Not only were 1890s provide a comfortable fit for for Hannah - a familiar period verging on modern times - but the long frozen winter was a natural setting for the odd couple concept. That idea found a home in the Yukon because Hannah wandered into the Klondike Museum in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The kernel of the story came quickly - a variation of the odd-couple idea set in an escapable place. "And I've always been a history buff and I'm a romantic at heart," said Hannah, a 1982 graduate of University of Washington.
The lawyer in her demanded she research the writing field and research showed that genre fiction - mysteries, romance, science fiction, and westerns - sell best. She targeted romance novels for both personal and practical reasons. "A Handful of Heaven" won the romance equivalent of an Emmy - the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award - which caught publishers' attention. To keep herself from going stir-crazy, she started the year-long project that culminated a manuscript, two awards and a contract with Fawcett books. The idea was revived when Hannah was confined to bed for the last five months of a difficult pregnancy. The romance novel nearly died with her mother. During the long days in the hospital, Hannah and her mother spun out ideas for a book. Hannah was busy practicing law when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago.
Her recently released first book, "A Handful of Heaven," is about a reclusive shopkeeper-photographer and neatnik spinster living in a gritty Yukon settlement. She's a lawyer, University of Puget Sound class of 1986, who started to write as a distraction from medical difficulties. Neither Kristin Hannah nor her prize-winning book fit lace-trimmed preconceptions of romance writers and their novels.
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