Writers Series Welcomes Hannah Tinti

SUZANNE RAMSEY
College relations staff writer

Hannah Tinti

Hannah Tinti’s novel, “The Good Thief,” started to come to life when she read two words: resurrection men. She had unearthed the phrase in “Forgotten English,” a Jeffrey Kacirk book about words that have nearly expired from the vernacular.

Resurrection men, she learned, were thieves who dug up corpses and sold them to doctors for medical research. An image came into her mind — grave robbers exhuming bodies under the cloak of near-darkness — and the first scene of the book was born.

“It was a moonlit night, and a small boy was holding the reins of a horse and wagon outside a graveyard,” Tinti said, describing the picture that was forming in her imagination. “I didn’t know anything about the boy, only that he was waiting for the resurrection men to bring the bodies, and that he was terrified.”

That scene became the first chapter Tinti wrote of “The Good Thief,” her first novel. She will read from the book at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5 in Sweet Briar’s Pannell Gallery. The event is part of the College’s 2009-2010 Writers Series, and admission is free.

As she continued writing that first scene, Tinti described the 11-year-old orphan. His name was Ren, and in his right hand, he held the horse’s reins. When she questioned what the boy was doing with his left hand, she was stumped until the answer hit her like a gravedigger’s shovel. Ren, she concluded, was missing his left hand.

“Suddenly the boy was alive,” she said. “This is how I discovered Ren’s secret, and I used it to unlock his character. It answered so many questions about him — why he was alone and how he might have fallen in with these dangerous men. Once I had this detail, the book came to me like a vision. I could see the whole thing. The details of the plot took much longer to figure out, though. Years.”

“The Good Thief,” which has been compared to works by Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, is replete with fascinating and sometimes quirky characters. Among them are Benjamin Nab, who adopts Ren from a Catholic orphanage under false pretenses; landlady Mrs. Sands, who shouts in all-capital letters; and Dolly, a giant hit man who is befriended by Ren.

Sometimes, as in the case of Mrs. Sands and Dolly, characters just materialized. Dolly, for instance, appeared after Tinti, in a fit of boredom, thought, “What’s the weirdest thing that could happen right now?”

“Others, like Benjamin, I had to really work on,” she said. “My writing technique is sort of like using a divining rod. I try and bring my intuition into it as much as possible. Sometimes that works splendidly. Other times it takes me on false roads for awhile.”

In addition to “The Good Thief,” Tinti is author of the short story collection “Animal Crackers,” and she is co-founder of One Story magazine. Currently, she is 100 pages into her next novel and waiting to see if “The Good Thief” catches the attention of film directors.

If it does, Tinti could offer some advice to the casting director. “For Ren, it would have to be some unknown kid,” she said, “although I loved Dillon Freasier, who played Daniel Day-Lewis’ son in ‘There Will Be Blood.’ For Benjamin, I always imagined someone like Johnny Depp. [For] Dolly, I’d say Brendan Gleeson or James Gandolfini.”

The next event in the Writers Series will feature D.A. Powell, poet and author of “Tea,” “Lunch,” “Cocktails” and “Chronic.” The reading will begin at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 25 in the Boxwood Room of the Florence Elston Inn & Conference Center.

For more information, contact John Gregory Brown, director of Sweet Briar’s creative writing program at brown@sbc.edu or Ext. 6434.