Interview with Imogen Martin - Author of To The Wild Horizon
Interview with Imogen Martin - Author of ‘To The Wild Horizon’
Novel is out now!
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About the Author:
Imogen writes sweeping, historical fiction. Her first two novels are set in nineteenth century America.
As a teenager, she took the Greyhound bus from San Francisco to New York. Over those three days of staring out of the window at the majestic mountains and endless flat plains, stories wound themselves into her head: tales of brooding, charismatic men captivated by independent women.
Since then, she has worked in a coffee-shop in Piccadilly, a famous bookstore, and a children’s home. She has run festivals, and turned a derelict housing block on one of the poorest estates in the UK into an award-winning arts centre.
During 2020 Imogen was selected by Kate Nash Literary Agency as one of their BookCamp mentees, a mentorship programme designed to accelerate the careers of promising new writers.
Married with two children, Imogen divides her time between Wales and Sardinia.
About To the Wild Horizon
Missouri, 1846: In the frontier town of Independence the sound of a gunshot shatters the night. As the pistol drops from her hand and clatters to the ground, Grace knows she has no choice but to leave. Now.
In this inspiring and deeply moving story of love, courage and endurance, a young woman on the run from the law sets off on a desperate journey of survival on the treacherous Oregon Trail.
This unputdownable and heart-wrenching historical novel shows the true strength and resilience of a woman’s heart, even when she has everything to lose and the odds are stacked against her.
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INTERVIEW
Welcome Imogen! Please share the inspiration behind To The Wild Horizon and a little burst on what the story is about?
To The Wild Horizon is a slow-burn romance set against the backdrop of the US pioneer journey in the mid nineteenth century. Grace and younger brother Tom want to reunite with their elder brother, who has settled in Oregon. When Grace shoots a man in self-defence, she is desperate to leave quickly. The man leading the next wagon train is stern Captain Randolph and he doesn’t let women travel alone. Grace has to pretend to be married.
I understand you live in Wales and Sardinia but your stories are set in the US. Why have you chosen this location? Have you encountered any problems in writing about a country you do not reside in?
I travelled through the US on the Greyhound bus when I was young and got a deep love for the landscape. It has a scale I don’t experience in the UK. I had to do a huge amount of research into the climate and landscape, as well as the historical context.
Name two facts you learned during your research for To The Wild Horizon, that surprised you.
I didn’t include this in my story, but there were mountainous places where the overlanders would take the wagons apart, haul pieces over the mountain, come back for more until they had carried everything, drive the animals over, sometimes hoisted in fabric slings, and eventually re-build the wagons to set off again. This was particularly in the mountain range the Mormons crossed in 1847 to the south of the main Oregon Trail, before deciding to settle by the Great Salt Lake.
It has been estimated as many as 1 in 10 emigrants died on the trail, about 30,000 people. That’s the equivalent of one grave every 80 yards. My story has a much more successful wagon train.
Tell us about Grace? Who is she: her character traits, her aspirations, her nemesis?
Grace is brave, determined and resourceful. The most important thing to her is keeping Tom safe. Life could be bleak for a ten-year-old in the Midwest with no family looking out for him. Her nemesis at the beginning of the book is her landlord. Others emerge as she makes her way West.
Your story is set in 1846: a challenging time when many settlers crossed the Great Plains to Oregon. What do you think drove these people to make such a perilous journey and what obstacles and dangers did they face?
Most of the settlers were middle-class. Poor people couldn’t afford the wagon, oxen, supplies etc. People who were already doing well in the States didn’t need to risk the danger of a 2,000 mile journey. In 1844, presidential hopeful James Polk first used the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to justify the expansion westwards: it was the white European American’s “right” to take the land. This may have fired some of the settlers.
The dangers were mostly from disease and accidents. A bizarrely high number of settlers managed to shoot themselves through mishandling of weapons. Cholera and dysentery were widespread, particularly as the numbers travelling increased.
The settlers thought the Native Americans would be a danger, but the truth was they were more likely to help them on their way by bartering food. Very few settlers were killed by the Native Americans.
Grace is a fiercely strong woman with a lot of courage. How did she help the other women travelling in her group?
Grace is conflicted early on because she wants to keep her head down and not be noticed. As time goes by, her natural instinct to help others takes over. She puts her own wellbeing at risk to help other women, partly to atone for the guilt she feels having shot a man.
What is special about Captain James Randolph? List some of his positive and negative traits.
I love Captain Randolph! In my head, he is Mr. Darcy in the US Army. He has a lot of faults though, the main one being misogyny. He has a low opinion of women’s abilities and steadfastness. We gradually learn why he has this attitude. Randolph has many positive points though. For example, he is pretty much the only person in the book who is not racist towards the Native Americans. This attitude would probably have been unusual at the time.
If you had the opportunity to go back in time to do research for a book, where and when would you go and who would you want to meet? What three questions would you ask them?
I would love to go back to 1846 and talk to Captain Randolph Barnes Marcy. He was one of my sources for the book (I took part of the name, obviously!) and he wrote The Prairie Traveler. It was a handbook for overland expeditions and he made the journey many times.
Other than the American 19th century, I would go back to 1605 to meet Shakespeare and ask how he managed to write several plays a year, each of them a work of genius.
I am fascinated with Russia and would love to go to the 1780s to ask Catherine the Great (who was German, not Russian) how she managed to achieve so much in a man’s world.
Have you always wanted to be a writer? Was there something or someone that inspired you to go in this direction?
I have always enjoyed writing. Stories would come to me – including To the Wild Horizon – and it took years for me to scribble them down. It was the death of my older daughter, Becky, about 6 years ago, that kicked me into action. She had achieved so much in her 27 years. I knew I had to get on with doing what was important to me, and that was writing.
Please share your publishing journey and one of your happiest moments as a writer.
My first two books are both set in 19th century United States. I got great feedback from editors and won a place on a scheme to accelerate promising writers, which came with representation from an agent. That was an exciting moment – followed by disillusion when my agent couldn’t find a publisher (this happens a lot, but is not something authors talk about). UK publishers were not interested in these American stories. I had got to the stage of wondering whether what I thought of as Becky’s Book would fail to be published, and that made me disappointed.
In early 2023 I sent Under a Gilded Sky to Storm Publishing. My happiest moment was waiting for a plane to Amsterdam when an email came through on my phone from an editor from Storm, asking if I had written any other books. I sent off To The Wild Horizon –– and Vicky (now my editor) got back to me very quickly saying she wanted to publish them both.
Do you have advice for new writers that you wished someone had shared with you?
I can’t think of any advice I wished someone had shared. But I received lots fantastic advice as a new writer, and read what successful writers recommended. I particularly like Marian Keyes’ advice: “Time needs to be set aside to write. Because time is short for most people it means you’ll probably have to give up something else you enjoy – sleep, the gym, telly. Keep at it, so much of writing is about rewriting.”
What four books have you read in the last twelve months you’d recommend and what is unique about them?
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – it’s David Copperfield retold in the Appalachians in late 20th century. The characterisation and ability to create a sense of place are amazing.
The Silence Project by Carole Hailey – one of the most original books I’ve read in a long time. First person account by a woman whose mother starts a cult, then self-immolates and sparks a world-wide movement. Lots of challenging ideas.
The Sea Sisters Swimming Club by Sue McDonagh – Fran retires early from the police after a heart attack and settles in a little village by the sea. There she meets Wyn, a big, ex-rugby player and deep-sea diver with experiences that he hasn’t yet overcome. Sue writes with gentle humour and you can’t help falling in love with her characters – particularly the hunky men.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – set in 1961, scientist Elizabeth Zott hosts a TV cooking show to make ends meet, and sparks a feminist revolution. I went to an author talk by Garmus and she was wonderful.
What fun activities or hobbies do you enjoy when you are not writing?
I do yoga every Thursday morning and run 3 times a week. Last year I discovered Parkrun – a 5k run at 9am Saturday morning. There are hundreds of locations in the UK and it’s spreading across the world. It’s wonderful to run alongside lots of other people.
I read as much as I can, obviously.
I love spending time in Sardinia. I can write in the peaceful mornings and go swimming in the Med and read trashy novels on the beach all afternoon.
Are you working on a new novel that you can share a little about?
I am working on my next book and am not sure how much I am able to say about it. But it is a sequel to To The Wild Horizon, set mostly in California.
We wish Imogen much success on her new novel that is out in the world now winging its way through many hearts. Drop by Imogen’s website for more details on her books, to sign up for her newsletter and to make contact.
