Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon call Mary Lee Donovan "an
editorial force of nature," but to hear her tell it, she gives guidance in
her quiet way by "massaging the writing" through comments or
questions. Bond called them "serious questions," such as "Who
knew what when?"--a key consideration in the solving of the mystery at the
center of Zora and Me. "It was a
tough balance to strike, feeding enough to the reader that you keep them
compelled to read on, but not so much that you give too much away," Donovan
said. She said the most noticeable shifts in the manuscript were clarifying the
relationships, "in particular the relationships of people in town, like
Mr. Ambrose and Joe Clarke, the owner of the store, and the roles they played
and who they were. Especially since Mr. Ambrose was white," Donovan
explained, along with the relationships between Gold and Joe Clarke and Ivory. "Mr.
Pendir's character was also something they worked a lot on, as well as how he
presents himself," she added.
So much of the book requires subtlety--how the children conduct themselves around adults, how the citizens of Eatonville conduct themselves in Lake Maitland among whites. As Carrie observes in the book, Mr. Pendir is not the only one who wears a mask; Gold certainly does. And so does Mrs. Hurston when she purchases the towels in the store and answers the shopkeeper about why she's purchasing them. "It's about what's being said and what's not being said, and they're of equal volume," Donovan pointed out. And that relates to the question Simon believes was most important from Donovan: "Do we need this, or will the reader know?"
As to the continuum between the Zora in the novel and Zora Neale Hurston, Donovan said she asked a few questions about facts, "more for myself than for them, just to judge for myself if certain liberties were okay or where poetic license had gone too far." While Donovan said it would be nice if Zora and Me led readers to Hurston's work, that's not why she wanted to pubish the planned three-book series. "It's a slice of life that I don't know that I've ever read before in children's literature," she said. "It's life-changing and mind-changing, a beautiful piece of writing. "