TERRI LEWIS, Author of Behold the Bird in Flight • Interviews

Interview by Andrea Caswell
TERRI LEWIS, AUTHOR OF BEHOLD THE BIRD IN FLIGHT: A NOVEL OF AN ABDUCTED QUEEN (She Writes Press)

In Behold the Bird in Flight, Terri Lewis brings to life the unusual story of Isabelle d’Angoulême, a young Frenchwoman abducted by King John of England in 1200. Jill McCorkle has called Lewis’ debut novel “enchanting” and “brave.” In this interview with Senior Fiction Editor Andrea Caswell, Lewis shares the inspiration to follow her imagination, the authors who have influenced her work, and craft advice for writing compelling historical fiction.

“Build a dream world you can enter to walk around with your characters and write about their lives from the inside.”

Andrea Caswell: What inspired you to undertake this ambitious project? Was it one of those ideas that wouldn’t let you go?

Terri Lewis: Yes, the idea wouldn’t let me go! My inspiration began with two sentences I read in a tourist book from Windsor Castle decades ago. The book mentioned an English queen I’d never heard of. I reread those sentences almost daily until I felt compelled to bring her to life.

Andrea: The title, Behold the Bird in Flight, is so fitting for the story of young Isabelle, who begins the book as a girl and, as she matures and survives using her own wits and strength, becomes a queen and ultimately mother to Henry III. At what point in the process did you decide on this evocative title? I love how birds appear on the cover and throughout the novel.

Terri: The title came rather late. I’d written about Isabelle training to manage a castle household and imagined an early task of feeding the chickens. Her favorite, Poulette, always flapped up to greet her. When she was older, she longed to fly like a hawk to see the wider world. And birds weren’t just in the sky; men carried them for hunting and as status symbols. “Behold” joined the birds for its religious connotation because Christianity was foundational to medieval lives. And—voilà—a title.

Andrea: As a child, Isabelle leaves her home in Angoulême, France, to live in the Lusignan household, about fifty miles north. Passing through countryside she’s never seen before, she asks, “Was this the world?” What helped you imagine that experience so faithfully through Isabelle’s eyes?

Terri: When I was young, my family took long car trips. New scenery, new places raised questions in my mind, and those trip memories slid into the story. Also, medieval times were dangerous; I imagined Isabelle confined within shouting distance of the castle, her curiosity about the world growing, making her restless. When a death sent her away from home, I could imagine that she would have almost felt relief.

Andrea: You achieve a wonderful balance of historical rigor and narrative depth to make Isabelle’s story both propulsive and accessible. What writing techniques helped you keep the story feeling true-to-life, without the novel reading like a history lesson? I couldn’t put it down!

Terri: Thank you for that compliment. It’s what every writer aims for. I used two techniques as guideposts. First, tell the story from the inside. Very seldom did my narrator describe events; it was always the character looking out into the world. I took a workshop on Free Indirect Discourse while writing the book, and that method allowed me to remove italicized internal thoughts, which I’d always found disruptive.

Second, I sought to adjust the prose to feel medieval while still working for the modern ear: contractions in narration, but not in dialogue; no archaic words like doth, etc. At the sentence level, I was aware my characters would’ve spoken some version of English, French, or Latin, so I researched interesting, slightly unusual words with appropriate etymology. For example, deemed instead of considered, hunkered instead of crouched, or naught instead of nothing. Merriam-Webster’s word history was key here.

Andrea: The natural world, whether in France or England, figures prominently in the book, and that outer world helps us understand Isabelle’s inner, emotional world. Could you speak more to character development strategies you used, whether for the protagonist or other characters such as Hugh and King John?

Terri: To Isabelle, the natural world means freedom and beauty. Because the story starts when she’s only eleven—but smart and self-aware—every time she got into trouble, she’d learn and grow. That growth came magically, almost without my direction. On the other hand, John never changed, living only inside his travails. Happily, his voice came to me right away, growling under his breath, gloating when he had advantage. Unlike many past historians, I felt sympathy for him. True, he was paranoid and selfish, but the kingdom he inherited was a mess. Hugh belonged to a renowned family but was seldom mentioned. I envisioned him as a lusty lad, afraid of his father, good-looking, and weak, but because Isabelle had to love him, I had to find ways to make him kind.

Andrea: When writing historical fiction, the work can sometimes bog down during the research phase. Where or how did you start that process?

Terri: I love research, but the medieval material is frustrating—incomplete, difficult to find, and like all histories, bent by personalities. Also, I began my research over ten years ago, when many excellent online sites like the Magna Carta Project didn’t exist. Because I lived in DC, I registered as a researcher at the Library of Congress and read what little they had. I really wanted to go to England and read the chronicles and pipe rolls, but that wasn’t possible.

PULL QUOTE: “Historical characters are like us—their milieu may seem strange, but their feelings and struggles are human.”

Andrea: What do you hope readers will take away from this story?

Terri: To recognize what history books miss. Isabelle was erased because historians considered her a mere token in exchange for land and power. That erasure has occurred time and again, not only to women, but to any people deemed “other.” Also, historical characters are like us—their milieu may seem strange, but their feelings and struggles are human. I hope that developing empathy for them can translate into empathy for others in our daily lives.

Andrea: Have you always been a reader of historical fiction? What are some of your favorite books or authors in the genre?

Terri: My mother read every book she could find about queens, especially those of Henry VIII, and she inspired me. I love historical fiction, but I also read history to check a novel’s accuracy. I’m embarrassed to say the first historical novel I loved was Forever Amber. How I wept over her fate! Favorite authors include Mary Renault, Alison Weir, and especially Geraldine Brooks. More recently I’ve loved Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, and Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships.

Andrea: For writers who might be considering a historical fiction project, what advice would you offer as encouragement?

Terri: Research everything, but keep the information in your pocket to use sparingly. Find out about dances, transportation, food, societal expectations, mores, and art. Read letters, government notices, song lyrics, maps, and other primary sources. Make a timeline of headline events, of battles, political moments to seed into the story. Build a dream world you can enter to walk around with your characters and write about their lives from the inside. It’s so much fun!

Terri Lewis is the author of Behold the Bird in Flight: A Novel of an Abducted Queen (She Writes Press, 2025). Lewis has studied in workshops with Jill McCorkle, Laura van den Berg, and Rebecca Makkai, and has published in Hippocampus, Denver Quarterly, and Chicago Quarterly Review, among others. She was a finalist for the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (Nonfiction) at The Missouri Review, and shortlisted for LitMag‘s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction. Her reviews for The Washington Independent Review of Books have been excerpted in LitHub. In 2025, she won the Miami University Press Novella Award. She lives with her husband and two lively dogs in Denver, Colorado. Behold the Bird in Flight is available on bookshop.org and from other fine booksellers.

Andrea Caswell holds an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s Senior Fiction Editor at Cleaver Magazine and is on the faculty of the Cleaver Workshops. She runs Cleaver’s Short Story Clinic, offering revision feedback on fiction up to 5000 words. Andrea’s work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, The Coachella Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Atticus Review, Columbia Journal, and others. She’s an alum of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more information, please visit www.andreacaswell.com.