History often feels intangible, difficult to grasp for those of us who haven’t lived through it. Most of us might encounter it in textbooks, or museums, or documentaries, which may present the facts but not necessarily the full depth and emotional experience of what it meant to be there. But the past is full of stories, some sweeping, others intimate, making it rich with potential for fictional interpretation.
Meg Waite Clayton’s books bring history to life on the page, illuminating the often forgotten stories of women throughout the years. Through considerable research and care, Meg transports readers back in time, introducing them to aspiring starlets, intrepid journalists, unsung wartime heroines, and ordinary housewives with big dreams. Today, Meg shares her approach to historical fiction, from the ethics of writing about real people to the research that helps her recreate the past.
Trigger Warning: This article contains discussions of the Holocaust and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Please exercise personal care while reading.
About Meg Waite Clayton
Internationally bestselling author of nine novels, including the instant USA Today bestseller, Typewriter Beach, “an irresistible story of 1950s Hollywood…” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) that is a Top 10 Library Read (thank you, librarians!), a Washington Post 5 for Summer, Los Angeles Times 10 for a Beach Day, Publishers Weekly Summer Read, Amazon Editors’ Choice, Woman’s World Book Club Pick, and more; the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and Good Morning America Buzz Book, The Postmistress of Paris; and the National Jewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London.
Thanks for chatting with us, Meg. Let’s get started!
Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction? When blending history with narrative, how do you decide which historical details are inviolable and which elements — like dialogue or internal motivations — are fair game for fictional invention?
For me, the difference between history and historical fiction is that in history, you learn about what happened, whereas in historical fiction, if it’s well done, you experience historical moments in a way that allows you to feel what it would have been like, that lodges in your heart. I know some writers take a lot of liberties with history, but I’m of the school that sticks as close to fact as possible. I spend a lot of time getting the history as straight as I can and sticking to it.
Many of my stories are based on, or inspired by, real people. The difference for me is that if I use a real person’s name, I should not take liberties with who they are, either factually or emotionally. Of course, I invent scenes and dialogue and fictional characters to make a story. A novel is first and foremost a story. But I would never have a real person do something they would not have done. So for Typewriter Beach, for example, even though Alfred Hitchcock appears in only two scenes, and his wife Alma in one, I read biographies and interviews and articles and watched their movies in order to deliver who they really were.
For The Postmistress of Paris, I thoroughly researched Mary Jayne Gold, the real Chicago heiress who inspired the story, but because I chose to give her a different love life, I called my main character Nanée, a nickname, rather than Mary Jayne. For Truus Wijsmuller, the real-life Dutch heroine at the center of The Last Train to London, we know she was childless but don’t know why, so that was a void I sketched in, but beyond that, the things Truss in my book did were the things the real Truus did, right down to the very dramatic scene with Adolf Eichmann (whom I researched so thoroughly that I knew his dog’s actual name). In that novel, the children at its center are fictional characters — but again based on extensive research about the real children rescued in the Kindertransport.
What is it about real-life events, as opposed to purely invented scenarios, that drew you to this specific form of storytelling? Was there a particular historical moment, a forgotten figure, or an archived document that first made you think, “This is a story I must tell, but only fiction can truly illuminate its deeper meaning?”
I come from a big Irish Catholic family, and much of what I know about my dad comes from listening to my Uncle Jim, who was the storyteller of my family. But Uncle Jim was a bombardier in WWII who came back a wreck by all accounts, and his war experience is the one thing he never spoke of — not even to my dad, who he lived with when he came home, or to his wife of many decades. The things we don’t talk about? Those are, I believe, the stories that need to be known.
I also feel there is a long history of American literature about men, and at least when I started writing in 1991, very little about women. There are so many women who have done inspiring things, then quietly returned home and never spoke of it, and are now largely forgotten. I’m always looking for those stories: a woman of some importance, who can inspire me and, I hope, readers, too. They are often women, like Truus, who ought to have biographies written about them. We would know more about them, which
we should. But through a story, through a novel, I hope readers will feel what it was like to do what they did, and be inspired should the times ever call for readers themselves to act.
In basing a novel on real lives, you take on a unique ethical responsibility, especially when the events are sensitive or relatively recent. How do you navigate the potential discomfort or scrutiny from living descendants, historians, or those directly affected? Do you feel an obligation to consult with these groups, or is your primary loyalty always to the artistic vision and the integrity of the novel?
I feel a tremendous responsibility to get it right and do everything I can to do so. I can’t imagine thinking that when it comes to real people, my “artistic vision” ought to trump their actual experience. If my “artistic vision” requires something different than their actual experience, then I ought to create a fictional character, and not trade on their name simply to sell books.
Because often the subjects I take on are painful for people who have survived the moment to talk about, I turn first to available research, including taped interviews and written recollections. For both The Last Train to London and The Postmistress of Paris, the real women on whom they were based left us written accounts of their experience, although both were out of print, and Truus’s was only ever published in Dutch. For me, it’s gratifying to get the history right, both factually and especially emotionally.
For The Last Train to London, for example, I’ve heard from people who were actually rescued, who reached out just to tell me they felt I’d told their stories. That… well, that is the single most moving thing I’ve experienced as a writer. Nearly as moving, I’ve heard from children of people rescued in the Kindertransport, who often tell me that their parents never spoke about their experience, and my novel gave them an understanding they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Your novels require meticulous research. Could you briefly describe the most unconventional or surprising research method you employed for your last book? Whether it was learning a niche skill, tracking down an obscure primary source, or visiting a specific, out-of-the-way location, what was the one research activity that most profoundly shaped a scene or character in your final book?
The Memory Bench in Typewriter Beach is a real bench overlooking the sea, which really does have a mailbox hidden underneath it containing journals that people who stumble upon them can write in. I keep occasional journals, but nobody reads them, and my estate documents provide that they are to be burned, unread by anyone.
My characters do write in those journals, though, so one of the things I did was make myself write in them, as well. It’s anonymous, but still, it was unnerving for me. Funny, though: it turns out to be liberating to write private thoughts anonymously in a journal and just let them go out into the world. And one of the most fun things that happened as a result of Typewriter Beach: I was walking with a new friend who lives in Carmel but didn’t know about the bench or the journals. So we stopped, and I showed her, and literally just opened one of the journals to a random page, and I swear to you the entry there said, from August 31, 2025, “I have lived in Carmel for 40 years, and I never knew about the Memory Bench. Thank you, Meg Waite Clayton, for writing about it in the wonderful new novel, Typewriter Beach. – Ann.” I wish I had any idea who Ann is, so I could hug her!
Historical research can often produce a mountain of data. What is the moment during your writing process when you know you’ve moved past mere documentation and have successfully brought a historical event to life as true fiction? Is it a moment when a historical character “speaks” to you, when a factual detail clicks perfectly into a fictional plot point, or when you finally understand the emotional stakes of the real-life situation?
I suppose that’s different for every book. One of the things I’ve done for the last three books is to write, as a sort of outline, a screenplay first. I’m always steeped in the general history before I begin, even that, but it allows me to get a sense of the shape of a story before I have to deliver in words exactly what, say, the Vienna train station looked like in 1938 or whether the Frank Lloyd Wright House on the coast in Carmel was there or not in 1957. And it allows me to settle myself into the hearts of the characters first, to let them drive the story.
Who is the one historical fiction author whose name on a spine instantly makes you buy the book?
Alice McDermott. She’s not someone you think of as “historical fiction,” but her stories are all set in the past. Her Absolution, about women in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War — just gorgeous and heartbreaking.
If your protagonist were suddenly tasked with walking across a movie set right now, what specific song — the one track that captures the exact mood and emotional undercurrent of your entire novel — would be playing on the loudspeakers? And does your main character love or hate that song?
I love this question!
I’m tempted to say Buddy Knox’s 1957 Party Doll, which can be summed up in a single line of its lyrics: “Every man has got to have a party doll,” which Isabella and Gemma would both hate, and Leo and Sam, too, although not so intently. But that’s just how the story of Typewriter Beach begins.
So I’ll go with The Beatles’ Hey Jude, which they would all love. Paul McCartney wrote it originally for a single, simple purpose — to comfort Julian Lennon when his parents were divorcing. But in rewriting (and the best of any writing comes in the rewriting), McCartney made it something bigger and more universal, about accepting ourselves as good enough, and finding within ourselves what we need to make our way through difficult times, but also welcoming others into our hearts as we do. That’s what Typewriter Beach is about at its heart: It’s a love story (or three) about making family when we find ourselves alone in the world, and sticking our necks out to dare to become who we want to be, and fiercely fiercely fiercely embracing love.
Thanks again to Meg for speaking with us! Visit her website or follow her on Instagram to keep up with her work — and don’t forget to check out Typewriter Beach!
Interested in the relationship between writing and mental health? Click here to read our interview with writing coach GG Renee Hill.
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