Today is the day to wake up and think it's Saturday.

Are you the type to check the locks three times before bed? Read this and email your behaviors to me..

Today's interviewee has a book out, set in Minnesota in the 1920's. Her first book, Summit Avenue, was a Book Sense 76 Pick. A Midwesterner like me, she is a Minnesota native and currently lives in England.

The Mary Sharratt Interview: Just Less Than Twenty Questions

Your new book, The Real Minerva is set in the 1920s. How did you select that era? Did you need to do much research in order to make it true to the times?
The Twenties were a pivotal period in history, the beginning of the modern era as we know it, and particularly pertinent to women. They had won the right to vote and many were determined to go where no woman had gone before. This was the age of pioneers like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. A new generation raised their hemlines, bobbed their hair, and set off to earn a living outside the home. However, in many ways, it was still a very repressive time. Despite living in the midst of a sexual revolution of sorts, birth control was difficult to obtain, especially for single and rural women. Respectable society shunned unwed mothers and their "illegitimate" offspring.

In writing The Real Minerva, I chose the form of a historical novel set in the Twenties to present three heroines struggling against the kind of overwhelming social strictures many of us today would have a hard time imagining. The Real Minerva poses a question: is it possible to leave your past behind and become someone wholly different? What if you are a woman living on the fringes of society in a claustrophobic small town? I wanted to take the great Twenties myth of the Self-Made Man, a la The Great Gatsby, and recast it through a female lens. How would my three heroines attempt to reinvent themselves?

To make the era as real as possible for the reader, I researched everything from the history of obstetrics and feminine hygiene to how to load and shoot a Winchester rifle. A lot of the material relating to early 20th century farm life is drawn directly from my grandmother's and mother's stories, such as the details on butchering chickens. Careful readers will also note the influence of Willa Cather's My Antonia in depicting the darker realities of rural life, such as mean-spirited relatives attempting to drown a "bastard" baby in the rain barrel.

Are there any other eras you are hoping to write about?
My third novel, The Vanishing Point, which will be published by Houghton Mifflin in Spring 2006, is set in 17th century England and colonial America. My fourth novel and current work-in-progress is set partially in the modern era and partially in Manchester, England during the Industrial Revolution.

"Minerva" is the Roman name for the Greek Athena. Were you a student of the classics?
Although I took a number of courses in the classics at college, it was not my major. However, myth and fairy tales play a huge role in my fiction. My first novel, Summit Avenue, tells of a young immigrant's coming of age through the prism of dark fairy tales. In The Real Minerva, I turned to the Greek myths. I wanted to tell the classic hero's journey from a female perspective. What shape does the journey take if the hero is a woman? Where would my protagonist, Penny, a small-town girl with an eighth-grade education, learn about great heroines? What role models existed for girls like her? When she gets her hands on a copy of the Odyssey, her whole world changes. Suddenly she's living her life on a larger canvas. She realizes she can wed her dreams to the figure of Athena/Minerva, who gave her town its name. This is the goddess of the intellect, of civilization and learning, yet she is also a warrior. She emboldens Penny to stick up for herself and fight for her rights.

Are you currently living in England? Do you consider yourself more American or European?
I've been living in England for nearly three years now. Before that I lived in Germany for twelve years. Nearly all my adult life, I have been a foreigner in someone else's country. Living on this side of the Atlantic has certainly shaped my attitudes and opinions. A USA-centric view of world politics, for example, is no longer possible for me. Like many long-term expats, I inhabit a liminal space, between cultures. Looking at my own country from this distance has allowed me to view it with fresh eyes.

What was your Fulbright Fellowship experience like? That's an honor I think that many of us have heard of, but actually know little about.
When I was just out of college, I received a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship sponsored by the American Austrian Fulbright Commission. This meant that I was selected to teach English language and American studies in an Austrian secondary school, which in my case was a Catholic girl's boarding school run by Ursuline nuns. It was very Sound of Music, surrounded by Austrian children, nuns in full habit, and Alps!

I think that Germany still carries some stigma to Americans. You lived there for twelve years. If you were to show an American around the country, what would you be sure to touch upon to reveal the best of it?
First of all, the forests. Although Germany is a densely populated and thoroughly industrialized country, 29 per cent of the land is covered in forest. In the Munich area where I lived, the natural surroundings were breathtaking. The Isar River flowed straight down from the Alps, making Munich's tap water some of the purest in the world. The streams in Grafing, the little town where I lived, ran so clear that otter and trout lived within the town limits. I believe that Germany's commitment to environmental protection is something the rest of the world can learn from. I'd also take people around the funky alternative neighborhoods you can find in any city or university town. Here you will find wonderful cafes where you can while away the whole afternoon for the price of one cup of coffee.

You say that you are sick of "depressing, defeatist" stories about women. What are some examples of such stories, and how is The Real Minerva different?
Examples from the world of film would include Monster , Thelma and Louise, Malena, and Baise Moi, all of which appear to serve as cautionary tales warning women what will happen to them if they dare step out of line. In most of popular culture it would seem that rebel women end up dead. An example of a recent literary novel from an author I quite admire would be Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin. The novel starts off as a gritty yet engaging tale of an 18th century teenager whose circumstances force her into prostitution. Like Moll Flanders, she refuses to bow down and be ashamed of her lot. But even this feisty heroine must die in the end, utterly ruined and humiliated for having the temerity to believe that she could rise above her circumstances. The opposite extreme would be chick lit, which to me, at least, seems to find humor in presenting women as neurotic, insecure Bridget Jones parodies. As a reader and writer, I am tired of victim/chick lit; I don't want to see women either dead or trivialized. I wanted The Real Minerva to be a book about strong women that packed the same punch as Thelma and Louise, except one that had a positive message behind it and a believable happy ending. In short, I wanted to write a novel about women who fight for their independence against all odds . . . and win.

What is the inspiration for the murderer character of Sadie Ostertag?
When I was living in Germany, there was a woman in a nearby village who murdered her three children with an ax before attempting to kill herself. The tragic irony was that she appeared so normal on the outside-a middle class, well-behaved, stay-at-home-mom. No one in her close knit community, not even her husband or friends, suspected she could do such a thing.

I read that you are not a mother yourself. Was it difficult to capture the emotions of motherhood, or is that something that is really not necessary to experience to write about?
Although I'm not a mother, the complicated symbiosis between mothers and children has always fascinated me and has been a focal point in my fiction. I have been very close to my friends as they went through pregnancy, childbirth, and the journey into motherhood. Ironically, I think because I have no children, mothers have felt freer to divulge their experiences to me, especially the more harrowing aspects of parenting. In mainstream media, you often see motherhood portrayed in a cloyingly sentimental way that undermines the whole depth and spectrum of what mothers go through. Part of the aim of my fiction is to go against the grain and try to give voice to my friends' experiences in order to present a more honest and complex portrait of motherhood that doesn't patronize women.

Are there any topics or emotions that you would have extreme difficulty putting into words?
At this moment, none come to mind. I don't shy away from difficult subjects. I don't think writers or readers gain anything from a sanitized, Prozac take on life.

Birds and childbirth figure prominently in the book. When you're writing, are you conscious of symbolism and decide ahead of time what will be the thematic images, or is it something that reveals itself subconsciously?
The symbols arise organically as the story takes shape. The germ of The Real Minerva, for example, was inspired by a camping trip in the Patagonian wilderness. There were wild geese everywhere. When I observed a mother goose ferociously guarding her young, this became the perfect image of a mother's fierce, protective bond to her children. Like my character Cora, who seem to rise from the landscape itself, the geese presented a wild, primal ideal of motherhood, as opposed to a domesticated one. Even domestic geese are never really tame; they can terrify when they turn on an intruder.

Are there any genres that you'd love to experiment in?
My fourth novel and current work-in-progress draws on ghost stories and the English gothic novel.

How do you work on one novel while touring for another? Do you write separate books simultaneously?
I don't write while I'm on tour. My attention and energy are completely focused on giving readings, talking to people, giving interviews, etc. When I'm on tour I'm completely extroverted and wired. I love meeting readers and bookstore people face to face. I wait till I'm back home before I return to my introverted writing mode. As far as juggling multiple projects, I'm afraid I have to work on one fiction manuscript at a time.

How did you come to be a lecturer on the topic of fairy tales?
My first encounter with traditional fairy tales took place when I was giving English lessons to Japanese children in Munich. I went to the library to look for children's literature and stumbled across shelves and shelves of fairy tales from different cultures. There were literally thousands of volumes, some of them ornate and leather-bound, as beautiful to hold as to read. I checked some of them out, ostensibly for my young students, only to discover that the tales were not appropriate for children. Many were brutal, even tragic, or else bawdy. The tales drew me right in and eventually became the central axis of my first novel and inspired much of my short fiction.

I started teaching fairy tale workshops, because I wanted to reclaim traditional fairy tales for adults. Thanks to Walt Disney, most of us today have a very distorted view of the tales. The original, unexpurgated stories are not cute in the least; most were never intended for children. The simplicity of fairy tales is deceptive. Once you pull back the surface layer, there are untold depths. Contemporary adults, living in what can seem like a soulless world, secretly crave stories of magic and power-wonder tales. In my opinion, this is why so many grown ups read the Harry Potter books.

Traditional fairy tales are particularly relevant for women. Many of the tales focus on female protagonists, female archetypes, and female rites of passage. Women looking for images of strength will find them in fairy tales, for they contain deep and ageless feminine mysteries. They are bristling with images of subversive women who possess amazing powers, such as Baba Yaga. Fairy tales are full of images of women both challenging and empowering other women. The bit about the prince coming to the rescue was often tacked on by revisionists and not part of the original tale.

What is your favorite tale and why?
The tale of Wassalissa going out in the dark midwinter forest to meet the terrifying Baba Yaga and ask her for fire. Once the naÔve young maiden encounters the hag, she will never be the same again. Wassalissa starts out as a downtrodden orphan, but in the crucible of the sorceress' house is utterly transformed. In the end, we see her returning home triumphantly with her hard won fire: a burning skull. Fire in the head.

How does it feel to be the 112th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
I feel very honored. Thank you for having me.