Under the Green Willow

THE MAKING OF FORGET-HER-NOTS, BY AMY BRECOUNT WHITE 

Pink Coneflowers.

People are always asking me, “Where did you get your inspiration for Forget-Her-Nots?  It’s so unusual.”  The seed was planted when I went to hear the author Toni Morrison speak years ago.  I’d taught high school English and was a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines at the time, but the desire to write a novel beat deep and persistent within me.  The audience was full of aspiring writers eagerly lapping up drops of wisdom from the mouth of a Nobel Laureate.  Her piece of advice that resonated with me was this:  “Write the book that only you can write.” 

I’d heard “write what you know” and “write what you love,” but contemplating the book that I alone could write truly sent me down a new path. I spent months making a list of my loves and what I truly cared about.  I became an observer of my own life and experiences, to decipher what I uniquely had to share with the world.

Orchids are for passion, or "belle of the ball."

Flowers kept popping up.  As a freelancer, I’d pitched a language of flowers idea to a few magazines, but never got the assignment.  I did have several “translations” of the language on my bookshelves and had written articles about gardens and gardening with children for The Washington Post.  I’d also written about recreation and travel, and most of those articles involved hiking, biking, or otherwise immersing myself in the lovely and varied natural worlds within a few hours of Washington, D.C.  As I raised my children and read story after story to them, I knew I wanted my own novel to convey the delights of nature.  For me, nothing inspires joy, hope, and delight better than a bloom. 

In the midst of my mothering, writing, and ruminating, my friend and neighbor Susan was dying of ovarian cancer.  I’d cooked and baked for her, but I wanted to do something special.  So I pulled out my language of flowers books and collected a tussie-mussie, a Victorian symbolic bouquet, from my own herb and flower garden.  I included rosemary for remembrance, sweet basil for best wishes, cedar for strength, coreopsis for cheerfulness, and borage for courage.* I wrote a card translating my flower message and gave her the bouquet.  She was thrilled and said it was the most unique gift she’d ever received.  How I wished my flower messages would come true for her!

Irises send a message, and tulips are for fame!

Within a few weeks of Susan’s death, I realized I had an idea, a story that only I could tell, and I began to write it.  It took me more years than I expected to get “all the lovely words just right,” as a favorite professor of mine used to say.  I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when my Publishers Weekly review described Forget-Her-Nots as having “a delicate sense of magical possibility and reverence for the natural world.” 

That was my goal exactly.

* There is no definitive list of the language of flowers.  In FHN, I used the most commonly found meanings, along with a dash of poetic license.

Amy Brecount White is the author of Forget-Her-Nots, which went on sale this week! She lives in Arlington, Virginia.