First-time author and Concord resident Kayla Fisher spoke with the Monitor about her book, Rootbound Rescue, the writing process, and the garden center that inspired her main character, Helen the hellebore rose. Rootbound Rescue was released in 2019. You can find it at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, Innisfree Bookshop in Meredith and The Bookmonger in Waterville Valley.
Q: So, is this your first book?
A: It is, the first I’ve written. I wrote a few books when I was a kid, it was my hobby. I remember my mom gave me a book in fifth-grade about how to write a book. And I finally did it.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for ‘Rootbound Rescue’?
A: It was really a big change of life that inspired the book. I was actually going through a divorce and having to restart my life, and I was working with a counselor from Concord and she knew my background was in writing. I used to write for different software and hardware companies. I put that aside to raise my children, but (then) it was time to do something new (again). And thinking about that was very scary, even with a great career (background). I knew I needed to do something different.
My counselor said, why don’t you start writing for 15 minutes a day and start the story that’s in your mind. And I had this in my mind, a book about a root bound flower. If you’ve seen one, its roots are crawling out of the bottom and it’s screaming to get out and it has to make a change or it’s not going to live, so I used that and got my story.
I do a lot of gardening and built a lot of landscapes for my home and I went to a garden center in Henniker. I was talking to the owner (Dennis, who’s represented on the front cover of the book) and I was watching him take plants out of the containers that were root bound. It struck me that these plants were going to have a new life. And it sort of took off from there. I incorporated people I knew that inspired me, that this plant met along the way that encouraged her to grow, like the lizard, who is my counselor, the wise lizard.
What inspired you to write a children’s book specifically?
I felt it was going to be a children’s book because I had three young children myself and I was always reading to them and I was also substitute teaching for a third-grade class at St. John’s School, so I was very tuned into their books and genre and the stories of that age group. But the exercise of writing 15 minutes a day really made the story grow in my mind so that I wasn’t as focused on my troubles as I was on these characters that sort of started to talk to me. I was spending my days in my mind thinking, what was Helen’s adventure? Who was she meeting? How was she growing? The 15 minutes became something I looked forward to and I couldn’t wait to get it down on paper.
Do you think plants, in particular, hold an appeal for all ages?
I think plants are like the analysis for life. We’re always planting our roots or sowing our seeds or blooming where we are. You know, even the Bible is full of analogies of plants so I think it’s a very eternal thing. Millennials too, it’s taking them longer to start their families because of the cost of living and I think the plant has become this wonderful organism to nurture and embrace and watch grow. There’s something so fulfilling in watching something grow and being part of that growth. It’s very primal for everybody. (Having plants in the house) it just makes their lives so rich and they name them. It’s something that appeals to all of us and our way of connecting with nature. We get to come home to something.
Helen the hellebore rose is the main character. Why that particular flower?
The hellebore rose is not a very well-known plant. It’s one of the first you can put in your garden in New England. It sort of pops out of the snow, it’s big and lush and unexpected, and it’s a perennial. But I just think it’s so rugged and beautiful, it can be in a garden or in the wild so it’s a perfect match. She imagines this perfect life and ends up in the wild.
Do you think your background in gardening helped you tell this story?
I think so because I connect with plants and I honestly feel most on purpose when I’m gardening. I feel most connected to the world, life, when I’m putting (a plant) in the ground or fertilizing it. Something really strikes me.
What message do you hope folks take away after reading your book?
The message I would like for people to take away and that they tend to take is “here you are.” In the book, I repeat it several times. Whenever Helen is meeting someone else, they remind her, here you are. I’m trying to help people understand that you can’t wait for your perfect life. Wherever you are, here you are. I’m also a firm believer that God works through people. The people we meet who give us love, tough love or gentle love, people really help us grow and develop and we should pay attention to what they say. So bloom and grow and be beautiful wherever you land.
One thing that was a little different for me was the question of including God in the book because a lot of people don’t have a lot of faith but at the end of the day, it felt really important to me to acknowledge that God is the creator of all things beautiful and you can really find God in nature and the love that others share. I wanted to include God by name, to include people in that message.
Tell me about the process of getting the illustrations for your book. What was that experience like for you?
In my business, in my marketing, I had worked with Rebeka Chase and she was a graphic designer so she helped me do illustration and graphics for brochures and websites for clients and then one day I said, “What do you think of illustrating a children’s book?” She had actually already been working on one for another person. I told her about the book and she loved it.
There is a local author, Deborah Bruss and she’s from the Bradford area and I love the way her art comes across, and the Winnie the Pooh books and I looked at that lively, colorful, imaginative art and Rebeka honestly just nailed it right away. I sent her a picture of hellebore roses and she gave Helen these gorgeous eyelashes and dew drops. There honestly wasn’t a ton of revision, she was intuitive about the story. Today she’s a tattoo artist up in Portland, Maine. That was her dream. Lots of the tattoos she does are flowers.
Both you and the illustrator lived in Concord while working on this book. Was a local community connection important to you for this project?
I think the Concord thread is an important one because I live in Concord and have been in New Hampshire for 27 years. Rebeka lived in Concord. It was my dream to bring this book to the local audience. It’s a beautiful local story and when I took the books to Gibson’s they were so warm and welcoming. To me, the Concord thread really pulls through, to buy locally, thinking local with books or produce or furniture. I would say Concord as a community means a lot to this book.
What’s next for you? Any more books on the horizon?
Well I have 16-year-old twins and an 18-year-old on the way to SNHU in the fall and you know, I don’t really know what the future holds. I feel a responsibility to spend more time getting this out there, see what I can do. I sent a copy to the New Hampshire Writers’ Project for their contest, trying to get it around the state in local bookstores and garden centers. And we’ll see what happens next.
(If she does write another book, Fisher said it will most likely be inspired by her golden retriever. And it already has a title that her daughter came up with when she was young – Saggy Baggy Dog Jaw.)