Author Jane Smiley loves Monterey. The Carmel Valley resident loves to wander around the picturesque coastal city, admiring historic buildings and appreciating their painstaking preservation. What she loves most throughout the whole peninsula is how civilization has been set within a very beautiful, natural world.

“One of my favorite things to do,” she said, “is to wander down Dahvee Trail over by Del Monte Shopping Center. It’s all so natural and wild and removed from civilization; I imagine, if I fell, I’d have to be helicoptered out. Except it is half a mile from Macy’s. So probably not.”

It was in the context of exploring Old Monterey that Smiley came up with the premise and the setting for her latest novel, published by Knopf in December 2022.

Picture it. During the 1850s Gold Rush era in Monterey, a young woman, “Eliza Ripple,” was relieved from her husband’s torment when he succumbed to a gunshot wound, yet was left to fend for herself. The opportunity to support herself by working in a local brothel gave her a sense of security until the dead bodies of young women began surfacing, just outside of town.

Given the alternatives of cowering or confronting the issue, Ripple chose the latter. When Smiley gave her character, brothel madam Mrs. Parks the wisdom and the wile to say, “Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Smiley knew she had the title to her book, “A Dangerous Business.”

On May 15, the Society of American Historians awarded Smiley the17th Biennial Prize for Historical Fiction for “A Dangerous Business,” citing historical accuracy in a historical novel. In so doing, they referenced “What’s the Matter with History,” by Allen Nevins (1939), “. . .the best history is neither mere pedestrian fact-accumulation on the one side, nor mere pleasant writing on the other, but represents a fusion of facts, ideas, and literary grace in a single whole.”

Smiley, upon receiving the news, felt it was like receiving an A+ from a history teacher. Her work is supported by a bachelor’s degree in literature from Vassar, an MA in English, a MFA and her PhD, with a specialty in creative writing, from the University of Iowa. She also spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Iceland. Her studies have always been in the context of a minor in history. Still, she credits historian Dennis Copeland for supporting her historical accuracy in “A Dangerous Business.”

“I turned my manuscript over to Dennis,” said Smiley, “who went through it, bit by bit. It’s so important to be accurate and to have a knowledgeable historian helping.”

In reviewing “A Dangerous Business,” The Boston Globe reported that “Smiley’s ability to deliver salient social commentary wrapped in such an inviting murder mystery shows that just because the game’s afoot, doesn’t mean you need to bludgeon your readers with criminal minds, blood, and guts.” This is a skill she explored among various early authors, their circumstances, statements, and style of writing in their social commentaries, however subtle or stark, in her newest book, “The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing and the Exercise of Freedom.”

Reading, writing & really wise questions

Smiley, who is widely regarded for her insight into the craft of writing and its effects, published her first nonfiction book on writing, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel,” in 2005. In her second work of nonfiction, to be released June 6, is a collection of essays through which she addresses questions about writing and life, explored by early writers of renown, while inviting readers to think with “more clarity and nuance” about the questions that matter most.

Smiley said “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, was extremely controversial in its day, as she looked at how racism and literature come together. It also was brave and bold and progressive.

“I’m intrigued by how issues are explored by different writers, who have their own views and techniques,” Smiley said. “I really appreciated Harriet Beecher Stowe’s determination to address the horrors of slavery and make people understand them.”

Before she wrote, “Thirteen ways of Looking at the Novel,” Smiley read more than 100 novels, many of which have not been taught in schools, such as the work by Queen Marguerite de Navarre, a woman of French nobility who wrote “The Heptameron,” a collection of short stories, most framed as a story within a story in portrayal of 16th Century Renaissance Society.

“I loved Navarre’s writing and really wanted to get into the aesthetics and cultural issues behind her work,” Smiley said. “Most males want to write about explorations and conquests, while females want to write about emotion. In her writing, these came together.”

Smiley also examined the works of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halladór Laxness and Jessica Mitford.

Her work is presented as a consideration of the “ambiguity of character and the weight of history,” an enduring complexity that has long challenged those engaged in the pursuit of social commentary.

“The world around us is always changing,” she said. “As a writer, one of our jobs is to be aware of how it’s changing and to think in a way that enables us to navigate our way through it. You’re inspired by something and you pursue it. As an author, we don’t know what the response to our book will be or where our book fits into the literary world. We get interested in something, and we lean into it. We don’t know, while we write, what sort of things we’re being prescient about.”

When Smiley wrote, “The Greenlanders,” a historical-fiction epic novel, she had an historical archeologist help her explore why the Greenlanders had vanished from the west coast of Greenland. At the time, she didn’t realize she was writing about climate change, but looking back on it, she was.

None of the writers Smiley explored in “The Questions That Matter Most” are contemporary authors.

“Sometimes I avoid writing about contemporary authors,” she said, “because I don’t want to voice my preferences, to pit one against another, to influence their audience. For the same reason, I don’t like to be mentioned among them, myself. Except by a fan.”

Jane Smiley will join her fans on Tuesday, June 6 at Olivia & Daisy Bookstore in Carmel Valley, from noon to 1:30 p.m., where she will read from “The Questions That Matter Most,” answer questions and sign books. To reserve a seat, call (831) 620-9290. Her book also will be available at River House Books at The Crossroads Carmel, Pilgrim’s Way in Carmel and Bookworks in Pacific Grove.