Trident Booksellers & Café continued its YA Passport event series with Rosalyn Eves, author of Blood Rose Rebellion, and Heidi Heilig, author of The Girl from Everywhere and its sequel The Ship Beyond Time last week. The talk, hosted by fellow author Mackenzi Lee, centered on the interaction between fantasy and history, elements present in both Eves’s and Heilig’s books.

Eves recounted her inspiration for Blood Rose Rebellion — specifically, time she spent in Hungary in her 20s. The nation’s rich past contributed to how she created the history and magic in her book, which tells the story of sixteen-year-old Anna who is born into a society where nobility are blessed with magic. She, however, is “Barren” — which is to say, unable to do magic like her noble peers. The book takes place in 19^th century Hungary, which Eves explained she captured through a combination of intense research and her own memories of visiting the country. Upon selling the book, she was able to travel back to Hungary, where she gathered important details to finish polishing the book for publication (apparently, some roads are much narrower than she thought.)

Heilig spoke about The Girl from Everywhere series, which follows Nix, a girl living on a time-traveling (and universe-traveling, for that matter) ship with her father and crewmates. Heilig said she drew inspiration from her love of maps and other “dorky” things and used that to blend together the historical and mythical worlds found in the series. Some of the first book takes place in historical Hawaii, which she knew well from her childhood in the state. Being able to draw from Hawaiian mythologies was an exciting part of crafting the story for her.

Questions from Lee and the audience covered topics ranging from diversity to cool/weird historical details the authors came across in their research (Eves recalled a feral child with webbed feet and hands who came to live in an estate after being found in a Hungarian swamp, while Heilig explained the surplus of gay pirates that history books often like to ignore.) The talk closed with a raffle for ARCs and a signing with the authors.

Thank you to Trident for this wonderful addition to their YA Passport event series. Look for a discussion with Ashley Herring Blake, Katie Cotugno, and Emery Lord on May 18^th.

For more Boston-local book happenings, see our events calendar.

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