Mary-Ann Tirone Smith 2008 on Girls of Tender Age

Author Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's book 'Girls of Tender Age' is not just a book about murder but also about autism and how she and her family coped with these twin challenges in their lives. Here she answers reviewer Ann's questions on the book.

AJ: You write of your brother with affection. Did you never resent the priority of his needs over anyone else ?

MT: I never felt resentful until I was an adolescent when I couldn't have friends to my house, couldn't play music, couldn't listen to television, couldn't do the kinds of things that people take for granted. But I didn't feel resentful toward Tyler because I knew none of this was his fault. I felt resentful toward my parents for not offering me sympathy just as they had not offered sympathy when I was a child and Tyler would do something that embarrassed me. But then, as the "normal" child I was expected to exhibit a maturity far beyond what a child could possibly possess.

AJ: Your father appears almost unbelievably saintly, keeping the whole family together, cooking and caring for you all, do you think he was a product of his age or was it his innate character ?

MT: When people would ask my mother how she got my father to do certain domestic things, she'd say, "He came that way." As I described in the memoir, my father's mother died when he was ten, and in order to prevent his two little sisters from being sent away to their aunt, he promised to take care of them, which he did. He said to me that he'd lost his mother and he wasn't about to lose his two sisters. My aunts would always say to me things like: "I remember when your father used to braid our hair every morning before school." He was a natural nurturer.

AJ: Apart from Fred, did you have any reactions to your book from those involved?

MT: I heard from many of the children of people involved-police officers, court officials, Irene's teachers, neighbors, and her friends. They all wanted to talk about the crime; they wanted to contact Fred and offer their condolences.

What was most amazing to me, though, were the endless letters and emails I received from women who were sexually abused as children and never told anyone. They told me. One woman said she'd memorized the license plate of a man who tried to grab her, who beat her until someone came along whereupon he threw her to the side of the road. (She was later spanked for dirtying her clothes.) She told me that after reading the book, she described the incident to everyone she knew, and was in correspondence with the motor vehicle department in the state where the incident happened and intended to find out who owned that car. Women kept thanking me for lifting the burden they'd carried for so long.

AJ: Do you think, in retrospect, that this was a good community method of dealing with the murder ?

MT: Dealing with the murder by acting as if it never happened was a disaster as demonstrated by the outpouring of people's needing to talk about the murder now, decades later.

AJ: Do you think Tyler was happy, and what advice would you give to families with relatives who are autistic?

MT: Tyler had moments of happiness, but mostly he was in a chronic state of torture. His anxieties were so abominable that he was forced to gnaw at his wrist to cope. What he went through his entire life is beyond my imagining. Families should seek out whatever help might be available for their autistic loved one and for themselves. They need a village. Big village.

AJ: How did you feel when you finished the book?

MT: Relieved that I had completed what I'd set out to do: tell the story of an ethnic life; of an autistic brother at a time when autism had not been identified; and create a memorial to a lovely child who was murdered by a psychopath and then again by the era of the fifties that disappeared her.

AJ: Were you the only child to have suppressed the memory of this time?

MT: So many people wrote and told me they remembered Irene and what happened to her, and what it a relief it was to finally talk about her, and the crime that took her life.

AJ: Do you think the restrictions caused by Tyler's condition made your acceptance of the abnormal easier?

MT: It gave me the ability to be utterly calm at a time of crisis. I have no idea what it's like to freak out.

AJ: What are your thoughts of Robert Malm now?

MT: I will always wonder where his demons came from, always wonder at how one person can kill another.

AJ: How do you think you would have responded if a similar incident happened to your child?

MT: I don't have the capacity to imagine such a thing.

AJ: I find your mother fascinating, she was obviously intelligent and talented; what do you think she would have been/done in this time?

MT: She would have invented the internet.

AJ: I think your book is a tribute to close family and community, supporting each other, how do you think we can recreate that closeness today?

MT: I think families today are even closer than they were fifty years ago because asking for support is not seen as a weakness; soldiering on rather than expressing feelings is encouraged. And there are all those book clubs!

AJ: Did you have to change your writing style to write this book being that you are a novelist?

MT: I used a narrative voice in telling my tale that I intended to be as compelling and sympathetic as the fictional narratives I'd utilized in my novels written from the first person point of view.

AJ: Were you influenced by any non- fiction authors?

MT: There are many, many nonfiction writers I adore. I try not to be influenced by any of them though I have been endlessly inspired by, among countless others, Roy Blount, Jr., David Halberstram, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joan Didion, Tobias Wolff, Paul Theroux, Donald Hall, Paul Gallico, e.e. cummings, Dava Sobel, Bruce Chatwin, Beryl Markham....