"I'm a history person and a book person. That is my background, and it comes together perfectly in my writing," said Mackenzie Van Engelenhoven, events coordinator at Trident Booksellers & Cafe in Boston, Mass., and, under the pen name Mackenzi Lee, author of the upcoming YA historical adventure novel The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue.
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Due out from Katherine Tegen Books on June 27, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is the story of Henry "Monty" Montague, a young British lord taking the "Grand Tour" through the capital cities of Europe in the 1700s. The Grand Tour, Van Engelenhoven explained, was essentially the equivalent of a gap year for upper-class young men of the late 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. These trips were intended not only for these young men to expand their boundaries, to be exposed to the wider worlds of European art, culture and high society, but also for them to sow their wild oats, to "get the crazy out of their system" before returning home to become productive members of society. Monty is taking the Grand Tour with his best friend Percy, with whom he is also secretly in love, and his little sister, Felicity, with whom he would much rather not be traveling. Along the way, the trio discovers a magical artifact, turning their trip into a swashbuckling adventure.
"I really love the idea that in history, people don't really change," said Van Engelenhoven, who first learned of the concept of the Grand Tour during a survey course in college. She found it fascinating that even back in the 1700s, young people were essentially taking gap years before the start of adulthood. At the same time, she has always loved adventure novels, and for a long time sought to write a "self-aware, tropey" adventure. What brought it all together and spurred her toward writing this novel was a renewed interest in queer history, and especially the way that queer people and characters have been left out of adventure narratives, both factual and fictitious. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, then, is her chance to give this kind of narrative to the characters "often left out."
Van Engelenhoven said she's been a writer for both "a long time and not very long," explaining that as a child, she read and wrote quite a bit, up until around the time she entered middle school. From then on, through high school, she didn't do much reading outside of assigned books and didn't write for pleasure.
"I loved reading middle grade when I was a kid," she continued. "But when it felt like I had to graduate from middle grade, at a time when YA wasn't as much of a thing, I sort of lost interest in books."
While pursuing her undergraduate degree in history, Van Engelenhoven spent time in England doing thesis research. She recalled that her thesis adviser kept saying that her history papers read like novels, and she began to realize that she might be writing the wrong kinds of things. At around the same time, while she was studying abroad, she began to read for pleasure again, and it felt like she had "found magic again" when she revisited books from her childhood. Her renewed love of reading led to a new passion for writing for teens. In particular, rediscovering Shannon Hale's 2003 fantasy novel The Goose Girl "catapulted" her back into writing.
After returning to the U.S. and graduating from college, Van Engelenhoven enrolled in the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program at Simmons College in Boston, Mass. She made her entrance into bookselling while in grad school, first at the Harvard Coop in Cambridge. From there she moved to Porter Square Books, where she "fell in love with indies"; after graduation, she worked in publishing for a time. Within two years, however, she made her return to bookselling at Trident Booksellers & Cafe, where she is now the events coordinator. (She still works at Porter Square Books on the weekend as a sort of "hobby bookseller.") She published her debut novel, This Monstrous Thing, also with Katherine Tegen Books, in 2015.
Van Engelenhoven added that though juggling writing with bookselling can be difficult, as she is essentially working two full-time jobs, she has found that working in a bookstore motivates her as a writer much more than working in publishing did. She said: "It rejuvenates me in a lot of ways to talk to talk to people who are writing and reading books, rather than people who are publishing them."
Van Engelenhoven will launch The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue at Trident on June 27 and soon afterward go on a short book tour. "I'm planning the tour around my friends' bookstores," she said. "It's a lucky and strange way to plan a tour." --Alex Mutter