Award-Winning Author Holly Robinson talks about her memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter

Holly Robinson, award-winning author of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, discusses her unusual childhood and the life lessons she gained as the daughter of a gerbil farmer!

Some men golf, some prefer to fish, and others enjoy a good game of poker with the buddies. Holly Robinson’s father, on the other hand, was obsessed with gerbils. It started innocently enough. After reading an article about “America’s Newest Pet” in a 1965 issue of Newsweek, Commander Donald Robinson purchased four pairs of gerbils and stashed them in his Virginia garage. The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by award-winning writer Holly Robinson (Harmony Books; Publication date: June 2, 2009) is the wonderfully quirky and funny memoir of growing up as the daughter of what would become the world’s largest supplier of gerbils, a.k.a. The Gerbil Czar.

CommitmentNow:  The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter is a family memoir from the period during your childhood when your father, a naval officer, began a second career as a gerbil farmer, and you and the rest of your family became “employees” of his operation. What inspired you to tell this story now?

Holly Robinson:  My youngest son started asking to have pet gerbils.  I had told our five children about Dad's Navy career, but I never mentioned anything about gerbil farming because telling anyone about the 9,000 gerbils in our backyard always stirred up more questions than answers.  Eventually, though, as my father's health started to rapidly decline, I realized that I had questions, too, and it was time to ask them before he was gone. 

CommitmentNow:  Gerbil farming was not just a job for your father. How did his obsession affect you, your mother and your siblings?

Holly:  The odd thing about childhood is that you live in a parallel universe from the adults.  Parents are like air:  you only notice them when they're gone.  My siblings and I simply accepted everything my father did for many years.  If Dad wanted to sneak gerbils up from the basement and into the bedroom to photograph them, or if he asked us to help clean gerbil cages, we went along with the program.  It was more complicated for my mother, whose basic reaction to the sight of a gerbil was, “Ew!”  Her standard line was, “Well, other men have golf.  Mine has gerbils,” punctuated by a sigh.

CommitmentNow:  While your father was interesting and eccentric, your mother was quite a character, as well! She had her own passions and interests, which varied from decoupage to horseback riding – and did not include cooking! How would you describe your mother?

Holly:  My mother was my hero and I was always a little bit terrified of her.  She was elegant and smart, witty and brave.  Whenever she wanted to try something new, like ballet or oil painting, playing the bass fiddle or teaching horseback riding lessons, Mom was always carried along by a sort of passionate optimism.  Even now, she's the same way. 

CommitmentNow:  Your parents seemed to have little in common beyond their smoking habits and disdain for hippies, yet they stayed together all those years. Was theirs a happy marriage?

Holly:  My parents were married after just three dates, because my father was in the Navy and at sea most of the time.  He cut a dashing figure in his uniform and my mother was eager to see the world.  Like many young couples back then, they knew little about each other before their wedding day.  There couldn't have been anyone more opposite than they were.  Eventually that drove them apart.  My parents got divorced when I was in my late twenties and my father married another woman.  Then, after nearly 20 years apart, he and my mother got back together again and were remarried.  The reason they did so is probably summed up best by my mom:  “Better the devil you know than the one you don't.”  At the end of Dad's life, there was a lot of mutual respect and affection because they'd been through so much together.

CommitmentNow:  You are now a mother yourself. How have your childhood experiences as the daughter of a gerbil farmer influenced your own parenting style?

Holly:  Picture the mother whose children are always clean and in matching outfits – Kate Gosselin from the TV reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, say – and then picture her opposite.  That's me.  We have five children and my house has always been like one big science laboratory and zoo.  Our coat closet is full of muddy boots, critter nets and damp sneakers.  Our windowsills are littered with mysterious little jars with hairy, crawling or slimy things in them, and in our living room right now we have a roller coaster built out of K'nex that's nearly as tall as I am and a pith helmet from World War II.  Don't ask why.  Oh, and we have two dogs, two cats, and three gerbils.  I believe, as my gerbil farming father did, that children grow up best if you appreciate who they are rather than try to mold them.  Other than teaching kindness and a few table manners, maybe.

CommitmentNow:  At the beginning of your book, you and your son Aidan are at a pet store when you reveal to him for the first time that your father was a gerbil farmer. Why had you kept that part of your life a secret until then?

Holly:  How would you explain to your son that your father had 9,000 gerbils?  It's no easy feat.  Plus, being a reserved military man, my father drummed this philosophy into our heads when it came to the gerbils:  “It's nobody's business but ours.”  I still feel a bit odd talking about the gerbils.

CommitmentNow:  The gerbils your father raised were sent to laboratories and companies where they were used for experimental purposes. Were you aware of the certain future of the gerbils when you were a little girl?

Holly:  Not when I was little, no.  My dad first raised the gerbils in our garage, and he wrote the first popular pet book about gerbils.  He sold them to schools and pet stores, so I always assumed that's what he would continue to do.  It wasn't until I was in high school and my father started raising gerbils on a much larger scale that I realized what he was really up to.  I was a very idealistic, pacifist, animal-loving teenager, so of course I was horrified; I even went so far as to call him “the gerbil Nazi” because he was sending animals to researchers who were studying epilepsy, audiology and neurological diseases.  Now I've come to understand that this was my father's way of trying to make a contribution to medical science, because he was so undone by the fact that my sister died of cystic fibrosis.  He wasn't the sort of man to talk about his grief.  This was his way of coping with it, I believe.

CommitmentNow:  Gerbil farming sounds quirky, but your father actually turned it into a successful business, becoming the world's largest provider of gerbils. Did his success make his obsession any more palatable for you and your family?

Holly:  I think that, once again, we never really thought much about it.  Raising gerbils was just what my father did, much the same way other farmers raised livestock like dairy cattle or sheep.  We were, of course, glad not to starve, happy to have money for college, and pleased when Dad was able to publish some of his scientific observations in magazines like Science News.  It was so weird to have a father who didn't get up, put on a suit, and drive to an office that seeing Dad's name in print gave him some credibility not just with the outside world, but with us. 

CommitmentNow:  For most of your childhood, your father's gerbil farming was kept a secret from the outside world. As a high school student in Massachusetts, word got out about the gerbil farm. The teen years are a time of conformity; how did you feel about having this unusual secret revealed?

Holly:  Naturally I was horrified in that way that children are always horrified when their parents do something to cause them undue notice.  But the truth was that I never fit in anyway.  My strange southern/Midwestern twang of an accent, my mysterious military father, and my passion for books above all things meant that I was a complete outcast in that little Massachusetts town.

CommitmentNow:  Were there any useful lessons to be learned as the daughter of a gerbil farmer?

Holly:  Yes!  My father, the gerbil czar, taught me two important lessons:  1) Being normal is overrated, and 2) No matter what your dream is, you can realize it.  It's just a matter of putting in the hours and having faith in yourself even when other people are pointing fingers your way.

Holly Robinson has been writing feature articles, essays and advice columns on health, parenting and psychology topics for national magazines since 1995.  She has been a contributing editor at Ladies’ Home Journal and Parents magazines.  Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Family Circle, FamilyFun, Fitness, Good Housekeeping, More, Parenting, Parents Expecting, Shape, and WorkingMother. The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, (Harmony/Crown, May 2009) is her first book.

Prior to beginning her career as a freelance writer, Ms. Robinson worked as a science and health writer for the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and received the American Medical Association’s Will Solimene Award for Excellence.  She has taught creative writing and English courses as an adjunct faculty member at Northeastern University and has lectured on writing at numerous other colleges in the Boston area.  Ms. Robinson holds a B.A. in biology from Clark University and is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She lives in northern Massachusetts with her husband and their five children

To purchase The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, click here.