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The Answer is Both Personal and Exciting!
When Eagles Roost follows newlyweds Miranda and Cornelius on an Alaskan honeymoon where breathtaking landscapes, wildlife, and the lives of other couples deepen their understanding of marriage, home, and love. What inspired the setup of your story?
The answer is both personal and exciting! First, I’d long been fascinated by Alaska and I’d assembled a thick file of articles, which I’d read for research. Second, I was thrilled when one day I received a call inviting me to teach at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Summer Fine Arts Camp, which was a fantastic experience. Meanwhile, my husband planned an extensive driving trip for us that began the day after my work concluded. We felt it was both an adventure and a second honeymoon, and I always knew I wanted to write about it.
Alaska feels almost like a character in the book. What research or personal experiences helped you capture its landscapes, wildlife, communities, and history?
As we traveled, I learned so much! Though I’d done a lot of research before our travels, there’s nothing like experiencing a place in person. I worked alongside and also interviewed many long-time Alaskans. It’s a unique place that requires residents to be resourceful and resilient. The weather as well as the length of summer days and shortness of winter ones is a challenge. Having native Yupik students was a joy and allowed me to connect with a local tribe when many members came to see the performance of a play I wrote with my students.
How did you decide how much factual material about subjects such as glaciers, whales, Indigenous traditions, and environmental history to weave into the romantic storyline?
Pace in a story is important, so my rule was not to slow down the action with too much description or research. So, for example, I do describe Kachemak Bay in some detail, but then we see my character Miranda get in trouble trapped under her kayak, so the reader is caught up in action. The narrative switches from passive to active.
Why was it important to show several different stages of love at once, from Miranda and Cornelius’s new marriage to Francine and Will’s commitment and Cedric and Ezme’s fifty years together?
Stories have arcs. In each novel there will be character arcs, that is, beginnings, middles, a climax and an ending for each main character. But there is also the overall arc of the story itself. In this novella, I wanted to present a tapestry that includes three different couples, each at a different stage of life. Collectively, they provide windows into both nascent and mature relationships.
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When Eagles Roost
Mara Purl’s When Eagles Roost is a romantic adventure wrapped around an Alaskan journey, with newlyweds Miranda Jones and Cornelius Smith discovering what it means to begin a marriage while both remain fully engaged in the work and interests that define them. Their honeymoon starts with professional commitments at the University of Alaska, then opens into a road trip through Denali, Valdez, Homer, and Sadie Cove before ending aboard an Alaskan cruise. Along the way, Purl folds in several familiar Milford-Haven characters, including Francine and Will, whose relationship takes a major step forward, and Cedric and Ezme Worthington, whose fiftieth-anniversary cruise becomes its own affectionate story. The result feels less like a single straight-line adventure and more like traveling alongside several couples who are each figuring out how love changes over time.
Alaska is really the book’s other leading character. Purl pays close attention to weather, wildlife, glaciers, museums, ferries, roads, small towns, and the strange summer experience of almost endless daylight. Miranda’s curiosity gives the story an especially observant quality because she sees the landscape both as a wildlife artist and as an environmental advocate. The book regularly pauses to explore subjects such as Indigenous traditions, subsistence whaling, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Exxon Valdez spill, glaciers, wolves, whales, and bald-eagle behavior. These passages give the novella a leisurely, travel-rich rhythm, as though Purl wants readers to come home with a fuller sense of Alaska. Some of the most memorable moments come when that factual attention turns almost mystical, particularly when Miranda feels a connection with an orca or watches the eagles as living creatures with their own family drama.
The emotional center is the parallel between the eagles and Miranda and Cornelius. The book periodically shifts into the lives of a mating eagle pair, following nest building, egg laying, hatching, feeding, and the awkward growth of the eaglets. By the time Miranda and Cornelius arrive at Sadie Cove and discover an eagle nest almost outside their window, the connection between human partnership and avian partnership has been quietly building for much of the story. When an eaglet falls from the nest, Miranda’s instinct is to help, but the rescue becomes a lesson in restraint, expertise, and respect for wildlife. She calls her biologist friend Joy Aderyn, and the young eagle is ultimately placed safely on a lower branch where its parents resume feeding it. That sequence brings together several of the book’s strongest interests at once: compassion for animals, responsible environmentalism, Miranda’s adventurous nature, and Cornelius’s steady support of the woman he’s married.
I’d recommend When Eagles Roost most enthusiastically to readers who enjoy romance with a strong sense of place, wildlife and nature writing, travel adventures, and stories about established relationships. Milford-Haven readers will have the added pleasure of seeing continuing characters cross paths in unexpectedly satisfying ways, especially during the cruise, where Francine and Will marry, Cedric and Ezme celebrate fifty years together, and Miranda and Cornelius settle more fully into their new life as husband and wife. New readers can still follow the central adventure because Purl provides enough background to make the relationships clear. By the final pages, when Miranda thinks about the fact that eagles mate for life and hopes for the same lasting bond with Cornelius, the title has gathered a meaning larger than the birds themselves. Roosting becomes an image of choosing a mate, making a home, venturing into the wider world, and knowing where you belong when it’s time to return.
Pages: 230 | ASIN: B0GFY26QJV
