Children's book author Katherine Paterson shares her thoughts about her new serial story and writing in general.

Children's book author Katherine Paterson shares her thoughts about her new serial story and writing in general.

By LAURA L. HUTCHISON

Date published: 2/14/2005

ARRE, Vt.--Katherine Paterson appreciates when people offer her ideas for stories, but she rarely uses them.

"For 30 years, people have been coming up to me, telling me they have a great idea for a story," she said. "I usually say 'Thank you very much.'"

But a few years ago, a friend at Paterson's church suggested she should do a story on the Haxhiu family. Paterson's church had sponsored the family to come to America, after they fled from war-torn Kosovo.

Paterson met with the Haxhius, and decided she would write a story about a family that escaped Kosovo as they had. The result was "Long Road Home," a serialized children's story published by Breakfast Serials and running Mondays in The Free Lance-Star's Life section through May 30.

The author of more than 30 books, Paterson knew how to write a story. But this one presented her with special challenges.

"I've never written about a place I haven't lived," she said. "It's very strange to write about Kosovo, where I've never been."

She spent months researching Kosovo, reading books, finding magazine and newspaper articles, searching online for maps and pictures.

"The history is unbelievable, and most of it is tragic," she said. "There have been wars over religion, land. Power struggles. You read about it and say, 'There are no good guys here. No good guys.' I was appalled by the whole ordeal of what people had to go through."

The older Haxhiu children were familiar with Paterson. They'd read her first serial story, "Field of Dogs," in school, and were excited about a story focusing on a family like theirs.

Since "Long Road Home" is a work of fiction, Paterson wrote it so that a number of events happen to one family, whereas in reality, a single family would have endured only some of the struggles faced by Meli and her family.

In fact, the Haxhius were able to escape the country before things got really bad for Albanians.

The patriarch of the Haxhiu family had served in the Army with a Serbian man. The man contacted him and told him to take his family and leave, because terrible things were about to happen.

The Haxhius left Kosovo for Macedonia, and stayed there until they moved to Vermont.

"It's wonderful how they got out," Paterson said, "that there were people brave enough to do that."

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Date published: 2/14/2005