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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Becoming a published author can seem like an impossible feat, and while it isn’t impossible, it is certainly difficult. One author who can attest to this is Connie Hertzberg Mayo, the author of “The Island of Worthy Boys” and a Sharon, Massachusetts local.
“From the time I started writing until the book was on the shelves was six years - it’s a long endeavor,” she told readers and fans at the Islington Branch Westwood Library. Mayo makes her living as being a systems analyst, yet also found the time, dedication, and interest to write an entire historical fiction novel.
Mayo not only spoke about the content of her book, but the process of writing it as well. “I wrote when I could, and sometimes that was day after day after day … Sometimes a week would go by, and sometimes it would be a month that went by, but I always came back to it,” she said. She explained that the reason she always returned was “I became really engaged in the story that I was writing. I knew basically what was going to happen but I also was winging it sometimes while I was writing. It was almost like reading a book instead of writing it. There were many details that came out unexpectedly.”
Her novel is set in Boston in 1889 and follows two boys who survive off the streets. When they accidentally involve themselves in a murder, the two boys pass as virtuous Protestant students and manage to be accepted into the Boston Farm School, located on an island in the Boston Harbor.
Mayo did a significant amount of research for the book, including many of the religious references and practices, which she discussed. “I didn’t grow up religious. A friend of mine was a pastor, and at one point, one of the boys had to say grace, so I picked her brain and said, ‘You know, at that time, what sort of grace would this boy had said?’ And I quickly jotted that down and that’s the grace he said.”
One of the more unusual, yet fascinating things about Mayo is that her brain is so two-sided. “I’m not sure I could be one person or the other, I’m not sure I could do nothing creative and be all ones and zeroes and technology,” she said. “But I’m not sure I could just be a writer.”
While she may not be just a writer, she certainly is one. Her next project, which is currently “on ice,” as she said, takes place in the same time period, but in New York. “It is set at the New York Cancer Hospital. It was the first cancer-only hospital in the country at a time when people believed cancer was contagious,” she explained. “I really wanted to write about medical ethics and I think this era and this setting is really a great fertile ground for talking about medical ethics.” Her next work is eagerly awaited by many.
