Behind The Book With Danielle Trussoni 

Last year I did a Q&A with New York Times Bestselling Author Danielle Trussoni which you can read by clicking on this link here https://booknotions.com/qa-with-danielle-trussoni/ . A year later we are doing a Behind The Book Q&A discussing Danielle’s new novel The Puzzle Box, coming out on October 8^th! If you haven’t read a copy on Netgalley I promise you, you are in for a treat! 

Q: Danielle, would you give a brief description of The Puzzle Box & talk about where the idea for that novel came from? 

A:  The Puzzle Box is the story of an ingenious puzzle solver called by the Imperial Family of Japan to open the most difficult, dangerous puzzle of his life: the Dragon Box, a 19^th century puzzle box that holds secrets that could change the nature of Japan. His attempts to solve it send him on a breakneck race through contemporary Japan and bring startling realizations about the nature of his extraordinary gift.

The story has many inspirations, but the seed of the novel took root in my twenties, when I lived in Japan for two years as a high school English teacher in a village called Yoshii-machi in Fukuoka prefecture in Kyushu, on the southernmost island of Japan. I applied for a job teaching English through the JET program; a program run by the Japanese government that placed native English speakers in Japanese schools so that students would have a chance to hear English on a regular basis. Teachers were placed everywhere in Japan, and I found myself in an extremely rural area. I was assigned ‘teachers housing,’ a small apartment in a building next to a rice paddy. My village had a grocery store, an onsen public bath (which I used all the time because my apartment had no hot running water), a small tea shop, a pachinko parlor, and a few small restaurants. It was 45 minutes by bus to the nearest medium-sized town. 

I’d never been to Japan before, and I loved it the minute I arrived. I was twenty-four years old and struggling to transform notebooks filled with fragments of poetry and story ideas into a living breathing novel. My primary job was to interact with Japanese kids, and through them I learned an enormous amount about Japanese culture—the kind that you don’t see in movies or in guidebooks. 

I taught classes every morning, which left my afternoons free. I would go up to the library and write longhand in notebooks. Over the course of my first year in Japan, I wrote what would become the pages of my first book Falling Through the Earth. One of the teachers heard that I was interested in learning a martial art, and soon I was studying wa-do, a Japanese martial art in the school dojo every afternoon after school. By the time I left, I’d earned a brown belt. I was learning Japanese calligraphy, Ikebana, and the Japanese language but more importantly, I was learning a way of seeing the world that revolved around community, routine, and education. These years were transformative not only because I developed a writing routine, and was adopted into a culture I loved, but because in my second year in Japan, my son Alexander was born. By the time I left Japan, I was a writer and a mother.

I’ve wanted to write about Japan for two decades but couldn’t quite find the right vehicle until The Puzzle Box. I felt that it was the perfect way to incorporate what I’d learned in Japan with a propulsive, panoramic story. It also allowed me to incorporate elements of Japanese culture and history that I’d discovered while living in Japan—Shinto religion, the Onna-Bugeisha female samurai, and the Imperial family’s drama of succession

Q: I read in the Authors Note that you always wanted to have a novel take place in Japan. I also saw a few of your Instagram posts about your adventures in the land of the rising sun. How much research & time did it take to write The Puzzle Box & where were your favorite spots in Japan to see?

A: As I mentioned, I lived in Japan, and a lot of the ‘research’ happened when I was there. But when I decided to write The Puzzle Box, I went back to Japan for two weeks to go to all the places in the novel. It was such a great trip! I think my favorite city in Japan is Kyoto, but I really love rural Japan, and especially Hakone, where puzzle boxes are made. I went to a puzzle box museum in Hakone that helped me to imagine puzzle boxes and the way that Mike Brink (the hero of the novel) would open one. 

Q: While I know The Puzzle Box is the sequel to The Puzzle Master, you told me on Instagram that you can read each novel as a standalone as well as reading it in order. What made you choose to write both The Puzzle Master & The Puzzle Box in this way? 

A: I think it’s hard to ask readers to read books in a certain order. I know that I like to pick up a book and just dive in, without having to do a lot of thinking about where the characters were beforehand. By making each of those novels’ standalone books, I am giving readers the option to start with THE PUZZLE BOX. I’ve heard from some readers that they prefer to begin with the second book, so I guess that plan worked out as I’d hoped!

Q: What lessons & emotions do you hope readers learn & feel after reading The Puzzle Box? For me I was reminded that each of us has a unique gift and sometimes it takes us going on a journey to realize we have much more courage and power than we realized. I felt that Mike had to realize this about his gift. 

A: I think you got exactly the message that I was trying to convey! Mike Brink has an extraordinary gift, but he’s also struggling to live with that gift. The essential question of The Puzzle Box, and the whole series is: how do we find happiness in the midst of struggle? Brink has many gifts, and most people would consider him extremely lucky, but inside he is struggling just to exist and connect with other people. I think that many of us feel this way.  We live in a world of great beauty, and yet we are faced with difficulties that seem insurmountable. I hope readers finish this book feeling inspired and that they feel a little less alone after meeting Mike Brink.