Exclusive interview with author Kimberly Freeman and a review of her new novel about life at a posh hotel in the 1920s
Rating: Three stars
Review by Gabrielle Pantera
“I read my grandmother’s memoir,” says Evergreen Falls author Kimberly Freeman. “In it she wrote at length of her time working as a waitress at a posh hotel in the 1920s. I used lots of ideas from her memoir. Every frock that she mentions made it into the book.”
Perhaps because I’ve read so many books lately with time leaps that I’m tiring of them. As great as a time leaper story like Outlander may be, sometimes a story works better if it sticks to a single time frame. Evergreen Falls could have been two different books. The story from the 1926 was so fascinating that I just wanted to stay there, to hear it told as a whole story on its own.
Evergreen Falls has love, intrigue, betrayal and class differences to overcome. The modern day part of the story was not as compelling. The character development of Violet living in the 1920s seemed incomplete. I wanted to know why her personality changed. In the modern day story of Lauren, I wanted to know why she wasn’t more introspective or more eager to experiment once away from her previously sheltered life. The thread that connected the two stories wasn’t strong enough, it’s really two novels in one book.
Lauren Beck is thirty years old and had lived a very sheltered life due to her mother’s fears. After taking a job at the Blue Mountains café, she encounters Tomas, a Danish architect hired to overseeing the Evergreen Spa Hotel renovations. There is a spark, but Lauren is nervous about dating. Lauren finds a key to the long-disused west wing of the spa. It’s the beginning of her learning to be a bit more adventurous.
For her research, Freeman spent a lot of time in the Blue Mountains region where the book is set. “Because I am terribly busy, I had a research assistant do a lot of the finding of details for me, so I could keep writing,” says Freeman. “I also used my grandmother’s memoirs for details and character ideas. Grandma’s memoir was something she wrote down before she died. It’s about 300 pages long, and I had never read it. When I started talking about setting a story in a hotel in the 1920s, my mother gave it to me and said, ‘I think it’s time you read this’.”
A woman who had read an interview in the paper where Freeman had mentioned her grandmother’s story, contacted Freeman. “She said her elderly mother had once been a friend of my grandmother,” says Freeman. “She wanted to meet me to give me something. Very intriguing. She had an old handkerchief that my grandmother had embroidered for her when she was a child. She returned it to me and my family.”
Freeman has six published novels as Kimberley Freeman. She has nine fantasy novels under her real name Kim Wilkins. And she has written ten novels for children. Evergreen Falls was named in 2015 by Library Journal as one of their Best Books. Her series about a teenage psychic detective is under development with a TV company in Australia.
Although Freeman has editors assigned to her by all her publishers, before sending anything out she runs it past her friend Paula Ellery, a freelance editor. “She always finds what I’ve missed and encourages me to be my best,” says Freeman.
Freeman says managing deadlines is her big challenge. “I write under two names, have a complex and demanding career as an academic, and have two young children. I do get to go on some wonderful research journeys and see interesting places. I get asked to do a lot of public speaking, but I find that fairly stressful so try to avoid it.”
Freeman is currently writing a novel set largely in the Victorian period. “It starts in England then moves to France, India, and ultimately Australia,” says Freeman. “It’s about the relationships between mothers and their daughters.”
Freeman lives in Brisbane, on the eastern coast of Australia. She was born in London. She can be found on Facebook at KimberleyFreemanAuthor.
Evergreen Falls: A Novel Paperback by Kimberley Freeman. Paperback: 416 pages, Publisher: Touchstone, Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1476799902 $16.00
