Eileen Brill's debut novel inspired by 'A Letter in the Wall'

Author, painter, and sign language interpreter, Eileen Brill, joins us to discuss her debut novel, A Letter in the Wall. The idea for the novel came in 2007, when her and her family moved into her current home and an electrician stumbled upon a letter he found within the wall. The letter was addressed to a person in New Jersey and written by someone who lived in the home. After some research, Brill discovered that the letter writer was a young Quaker woman named Joan Dumann, who lived in the house in the 1920’s with her family. “Because it was inspired by a letter that I found in my house, and it was based on a person that actually lived in my house, I felt a connection that way…I didn’t know her. She died a long time ago and I had to imagine who I wanted her to be and because of that I kind of created this personality profile, psychological profile, who my protagonist was and that sort of became the vehicle driving the plot and all the other characters…I kind of felt like I knew her so well and knew her motivations and her fears and what drove her and so the process of writing her just felt natural.”

A Letter in the Wall initially began as a screenplay, but later turned into a biography. However, while Brill did find some information on Joan and her family, she wasn’t able to gather enough details to create the biography. She then changed the book into a novel, with Joan as a woman who wanted more in life than just marriage and motherhood. “This was someone who was trying to, along the way, challenge the status quo and push back a bit and was not getting the support she wanted… I attempted to make her multi-layered and and complex because I wanted her life and her personality and her decisions to be open to interpretation… She, sort of, in the end, I do think she changed and evolved…So I wanted to create a character that, she kind of pushed your buttons, and you had to, if not like her, possibly empathize or understand her, if you know where she’s coming from and what some of her struggles were.”