Jack Wang is the author of the story collection We Two Alone, winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and longlisted for Canada Reads. Originally from Vancouver, he lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and their two daughters.
The Riveter is an exploration of one man’s journey finding his place in the society of the only place he’s ever known as home. But it’s also a love story set during World War II which explores the challenges two young people face during the uncertainties of war time; Josiah, trying to keep himself and his relationship alive and Poppy, a strong, independent modern woman who’s struggling to wait for Josiah to return.
Interviewed by Nikki Hillman
Nikki Hillman (NH): Why did you choose to set a love story in the context of WWII?
Jack Wang (JW): At the time of the Second World War, Chinese Canadians didn’t have full citizenship rights, including the right to vote, so they couldn’t join any professional societies, which meant they couldn’t be doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so on. Lack of citizenship also impeded their ability to marry, so Chinese Canadians who served in the Second World War were also fighting for the right to love freely. That’s why it was important to set an interracial love story during World War II.
NH: Were the characters based on real people or composites of several individuals you came across in your research?
JW: Josiah Chang, the protagonist of The Riveter, was inspired in part by Richard Mar, the only Chinese Canadian to serve in the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion during the Second World War. But more than six hundred Chinese Canadians served in all branches of the military, so Josiah is also a composite of others who served in World War II, especially in Normandy. Plus, his initials, J.C., are an allusion to Johnny Canuck. Like the famous figure of Canadiana, Josiah is a lumberjack, a soldier, and thoroughly Canadian.
Poppy Miller, his love interest, is also drawn from different sources. For example, I read a book on wartime shipbuilding in which a woman emerges from behind a closed door in a shipyard, having done something indiscreet with a man. That might have been the first spark for Poppy’s character. I also found a photo in the Vancouver Archives entitled “Burrard Dry Dock – Miss Heddy Brunkel, Jitney Driver,” which is why Poppy is a jitney driver in a shipyard. Poppy is also an allusion to Penelope, perhaps the most famous woman ever to wait for a beloved to return from war. Ultimately, though, Josiah and Poppy are both figures of my imagination.
NH: As a fiction writer, how did you weave together historical facts with the emotional arc of a love story?
JW: I needed to give Josiah Chang a reason to go to war, and ultimately that reason is love. His desire to marry Poppy is what compels him to serve. Consequently, the harrowing experiences he goes through during the war, from Normandy to the Ardennes to Germany—all drawn from the historical record—are a testament to his feelings for Poppy. Because poppies are synonymous with not only service but Canada itself, Poppy symbolizes the nation state, and the challenges in Josiah and Poppy’s relationship, especially around questions of fidelity, mirror the kinds of challenges Chinese Canadians faced in reconciling with the country they called home.
NH: In what ways do you think the story of The Riveter speaks to today’s readers, especially younger generations?
JW: Any historical novel worth its salt always speaks to the present. Today, the question of full citizenship rights—or the cost of not having them—whether in Gaza or the United States or elsewhere, is on full display. Citizenship rights are about not just legal status but defining who gets to be fully human. That’s an issue that ought to be resonant with readers today, young and old alike.
NH: Are there parallels you see between the wartime sacrifices of the 1940s and challenges faced today?
JW: Yes, for sure. In many ways, Canadian identity was forged in the crucibles of the First and Second World Wars. We were a small country, but we rallied as a nation and showed unusual pluck in combat. Now the threat of fascism is right on our doorstep, and we’re coming together again as a nation and showing that pluck. I like to think that The Riveter is a novel for our times.
NH: What was the most surprising or moving detail you discovered while researching for this book?
JW: This might be a little macabre, but at one point I was trying to describe a massacre in the Belgian town of Bande, in which thirty-seven men and boys of fighting age who’d been executed by the Germans were discovered in a cellar. I was having trouble making the scene feel convincing until I learned that some of those men and boys, who’d been laid out on the floor, had their arms in the air, stiff with rigor mortis. That startling image was the authenticating detail I needed to make the scene feel real.
NH: And finally, if The Riveter were adapted to screen, who would be your dream casting?
JW: I don’t have a movie or TV deal yet, so I don’t want to jinx anything, but someone said to me that Poppy could have been played by a young Michelle Williams. I can see that.