Kate walbert biography

Interview

Kate Walbert shares about her initial inspiration for The Gardens of Kyoto and how it expanded from a short story to a novel.

What was your initial inspiration for The Gardens of Kyoto?
My father's cousin, Charles Webster, was killed on Iwo Jima during what they called a "mopping up" operation -- essentially after the battle had been won. Charles was the only son of his beloved Aunt Maude, and they lived just a mile or so down the road from the land my father's family farmed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My father had been quite close to his cousin, his own brothers off fighting in Europe, but he never spoke of him to us except to describe the day Aunt Maude received the telegram announcing Charles' death. It was a single image, really, not a story at all. He simply recalled how Aunt Maude came and sat with his own mother at the kitchen table. The image stuck with me -- two silent women at the table, one with sons in battle in Europe, the other with a son dead in the Pacific -- and I supposed I w

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