There are so many fascinating details. How did you research them? Did you actually travel to Cork, London, and Liverpool?
The research began with reading. There's an enormous literature about Ireland and England at this time-novels, factual accounts, histories, diaries. On my desk are some fifty books dealing with everything from what the London police were like to the color of inks in the pens people were using and even the way they talked. Sure, the characters and their emotions are invented, but the facts of the story really are not. It's amazing how much information is available. But then I did travel to Liverpool, London, and Cork specifically with research in mind and walked the very streets the characters walk. When I reached Liverpool, the city to my astonishment was on a hill, and I had had no idea, so I went back and made reference to the fact that it's a very steep city.

Book One alone is longer than any of your previous novels, and Book Two to appear in Fall 1996, will be equally lengthy. Has the sheer size of the work affected the writing process?
The answer is yes. The sheer size requires a immense concentration. I've been working very long hours. The Barn, for instance, I could read in an hour. To read this whole book requires a week, and so I have to approach it in different ways, break it down into smaller units. Otherwise, my head can't encompass it all, and indeed I marvel at the great Victorians-Dickens, Trollope-how they did this as a matter of course. It's exhausting.

Beyond the Western Sea is a historical novel about the Victorian era, but, more than that, it's Victorian in spirit, using, as it does, conventions of Victorian writing such as coincidence. Did this add to the fun of it for you?
Fun for me? There are moments of fun, but it has to be fun for the reader. The coincidences I hope are part of the pleasure of the book, but I do take literally lots of long walks, saying, "Now if I do this, I do that; if I do this, I do that," making sure this all works together. It's a little like playing tug-of-war, but instead of pulling one rope you're pulling seven or eight ropes and running from one rope to another. There are all these games, as it were, going on simultaneously, and you have to keep them in your head in order to make them clear and understandable and fun for the reader.

A book this long for young readers is unusual. Did you write it in response to requests for a longer work, something in which the adventure wouldn't end so soon?
I do get lots of letters from kids asking me, "Whatever happened to Charlotte?" in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, or "What did Ben do?" in The Barn, so in a sense kids have been asking me to write longer works or sequels. And kids are reading long books. They're reading Stephen King; they're reading Michael Crichton. They used to read enormous novels-Little Women, Treasure Island. I just believe that, if the story can be made to move along with a certain energy, real energy, young readers who love to plunge into a book will get a lot of pleasure from this.

Can you give us some idea of what's to come in Book Two, or must we wait and see?
The second book deals with the voyage to America, which is difficult and long, going to Lowell, where they encounter intense anti-immigration, particularly anti-Irish, feeling, and their struggles with that. So the adventure continues. It's not quite so specific as "Shall we get on a boat or not?" In Book Two, it's "Shall we live or not?" It's still in process. And then, with so many characters, I believe there's a place for a third volume, but my readers will tell me.
A Conversation with Avi reprinted courtesy of Orchard Books.

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