In 2016, I took a field trip to the city of Cartagena, formerly Carthago Nova, on the southeastern Mediterranean coast of Spain. In addition to Roman history and culture, I read, for comparative purposes, narratives of enslaved people in America from the nineteenth century (Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs in particular), and I also read scholarship by and about modern-day sex workers, as well as books about the psychology of trauma, the history of sexuality, and the history of slavery in general. While I was writing Sparrow, I held down a state government job, so for the ten years it took to research and write the book, I did most of my work during my off hours.
I had two years of Latin in high school many years ago, but I’m hopeless at it, so I have also read a lot of Roman literature in translation. In my home in Austin, Texas, I am up to my knees in cat hair and books about Roman history, society, and culture.
What sort of research did you do in order to write Sparrow ?
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