Launch: Frederic Fahey’s The Scoundrel’s Son
INTERVIEW BY MALLY BECKER
Frederic Fahey is a writer of historical fiction whose first novel, The Scoundrel’s Son, has just been published by Goose River Press. He is also a medical physicist, practicing most recently at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as a Professor of Radiology Emeritus at Harvard Medical School. Fred has spent most of his life in and around Boston, but now lives with his wife on Peaks Island, Maine.
How would you describe this book and its themes in a couple of sentences?
The Scoundrel’s Son is a combination of a Tudor-era fiction and a pastiche of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Caught in the terrible winds of history, Tom Canty, the pauper from Twain’s classic The Prince and the Pauper, now a teen, knows only a boy with his wily skills can aid his best friend, King Edward VI, and rescue his first love, Lady Jane Grey.
What inspired you to continue the story of Tom Canty, Mark Twain’s beloved pauper in The Prince and the Pauper?
I remember watching the Errol Flynn version of The Prince and the Pauper on TV as a child and being enthralled. Immediately, I looked up Edward VI in our encyclopedia and saw that he was a real prince who became king. I asked myself, “What happened next?” Twain said Tom lived to be an old man, and my encyclopedia said that Edward did not. So, I pondered and, more recently, I wrote. Now I know what happened next.
How did you find a balance between describing the complicated history of the mid-1500s and shaping your tale’s fictional story and relationships?
I knew Twain’s tale well and did some research on Edward and Lady Jane, so I had a scaffold of the main characters and what happened when. On my first draft, I concentrated on establishing the plot line and getting to the end. However, the early drafts tended to be segmented into historical expositions separated from the story. So, I strove to make the two more seamless where the reader couldn’t tell where the story ended and history began. I hope I was able to achieve that to some extent.
What was the toughest part of bringing actual historical characters to life?
I had a sense, early on, of how I wanted to portray Edward and Jane, so that wasn’t too difficult. It was harder to give a sense of the other historical figures Tom encounters such as Edward and Thomas Seymour, John Dudley and Lady Mary Tudor. I went to some records of the time such as Edward’s chronicle and a few historical reports and biographies to get a sense of who these folks were and how they were perceived. We observe these characters through Tom’s eyes in brief scenes. Still, I wanted the reader to know them as Tom knew them. Particularly, I wanted to emphasize how Tom might perceive these characters differently from either Edward or Jane. That wasn’t easy!
Who is your favorite secondary character and why?
My two favorite secondary characters are Richard, Edward’s head groom, and Aly Brown, the girl who’s Tom’s best friend from his parish of Offal Court. Richard surprised me by taking on a more essential role in the story as the tides turned. Besides her innate intelligence, Aly is different from Jane in practically every way possible. Either despite this or because of it, she becomes Tom’s closest confidant in the second half of the tale.
Tom is apprenticed to a metal worker and helps him develop the first muskets. Why did you choose to weave “gun technology” into your story?
I hoped the introduction of guns would smooth the storyline in two ways. It allowed Tom to showcase a skill he had, i.e., woodworking, that his master, Robert, didn’t possess. Also, I was able to connect Tom with Miles Hendon, the friendly soldier from Twain’s tale, in a more meaningful way. But then I was confronted with the notion of Chekhov’s gun. Put simply, if you introduce a gun in Act I, someone needs to be shot by Act III.
You describe actual locations Tom visits in great detail. How did you nail down all those details?
Again, my goal in the first draft was to lay out the plot line and get to the end. In subsequent revisions, I added some “color” with respect to setting and wardrobe. I limited the settings to a few main ones: Whitehall Palace, the Strand, the Tower of London, Windsor Castle and Offal Court, a fictional “disreputable” parish. I was able to locate 16th-century renderings of Whitehall, Windsor Castle, and maps of both London and the Tower grounds. In 2022, my wife and I visited London and Windsor to witness the locations firsthand. I sat where Tom and Jane’s last meeting occurred in the Tower’s chapel. Regarding wardrobe, the fact that the tale is told from the memory of a boy helped. One reader told me that Tom’s description of Jane’s dress “Today her dress was a light blue that suited the season and complimented her reddish-brown eyes,” was perfect for an 11-year-old boy.
You’ve had a long career as a medical physicist and professor at Harvard Medical School. Did any element(s) of your prior career make it easier or harder for you to write your novel?
In my 40 years as a biomedical researcher and educator, I learned how to perform research from a variety of sources and to effectively explain complicated situations in a concise manner. I will note that The Scoundrel’s Son contains essentially no physics or medicine.
What advice would you give someone interested in writing historical fiction?
Do your research and do it well but keep it in balance with the creative aspects of the work. Readers of historical fiction don’t just want the facts. They want to feel that they’ve been there in time and place. Whether your characters are fictional or true historical figures, readers want to have a sense of them, who they were, and why they acted as they did. In my case, I wanted Tom, who was fictional, to provide unique, heart-felt insights regarding the historical figures, King Edward and Lady Jane.
What is the last great book you read?
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips.
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