"Jodi Picoult is a more convincing argument for reincarnation that anything Shirley MacLaine has ever written: How could a 26-year-old first novelist have so much knowledge of marriage, of mothering a teenager, of separation and reconciliation, unless she's been down this road before in another guise? Picoult's imagination is formidable."

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

A conversation with Jodi Picoult about Second Glance

Your new book, Second Glance, delves into a very ugly chapter of American history and one that is probably not well known: Vermont's eugenics project of the 1920s and 30. Tell us about this project and how you learned about it.

JP: I have to admit, I learned about it by accident. I was intent on writing a ghost story, and my search for a fictional ghost led me to the Abenaki Indians in Vermont, who often protest development because they allege the land is an ancient burial ground. I started doing a little research on the Abenaki, and found an article from the Boston Globe that discussed the Vermont eugenics project and its effect on the Abenaki, as chronicled in the thesis of a woman named Nancy Gallagher. The more I read, the more stunned I was - in the 1920s and 30s in Burlington VT, a bunch of very progressive thinkers - doctors, lawyers, university professors - decided to preserve the state's rural charm by getting rid of the people they didn't think fit the bill… namely, people who weren't white, Protestant Yankees. They began by organizing a survey that mapped out extended 'degenerate' families they felt were a drain on the economy, due to repeat stints in poorhouses and mental institutions and prisons. Often, these were Abenaki Indians, French Canadians, and indigent folks. Eventually, a law was passed that supported voluntary sterilization of these individuals. Unfortunately, 'voluntary' was not always a matter of free will - in many cases, only two doctors had to sign off on a case to make it happen. Hundreds of Abenaki Indians and others were sterilized before funding dried up in the late 1930s - thanks to the Nazis, who credited American eugenics programs with laying the groundwork for their own plans for racial hygiene.

Well, reading this now, you probably feel a bit like I did - shocked that this happened only 70 years ago, shocked that it happened in America, and shocked that I didn't know about it before. But what really resonated in me was that it continues to happen: today's debate over mapping the human genome and cloning and gene replacement therapy addresses many of the same issues that were raised by scientists who supported eugenics years ago. I wanted to explore the idea that all sorts of things come back to haunt you - including history. And I wanted to show that the scientists of the 1920s and 30s were not evil Dr. Frankensteins, but rather progressive thinkers who truly believed they were doing the right thing at that moment. Yet at the same time I wanted to remind people that just because science is measurable and verifiable doesn't mean it's something we should automatically believe in.

When I was doing my research, I found many prickly people. From historians who worried about reopening this can of worms, to Abenaki who wanted to know why, as a white, I thought I had the right to tell this story - I wasn't always sure that I was doing the right thing. In the end, I have always believed that the job of a writer is to make people question their beliefs… and while I am not judging either the eugenicists or the Abenaki in this book, I think people deserve to know what happened… even if it's been coated in a fictional tale. I did not tell this story for the shock value. I told it because I had to.

How has the state of Vermont kept these eugenics projects a secret for so long? Were similar projects conducted in other states?

JP: I wouldn't say that Vermont was 'hiding' these projects. I think they just sort of fell by the wayside. Once funding dried up, there was no one championing eugenics before the state legislature. And after World War II, I imagine there was a certain discomfort in discussing what had gone on. At any rate, the genealogy charts of degenerate families and the paperwork were forgotten for years, until they were found by a man named Kevin Dann, a Vermont historian, who began to bring them to light. And although it's easy to dismiss this as a single blight in U.S. history, the sad truth is that more than half the states in America had, at some point, a sterilization law on the books.

What was the end result of the eugenics project? What happened to the prominent men who were conducting them? What happened to the families who were subjected to this?

JP:After Hitler came into power and the worst-case-scenario of eugenics moved into the spotlight, American eugenicists no longer commanded the same sort of attention they had before. Money disappeared, and projects died out. The prominent men and women who were involved went back to teaching, or grew famous in offshoot capacities (i.e. Margaret Sanger and her work with birth control). Eventually in the 1960s and 70s the ACLU was successful in repealing many of the sterilization laws still on state books, or changing the language so that the rights of the individual were protected more fully. Of late, several states have formally apologized to the victims of the eugenics legislature.

In Vermont, no one ever apologized. And because northern New England is one of those places where people don't tend to move around very much, the descendents of both the leaders of the eugenics project and the victims of the eugenics project still live in close proximity. Some families of the scientists feel shame as well as anger, since their relatives are often portrayed as evil megalomaniacs, when that was not the case. Some families of the Abenaki are resigned and bitter, and prefer not to open up a wound that still smarts. For these reasons, and many others, it has been easier for both groups to sweep what happened under the proverbial carpet, rather than to bring it out into the open.

Is the Abenaki Indian tribe, which features prominently in the story, a real Vermont tribe? What is their story?

JP: Oh, yeah, the Abenaki exist! Thousands of years ago, they covered the area from northwest Vermont to the southeast, as well as parts of western Massachusetts, bits of New Hampshire, and some of Quebec. Their name, Abenaki, means 'people of the dawn.' At one point they numbered 40,000; now there are about 2500 left.

The interesting thing about the Abenaki, historically, is that they didn't have a central authority. In war times, they'd leave their villages in small groups, and reband somewhere else to plan an attack. They got very proficient at going underground, as it were, in order to save themselves. And this is exactly what they did years later when they became targets of the eugenics project. Unlike white folks, some of them had migratory lifestyles and didn't even live in houses. Some of them chose not to be married in a Christian church. Their kids didn't always go to public school, and didn't dress 'normally.' They seemed to get thrown into jail a lot (a cyclical thing, since the reason they were arrested was because they weren't behaving the way a 'white man' should.) It was their difference as a cultural group - their 'otherness' - that led the eugenicists to believe they didn't fit the picture-postcard image of Vermont although, of course, the Abenaki had been there first.

When the eugenicists started rounding up some of these alleged degenerates, the Abenaki did what they had always done well - they split up and resurfaced in white clothes, doing white jobs, marrying whites so that they'd have white surnames… and being 'Indian' behind closed doors. They did what they had to to keep their entire cultural tradition from being wiped out by the eugenics project. However, this behavior cost them dearly. Today, they are not federally recognized as a tribe - which would net them funds to do things like buy back land they feel is a burial ground - because they do not have a continuous, unbroken line of native history. Their survival tactics during the eugenics project of the 20s and 30s, meant to keep their traditions alive, ironically has turned them into ghosts whose collective voice cannot be heard. Of all the things I learned about the eugenics project, this seemed to me the saddest.

I'm not Abenaki, and it's always a little daunting to write about a people when you're not a member of the group. I was at the University of Vermont doing an event while I was working on Second Glance, and an audience member asked me about my book-in-progress. When I finished talking about it, a woman stood up. She was Abenaki, and she was crying. 'Thank you,' she said, 'for telling this story.' I know not every Abenaki will feel that way about Second Glance, but I would hope that they find I have addressed this very painful chapter of their history with respect.

In addition to your intensive research into this period of Vermont history, you also conducted a lot of research in ghost-hunting or paranormal activity. Is ghost-hunting for real? Did you actually go on a ghost hunt?

JP: Like I said, the ghost story element came first. And to tell you the truth, I thought I might be able to fudge some of the ghost stuff, instead of being the research guru I tend to be. But then I realized I would indeed hear from every reader in the country who has seen a ghost to tell me I got it all wrong, and I decided I'd try to find someone who could, with authority, tell me about ghost hunting. I looked on the Internet, and found the Atlantic Paranormal Society, and left an email for each of the founders. I figured it might take a while to find someone who believed in ghosts, but no, I had responses from all of the guys within hours. Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson were more than happy to speak to me about paranormal investigation. They suggested that I come down to Rhode Island, where they are based, so that they could take me out on a ghost hunt.

This was particularly interesting. I mean, here I was telling my children at night there's no such thing as ghosts… but dressing in black and heading out to an abandoned New England mental institution in the dead of a January night with a bunch of paranormal investigators. The building was boarded up - it had been the pool room, and I could see the empty inground pool full of leaves and debris. In the background, too, I saw what looked like fireflies - something the paranormal investigators said were globules, or energy changing form. Afterward, we walked across a field where one of the buildings had burned to the ground, with patients inside. I was walking with a sensitive (someone who can 'feel' ghosts). It was very cold out, and very clear, and our breath was visible in front of us. Suddenly all the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Before I could even mention this to my walking buddy, he lifted a digital camera and held it up between us backward, over our shoulders. This is the picture he took:

Now, it's important to remember a) our breath was in front of us and b) there was no one and nothing behind us. This is just what showed up in the camera. A ghost hunter will tell you that sometimes, ghosts can affect film or digital photography because of heat or magnetic energy.

What do you see here?

From here we went on a real, live, ghost hunting call. A couple just over the border in Massachusetts had - they thought - a ghost. They wanted TAPS to come confirm it. What truly impressed me about this group was that they made fun of themselves plenty - Ghostbusters jokes abounded - and they didn't charge their 'clients.' No one, they believed, should be penalized for having a ghost; in my mind, it meant they weren't out to find something just for the money.

The house was small, and the bumps and thumps the inhabitants had heard were in the attic, a small third-floor room with a little door and a padlock. The TAPS guys gave me the only key, and then set a video camera up in the middle of the attic. Often this way they will catch something - more globules, noise, voices. The attic was swept absolutely clean, there was nothing paranormal to be seen. I was the last one out of the room, and I padlocked it behind me, then slipped the key into my pocket. As the others went downstairs to talk, I checked in the bedrooms of the couples' two children - both sleeping comfortably in cribs, in rooms that were completely clean and orderly. Downstairs, the couple described hearing calliope music at 2 AM, only to find a child's toy piano on the attic stairs. Coming home and finding all the faucets running or the cereal boxes knocked out of the cabinets, contents spilled. Rooms that got, suddenly, twenty degrees colder. After listening for a while, I said I was going back upstairs. Again, I ducked into the room of the first child. Now, lining the carpet on the edge of the crib, there were six pennies that had not been there before, all dated between 1968 and 1972. I picked them up and put them in my pocket and went into the next child's room to find the same thing - six pennies, all dated between those years. Finally I went to the attic, took out the key, unlocked the padlock, and flipped on the lights to find a handful of pennies beneath the video camera, all dated between 1968 and 1972. I can't tell you that there was a ghost there, but I can tell you that if you look in your wallet, you'll be hard pressed to find a single penny with that date on it, much less thirty.

So, we have to ask, do you believe in ghosts now?

JP: I believe there is a lot in this world we don't understand. And that seeing ghosts is often an all or nothing thing - people don't believe until they see one, and then - bam! - they're convinced. Did I see Casper? Nope. But I did see things I could not reasonably explain, and that leads me to believe that ghosts are certainly possible. One of the most enjoyable parts of writing Second Glance was exploring the nature of belief. We're predisposed to think that if there isn't scientific proof, something doesn't exist… but as I pointed out earlier, science isn't always right… and proof can't always be measured in a beaker or a lab test. People say you can't believe in a ghost, because you can't see it or touch it or capture it. By that criteria, though, those people have to say that love doesn't exist, either… and yet most of us have experienced that in some form or another.

SECOND GLANCE is a deft example of mixing fact with fiction and the present with the past. How did you so smoothly combine these elements in this novel?

JP: When you write something with any sort of historical relevance there is such an awesome responsibility attached to it, a driving need to get it one hundred percent accurate. But in this case, especially, the theme of history repeating itself made diving into the past absolutely necessary. I had a very hard time deciding whether or not to use the names of some of the real players in the eugenics project - like Harry Perkins, for example. He exists in the book, but as a character who is talked about and never met. The main cast is all imaginary, so that their issues and tangles and choices come from my imagination.

The fluidity between the past and the present was really based in the characters of Lia, and Meredith. Lia's link is obvious, but Meredith's ties are more intellectual. As a preimplantation genetic diagnostician, she is the modern day incarnation of yesterday's eugenicist: a woman who uses science to do good, by employing techniques that - in the wrong hands - could be devastating. While I was working on Second Glance I had a lot of arguments with a friend of mine, a medical researcher who does not support stem cell research. I do. The problem isn't the science, in my opinion; it's in who decides what's 'normal' or 'optimal' or 'valuable.' It was not the eugenicist's desire to make the world a better place that was faulty - it was the way they chose to define 'better.'

Of all my books, this was the most technically difficult to write. It felt like I was performing brain surgery - setting up all these open plugs in the first part so that I could join them to their resolutions in the last part. There are so many twists and turns in Second Glance, and that was tough to pull off, because when you write about history there's a sense of inherent closure and expectation. You read the book, and you think you know what's coming… but in fact, you don't.