Gun Ball Hill
What happens to normal life in wartime?
Why did so many people in the Province of Maine, in 1774, take up active, intense resistance against British colonial rule? What if there’d been a foundry in Maine to make plenty of ammunition for the new American army?
Writing this novel was how I answered those questions.
I’d been living in rural/coastal Maine for five years when I realized I was looking at landscapes as settings, and soon I became fascinated with the early settlements, towns, farmers, land. Poking around archives for first-hand accounts, I came upon a diary mentioning how British soldiers kidnapped Maine sailors to pilot their ships to Canada: that turned into the opening paragraph of this novel about the early days of the American Revolution, from Maine down to Boston, and back.
I had never planned to write about “the past.” It just came to me in a way I couldn’t say no to.
Our past was someone else’s present–as it happened in my several novels about “before,” I didn’t feel I was trying to re-create something, or treat the narrative as historical. It’s a now. I feel I time-traveled, in a way. For two months, before I started writing, I immersed in first-hand accounts and newspapers of 18th century New England. I went to archives, sites, museums, libraries. It wasn’t about doing research, not just. It was about taking steps to get into the now of people a long time ago. I really still feel I traveled there.
Praise & Reviews
A careful, intelligent account of the personal motives behind historical events. Dramatic and instructive.
— Kirkus Reviews
“Cooney’s painstaking historical details add weight to the authenticity of her characters’ experiences. This novel truly brings history to life. The historical period is specific, but the human themes are universal.”
—ForeWord Magazine
“Ingenious and effective. The great thing about Gun Ball Hill is its empathy for the people of eighteenth-century Maine…A finely crafted narrative, a keen and sympathetic grasp of human nature, a convincing portrayal of place and time.”
—Downeast Magazine
“Cooney’s prose is lively and often surprising. Each of her characters is fleshed out, earthy, and full of quirks.”
—Historical Novels Review