In two decades of writing Katherine Paterson has created heroines who span centuries and continents. There's the daughter of a samurai in Of Nightingales That Weep, (HarperCollins,$13.95, $3.50); an embitter foster child in The Great Gilly Hopkins, (HarperCollins, $3.50,$12.95) and a young woman trapped in the machinery of the Industrial Revolution in Lyddie (Lodestar, $14.95;Puffin, $3.99). Paterson has won the Newberry twice with portrayals of uncommon young women. Leslie from Bridge to Teribithia (HarperCollins, $12.95, $2.95) is an imaginative young girl who takes on rural Southern narrowness. Louise, the heroine of Jacob Have I Loved (HarperCollins, $12.95, $2.95) is a Chesapeake twin who feels less loved than her sister. Paterson's women aren't always physically beautiful, or perfect, but young adult readers trust her because she writes stories of real women who won't be simplified. Even in fairy tales.

In her book The Gates of Excellence: On Reading and Writing Books for Children (Dutton,$10.00) Paterson reveals her writing process as the "sweat theory of writing" marked by "internal storms". She also writes of her admiration of fantasy, but an inability to create it. "If a great tale of fantasy came to me," she writes, "I'd rush to write it down."

These words prove prophetic in her newest book, The King's Equal (Ages 6-10; HarperCollins, $17.00). Her editor had been asking her to do a story that Vladimir Vagin could illustrate, but Paterson thought, "He needs a fairy tale and I don't write fairy tales and I'm not going to write him something that's not a fairy tale because that's what this man does best." She let the idea drop, but began reading lots of fairy tales. In retrospect Paterson sees these "went into her unconscious process of writing."

Six months later, in the middle of a shower, The King's Equal came with all the magic a fairy tale should. "I threw on my bathrobe, rushed downstairs, terrified that someone would walk in and it would be gone forever. Essentially the story you read is the story that came to me in the shower. It proves how much of writing goes on underground. You don't have any notion of what's happening and it seems to come as a miracle." Since then she's taken many showers, but the creation of The King's Equal is "the only time that I have walked into a shower without an idea in my head, except how dirty my house is, and walked out with an entire story."

The King's Equal begins with Raphael, a greedy, egotistical prince whose inheritance rests on finding a woman whose beauty, intelligence and wealth match his own. Enter Rosamund, a genuine woman who is greater than his equal. Turning the tale upside down, it is Raphael who must prove his equality through humility, honesty, and hard work.

Paterson jokes about the speedy arrival of her latest book. "Of course I wrote The King's Equal quickly, it's a fairy tale. It's only a fill in the blanks. You've got once upon a time, happily ever after and in between everything happens in threes. All you do is take the form and subvert it."

And subvert the form she does, infusing her tale with feeling that dimensionalizes the fairy tale genre. The turning point of the story comes when Raphael tests Rosamund's knowledge. She tells him she knows one thing no one else does. "'I know,' said Rosamund quietly, so that only he could hear, 'I know that you are very lonely.'" In that one moment Rosamund brings Raphael to his point of vulnerability with intuitive wisdom and compassion. And in that one moment he falls hopelessly in love, sees a way of life he'd never imagined, and shifts his values forever.

Rosamund, like many of Paterson's heroines, shares qualities she values in her dearest female friends. "I've had strong friendships with women since I was a child. Even in my crazy growing up years, when I moved I almost always left behind someone I could not bear to live without. When you have that kind of friendship, it makes you know that you're a person of worth. I always knew I was worth something because I had wonderful friends who knew all my faults and failings and they still cared about me."

"In my closest friends I see strength and wonderful humor. My close friends are intelligent people and imaginative. And there's caring strength that goes through all they are and all they do."

And what of Paterson in Rosamund? "Rosamund describes herself as not so beautiful and I understand all of that. She's a nice kid and there's some of that in me, too. She is beautiful because of the magic of the wolf and because she loves someone."

Though she is mindful of fairy tale conventions, Paterson herself confesses, "one of the scary things about writing is that you're going to reveal yourself whether you want to or not. It's not going to be a straight fairy tale because I wrote it. It's going to come out betraying my thoughts and feelings."

Paterson isn't exclusive in her loving. "I've always liked men. I have a very nice husband, two lovely sons and a very nice son-in-law. I like women. I like human beings. I didn't set out to write a feminist fairy tale, that's just the way the story came."

Paterson doesn't set out to write strong female characters or nurturing males. Her characters in Bridge to Teribithia reversed typical roles, but this wasn't planned. "They were just real people to me and that's the way it came out. You hope your characters will be so real that they'll haunt people. You've read books when you think you know that person and then you realize that person is in a book, but the person is so real that it has a life outside the book."

Paterson has once again given us models of humanity that will live happily ever after.

©Susie Wilde 1998