenough, Robert, is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the New World to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert’s past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.
The last runaway / Tracy Chevalier
Honor Bright is a modest English Quaker with a broken heart. Emigrating to Ohio with her sister in the hope of making a new life, she soon discovers that 19th-century America hard, precarious place to live. Its people are practical and unsentimental, its climate challenging. Even its quilts are different from those she makes. Moreover, it is divided by slavery, legal in southern states and opposed by many northerners.
One day a runaway slave appears in the farmyard of Honor’s new family, and she must decide what to do. Even Quakers – famed for championing human equality – may hesitate to break the laws of the land. Drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network of people helping runaways escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who demonstrate what defiance can achieve. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.
Remarkable creatures [sound recording] : a novel / Tracy Chevalier
Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent for finding fossils, and whose discovery of ancient marine reptiles such as that ichthyosaur shakes the scientific community and leads to new ways of thinking about the creation of the world.
Working in an arena dominated by middle-class men, however, Mary finds herself out of step with her working-class background. In danger of being an outcast in her community, she takes solace in an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, a prickly London spinster with her own passion for fossils.
The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and and jealousy.
Burning bright / Tracy Chevalier
Burning Bright follows the Kellaway family as they leave behind tragedy in rural Dorset and come to late 18th-century London. As they move in next door to the radical painter/poet William Blake, and take up work for a near-by circus impresario, the youngest family member gets to know a girl his age. Embodying opposite characteristics – Maggie Butterfield is a dark-haired, streetwise extrovert, Jem Kellaway a quiet blond introvert – the children form a strong bond while getting to know their unusual neighbor and his wife.
Girl with a pearl earring / Tracy Chevalier
Girl With a Pearl Earring tells the story of Griet, a 16-year-old Dutch girl who becomes a maid in the house of the painter Johannes Vermeer. Her calm and perceptive manner not only helps her in her household duties, but also attracts the painter’s attention. Though different in upbringing, education and social standing, they have a similar way of looking at things. Vermeer slowly draws her into the world of his paintings – the still, luminous images of solitary women in domestic settings.
In contrast to her work in her master’s studio, Griet must carve a place for herself in a chaotic Catholic household run by Vermeer’s volatile wife Catharina, his shrewd mother-in-law Maria Thins, and their fiercely loyal maid Tanneke. Six children (and counting) fill out the household, dominated by six-year-old Cornelia, a mischievous girl who sees more than she should.
On the verge of womanhood, Griet also contends with the growing attentions both from a local butcher and from Vermeer’s patron, the wealthy van Ruijven. And she has to find her way through this new and strange life outside the loving Protestant family she grew up in, now fragmented by accident and death. As Griet becomes part of her master’s work, their growing intimacy spreads disruption and jealousy within the ordered household and even – as the scandal seeps out – ripples in the world beyond.