Alyson Richman, who grew up in St. James, returned to the “healing landscape” of her Long Island childhood after she and her husband experienced the 9/11 attacks from an apartment overlooking the World Trade Center. In her 10th novel, “The Time Keepers” (Union Square & Co., $18.99), her “most Long Island-based one to date,” she finds healing and hope for a group of characters affected by the Vietnam War, residents of the fictional town of Bellegrove — a stand-in for Bay Shore — in 1979.
In a recent Zoom interview, she discussed the real-life inspirations for “The Time Keepers,” which comes out Oct. 15. She’ll also talk about the book at two Long Island venues — Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. at The Next Chapter in Huntington and Oct. 20 at 2 p.m. at A Book Place in Riverhead.
Tell us about the research you did for this novel.
The stories that are woven into “The Time Keepers” came to me over a period of years, stored in the rolodex of my imagination. The original seed was planted by a parent at my daughter’s ballet school. During her childhood in the 1970s, the Suffolk County diocese sponsored several South Vietnamese families, and a group of young mothers pitched in to help. My friend said that observing the refugee children inspired her to have a sense of gratitude for her life, but her older sister, who was a teenager at the time, looked at the experience differently.
This must be where you got the character of Katie, who’s so snarky about her mother’s involvement with the refugees.
Yes, that’s it! A few years later, I had the chance to interview a Long Island teacher who entrusted me with a very dramatic and tragic story about her escape from Vietnam with her family. Everything that you read in “The Time Keepers” about Bao and Anh’s escape, including the story of the scar on Bao’s hand, comes from her experience. As these stories lingered in my heart and in my mind, I began to imagine a novel that would be told from multiple perspectives.
Was the character of Jack, the…
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