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On an autumn day when the maple leaves looked like gold coins flung against the blue New England sky, I met with Karen Hesse to discuss her writing for children and young adults. Karen lives in Williamsville, Vermont, with her husband and two teenaged daughters. She maintains an office/apartment in downtown Brattleboro in an old building that faces a main street and backs up to the Connecticut River and Wantastiquet Mountain of New Hampshire just beyond. Few of the apartments in the building where Karen rents her office have signs on the doors, and after I rang the doorbell next to her name on the mailbox, I walked down various dark staircases and corridors, hoping I had the correct date and time of our visit. On an upper floor, a friendly face with glasses and curly dark hair peered around an open door. "Ellen?" a voice asked. "Karen?" I responded, as if I knew lots of other women in this building. I had the right day after all.
Karen Hesse opened the door to her work place. Her office is every middle-aged mother's dream-a homey place of one's own away from home. The door opens into her kitchen with its wooden table and four chairs in the center and its friendly bookshelves along two walls. To the right is a room with her computer station and comfortable sofa. Off this room is a bedroom where infrequent late work schedules or predawn arisings can be accommodated without disrupting others in Karen's family. Off the living room and bedroom side of the apartment is a balcony where one can see the Connecticut River and the mountains of New Hampshire immediately beyond. Karen told me I had just missed the magical part of the morning when the sunlight danced on the river. Karen has rural New England out her back window and downtown Brattleboro with its coffee shops, book stores, and independent shops out her front door. I was ready to move in.
Karen has written novels for young adults (Letters from Biflia, 1992; Phoenix Rising, 1994; A Time of Angels, 1995; and most recently, The Music of Dolphins, 1996), fiction for younger readers (Wish on a Unicorn, 1991; Lavender, 1993; Sable, 1994), and picture books for children...