Tiger Eyes

Author Q&A

Judy Blume talks about writing
Tiger Eyes

Although there’s a violent crime at the center of the story, Tiger Eyes isn’t about violence. It’s about the sudden, tragic loss of someone you love. I lost my beloved father suddenly, when I was 21. He died, not as the result of a violent crime, but of a heart attack at home. I was with him. I still can’t write this without choking up, remembering. Davey’s feelings about her father’s sudden death were based on mine, though I’m not sure I was aware of it while I was writing the book.

I lived in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the setting of the book, for two years. My teenaged children went to school there. It wasn’t a happy experience but it helped me write what George (my husband) and Larry (my grown son) think is my best book. It allowed me to write about a world I would never have known, about characters I’d never have imagined. Yet I had no idea, while I was living there, I would ever write a book set in that town. All I could think of was getting out. It took a few years to look back and see it more clearly.