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I did. Don Russell dug me out of plot holes, designed the Stella Maris and is the source of Emilio’s sense of humor. Mary Dewing taught me how to write; our fifteen-year correspondence was my apprenticeship. Mary also read every draft of this book and never failed to find a way to make each one better. Many friends helped me improve the manuscript; I thank Tomasz and Maria Rybak, Vivian Singer and Jennifer Tucker in particular for critical readings at critical times. Charles Nelson and Helene Fiore were crucial links to the world of publishing. Stanley Schmidt gave me encouragement and invaluable advice; Mary Fiore did the same and then opened doors that led to Jennifer McGlashan and to Miriam Goderich and my invincible agent, Jane Dystel. And I will always be grateful to David Rosenthal of Villard and Leona Nevler of Ivy-Fawcett for their support and faith in this book. And I fall to the feet and kiss the collective hem of the staff at Villard, who worked very hard for this book and graciously tolerated a new author’s anxiety. Ray Bucko, S.J., proofed the final draft of The Sparrow and is himself proof that there are real Jesuits as extravagantly funny and plainly good as the guys I made up. He is not responsible for any remaining misrepresentation of Jesuit life—I am the author and I outrank him. Thanks also to the ladies of the Noble Branch of the Cleveland Heights Library, who brought a ton of reference works within easy reach.

A final note to Don and our son, Daniel, who hardly ever complained about all the time and attention and love I lavished on fictional characters when my dearest real people were right downstairs: Thanks, guys. You’re the best.

M.D.R.

The

Sparrow

MARY DORIA RUSSELL

A Reader’s Guide

A Conversation with Mary Doria Russell

Q: Until The Sparrow you had only written serious scientific articles and technical manuals. How did you end up writing a speculative novel?

A: The idea came to me in the summer of 1992 as we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. There was a great deal of historical revisionism going on as we examined the mistakes made by Europeans when they first encountered foreign cultures in the Americas and elsewhere. It seemed unfair to me for people living at the end of the twentieth century to hold those explorers and missionaries to standards of sophistication and tolerance that we hardly manage even today. I wanted to show how very difficult first contact would be, even with the benefit of hindsight. That’s when I decided to write a story that put modern, sophisticated, resourceful, well-educated, and well-meaning people in the same position as those early explorers and missionaries—a position of radical ignorance. Unfortunately, there’s no place on Earth today where "first contact" is possible—you can find MTV, CNN, and McDonald’s everywhere you go. The only way to create a "first contact" story like this was to go off-planet.

Q: How did religion come to play such a central role in the story?

A: At the time I wrote this I was in the process of bringing religion back into my own life. I was brought up as a Cathotic but left the Church in 1965 when I was fifteen. After twenty years of contented atheism I became a mother. Suddenly I was in a position of having to transmit my culture to my son. I needed to decide what things to pass on and what things to weed out.’ I realized my ethics and morality were rooted in religion and began to reconsider those decisions I had made when I was young. I found myself drawn, to Judaism and eventually converted. When you convert to Judaism in a post-Holocaust world, you know two things for sure: one is that being Jewish can get you killed; the other is that God won’t rescue you. That was the theology I was dealing with at the time. Writing The Sparrow allowed me to look at the place of religion in the lives of many people and to weigh the risks and the beauties of religious belief from the comfort of my own home.

Q: What exactly are the risks and beauties of religion?

A: The beauty of