PHOTO: Mary Doria Russell, acclaimed author of The Sparrow and A Thread of Grace, photographed at her home in Cleveland, Ohio.
Award-Winning Novelist Of Science Fiction And Historical Epics
Mary Doria Russell discusses her remarkable journey from science to storytelling, the inspirations behind her genre-shifting novels, and how meticulous research and moral curiosity shape her unforgettable characters and narratives.
Mary Doria Russell is one of those rare novelists whose body of work resists categorisation. With a background in biological anthropology and an early career devoted to rigorous scientific study, she brings to fiction a scholar’s eye and a storyteller’s heart. Her novels range widely in setting and subject—from the speculative landscapes of The Sparrow and Children of God to the searing historical realities of A Thread of Grace and the American frontier reimagined in Doc and Epitaph. What binds them together is not genre, but the author’s unflinching search for truth in the lives of her characters.
Each of Russell’s books begins not with certainty, but with a question—a spark of curiosity, a fragment of history, a puzzle that demands attention. In exploring those mysteries, she uncovers the fragile humanity of both ordinary people and legendary figures. Whether re-examining the myths of the Wild West or illuminating the forgotten courage of Italy’s wartime survivors, she strips away the layers of received wisdom to reveal the beating hearts beneath.
Her writing is distinguished by both intellectual depth and emotional resonance. Meticulous research informs every page, yet it is never mere fact-finding: it is always in service to story, character, and the ethical dilemmas that shape human lives. A scientist by training and a novelist by calling, Russell occupies a singular place in contemporary literature—one where imagination, history, and moral inquiry meet.
To read Mary Doria Russell is to be reminded that literature is not simply an act of invention, but an act of excavation. In her hands, the past and future become mirrors, reflecting back our most urgent questions about faith, power, courage, and what it means to be human.
You have written in a number of genres as a novelist-
Yes, for me, genre was a tool, not a career path or a lifestyle. I picked the genre that seemed right for the story I wanted to tell. And since my first publisher was Random House, which got its name from publishing randomly, I was free to explore ideas with some expectation of being supported by my editor.
How did all those changes in direction happen? Let’s start with the first shift, from from science fiction in The Sparrow (1996) and Children of God (1998) to the World War II thriller, A Thread of Grace (2005)? Did your conversion to Judaism influence that?
I left Catholicism at thirteen. After three decades of contented atheism, I became a mother, and I was drawn to Judaism’s emphasis raising children who will want to be good – without the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. (BTW, my son has grown up to be a mensch. So, good call…) The Sparrow let me revisit Catholicism before making a decisive change, and I was able to think carefully about the role of religion in the lives of my characters, who ranged from atheist to bridal mystic.
That initial shift to historical fiction came when I stumbled onto the fact that 85% of the Jews of fascist Italy survived the Holocaust. Seven years of research and writing resulted in A Thread of Grace. Telling the story of Italy’s rescuers and survivors was an exploration of how to live ethically when all rules and expectations are being shattered.
Was that the pattern for each of the historical novels? You find something that surprised you and–
Or puzzled me, yes. For Dreamers of the Day, the spark was Osama Bin Laden’s statement that the attacks on 11 September, 2001, were “retribution for the catastrophe of 80 years ago.” I thought, What the hell happened 80 years ago? It turned out to be the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference and the making of the modern Middle East.
Doc started with Val Kilmer’s charming performance as Doc Holliday in the movie “Tombstone,” but the spark was reading that John Henry Holliday was born in 1851 with a cleft palate and a cleft lip. Like: wait, what?! I didn’t intend to write about what happened in Tombstone, but people kept asking me why I didn’t include the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. So I went down that rabbit hole as well. Hence: Epitaph (2015).
The Women of the Copper Country (2018) is about a miners’ strike in 1913, which was led by 25-year-old woman: Annie Clements. I saw a television documentary about that strike and mentioned it on Facebook. Turned out, my friend Rivka’s grandfather was the last miner to die before the strike was called. She urged me to tell the story and gave me a stack of family documents. The gods of literature wanted that one written.
Your novels Doc and Epitaph reexamine Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday—how did you reconcile mythic legend with historical record in crafting those characters?
I stripped the legends off entirely and found the real men beneath that pile of bullshit. Rule of thumb for every character, even if they’re wholly fictional: know their childhood.
Most writers drop in on Doc when he’s 29 and arrives in Tombstone. They accept the “gambler and gunman” caricature created by 20th century novels and movies. But Karen Holliday Tanner’s biography Doc Holliday: a Family Portrait (1998) let me begin with Alice Jane Holliday’s son, a shy and sheltered boy with a significant speech impediment.
Wyatt’s childhood was harder to unearth, but I found a diary by Sarah Jane Rousseau, who went West in a wagon train led by Wyatt’s father in 1864. Nicholas Earp didn’t only beat his own sons, he beat other people’s children! Wyatt tried for years to overcome that violent, abusive childhood, but it finally surfaced – not at the O.K. Corral, but as Homeric rage during the infamous Earp Vendetta Ride, when Wyatt carried out four extrajudicial executions of men he held responsible for his brother Morgan’s death.
BTW, that “Know the Childhood” rule is why the first few pages of A Thread of Grace are about the family of the child who would become Adolf Hitler. A beaten boy who took it out on the whole world…
Dreamers of the Day explores 1921 Cairo—did your research approach differ when writing a political romance versus your other historical novels?
Not really. The narrator’s childhood was central to her evolving understanding of herself and the world, so I started with that. Travelers to “the Holy Land” in the 1920s often wrote books about their trips. And the published letters of T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and Gertrude Bell were an overwhelming source of detail. Agnes, the narrator, let me focus in on what she knew and how she learned about all those people casually drawing lines on maps that haunt us all to this day.
In researching Annie Clements’s life for The Women of the Copper Country, how did your background in anthropology inform your portrayal of early twentieth century union struggles?
My doctorate is in paleoanthropology with specialties in bone biology and biomechanics, so it wasn’t directly germane, except for this: I was used to doing years of research about things that might interest maybe eleven people, worldwide. The story of a young union organizer who led a miner’s strike in 1913 in the far north of Michigan? Didn’t seem like a particularly canny career move, but the response to it has been gratifying. Tourists are going to Calumet, and residents of the town are raising funds for a bronze statue of Annie!
What advice would you give to aspiring authors hoping to blend meticulous research, philosophical depth and compelling narrative as you have?
You’re very kind, but I didn’t start out trying to do anything so ambitious! I was just trying out a little short story about a guy whose hands didn’t work, and it got away from me.
Advice? Sit down and make some prose happen. The next day, you’ll reread it and be appalled by how awful it is, but the great thing about writing is, you can go back and fix stuff. It’s not one and done. Made progress every day, even if it’s only untangling a paragraph or choosing a better word for an important sentence. And don’t give up!
