Bainbridge writer breaks new ground in 'Home Before Dark'

There must be something in the water over on Bainbridge Island.

This little gem in the middle of Puget Sound is home to many successful writers of varying levels of fame — including David Guterson and Kristin Hannah — and islander Susan Wiggs is preparing to notch up her career with her first hardback: "Home Before Dark" (Mira Books, $24.95).

Wiggs, who jokes that she "was a writer since before I could write," traces her penchant for setting down stories to the days when she scribbled on collection envelopes at church — many of them faithfully saved by her mother and greatest fan. (You can check out Mom's thoughts on Wiggs' Web site, www.susanwiggs.com.)

Wiggs is the author of some 20 books, including historical and contemporary romances, but "Home Before Dark" breaks new ground for her in terms of complexity and characterization. It also makes liberal use of Wiggs' own past, particularly in the relationship of the two sisters — Jess and Luz — whose complicated lives are the heart of the story.

Like Jess in the novel, Wiggs stole her sister's boyfriend. She also is happily married to the boyfriend, Jay Wiggs, 24 years later.

"I was the sophomore college student, she was the senior in high school," Susan Wiggs remembers, "and she introduced me to her new boyfriend, who soon became my new boyfriend."

So how did this turn of events affect the sisters?

"She was like, 'Well, that's annoying,' but she wasn't seriously upset," Wiggs laughs.

It must have been Wiggs' insider knowledge of sisterhood that made "Home Before Dark" — a saga of sisters who share some surprising secrets — flow from her pen. (And it really is a pen, too; Wiggs carefully fills up manuscript books by hand, typing the manuscripts afterward as part of her editing process.)

"This book just poured from my heart," says Wiggs, an unpretentious and wryly funny woman with a teenage daughter (Elizabeth) who inherited her thick, wavy hair.

'Amish laptops'

"It wasn't like pulling teeth or passing a kidney stone, some of the horrible metaphors I keep hearing about producing books. This book took about six months, riding back and forth on the Bainbridge ferry with my notebooks. 'Amish laptops,' I call them."

The Bainbridge ferry was one of the allurements that drew Wiggs and her husband to the Northwest. In 1994, the couple visited Bainbridge on the recommendation of Wiggs' father-in-law, who had been stationed here during World War II.

"We came up during one spring break from Houston," remembers the author.

"We must have picked the only sunny March in history. There are no words to describe that first ferry ride. Well, you know how beautiful it is, especially when the sun shines. We were hooked."

Now the family lives on a tree farm stocked with noble firs, and Wiggs writes her books while ideas for the next ones circle around overhead — "Just like air traffic control," as she puts it. (Next in line: what Wiggs calls "the fascinating subculture of the Navy wife.") She has hopped among a few publishing houses, and was ready to send out two previous hardbacks when her editor left. ("I was orphaned," she claims, "because your only real advocate at a publishing house is your editor.") The newest book is published this month by Mira.

Back to Houston

A Harvard graduate and a former fifth-grade teacher who also plays the cello, Wiggs grew up in a peripatetic family, spending her junior-high and high-school years in Brussels and Paris: "There were three of us, each two years apart, and all whining to go back to the States."

Eventually they did, and Wiggs spent a lot of time in Houston. Not surprisingly, her book tour is taking her back to the Houston area, where Wiggs claims she will become "the media darling of Old Dime Box, Texas." In between books and tours, she grows tomatoes and does Fair Isle knitting.

"Really, I am such a gawk when I come into the big city," she says, looking out the window of a Pike Place Market restaurant.

"Writers have to be careful to have a life outside of their books, though. It's very liberating to leave our little rain forest and get out for a while."

Maybe it's the schoolteacher in her, but Wiggs gets an early start on each day — 6:30 a.m. — and she does "most of the hard writing" before 9 a.m. Then it's off to exercise class, then the hot tub and a phone chat with Mom.

Most of her creative work is done before noon, and the afternoon is given over to e-mail, correspondence and business arrangements. And browsing truly bizarre Web sites, such as www.extremeironing.com (you have to see this one to believe it).

Wiggs will visit her mother's bridge club, where everyone present had better buy her book. And there's the fan mail. She loves getting letters. One of them arrived recently from her third-grade teacher.

"That's the woman who taught me cursive," she exclaims.

"I'd recognize her handwriting anywhere!"

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com