Heather Bouwman
English Professor Heather Bouwman speaks at St. Thomas about one of her books. (Brandon Woller '17/University of St. Thomas)

The New York Times Says Professor Bouwman’s Novel ‘Truly Shines’

The coming-of-age novel Scattergood by Dr. Heather Bouwman, an English professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, received several advance, rave reviews.

Scattergood. book cover by H.M. Bouwman

Published by Holiday House on Jan. 21, the historical novel is told from the first-person point of view of 12-year-old Peggy Mott, a Methodist in rural West Branch, Iowa, in 1941, who is grappling with her best friend Delia’s leukemia diagnosis, her first crush (on 16-year-old German Jewish refugee Gunther) and her friendship with a Jewish professor, who is hoping he can locate his wife and children who went missing during the war with Hitler.

The New York Times wrote that “Scattergood truly shines, because on some level it investigates not only whether we can survive great loss, but also how.” The review continued: “On its surface, Scattergood is both a cancer novel and a Holocaust narrative, but rather than weigh each other down, these threads create a sort of shared logic – because while cancer and the Holocaust signal looming devastation, Peggy and the professor continue to search, if not for a happy ending then for meaning and comfort within their pain. There’s a symmetry to that.”

Bouwman, who scheduled launch events at Wild Rumpus and Red Balloon, as well as other events throughout Minnesota, Michigan, and Iowa, was recognized by Kirkus Reviews when it wrote, in part, that “readers will become deeply invested in the fully developed characters – each flawed and human but doing their best, Peggy included. The power of stories to connect people with others, bear witness, and create joy is an interwoven theme running throughout the text.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune interviewed Bouwman and wrote that “the University of St. Thomas creative writing professor, who publishes middle-grade books under the name H.M. Bouwman, has worked on and abandoned the book multiple times.”  She first started drafting the book when she was pregnant with her now-21-year-old child.

From the Minnesota Star Tribune:

On why she wrote Scattergood:

I was really grabbed by the story of what happened at Scattergood during World War II. But another reason was my own cousin died. We were the same age. She was older than Delia was when she died but it was very sudden. She was murdered. It was a shooting and – it’s hard to talk about. It was something I wanted to write about but didn’t want to write about. Part of the reason I started with Peggy as I did was that I had been so angry at how there was no chance to say goodbye to my cousin, for any of us. I thought, “What if the cousin in the book has a much longer period of time? What if she had a chance to say goodbye?”

On the value of sad books for young people:

I think it’s valuable for them to know it’s not just them, that they aren’t totally unique in experiencing whatever sadness they’ve been through, that there are people they can turn to, even if they’re just characters in fictional books. If you’re a kid who hasn’t experienced that kind of loss yet, I think it’s also useful. You know people who have. It helps you become more empathetic to the people around you because sadness, we are all going to experience it.