SOURCE: Sheehy, Gail, and Beth Levine. “Gail Sheehy.” Publishers Weekly 233, no. 20 (20 May 1988): 65-6.

In the following interview, Sheehy discusses her research methods and writing process for Character: America's Search for Leadership.

Character. Crisis. Survival. Growth. These are the words that have fascinated Gail Sheehy throughout her long writing career. How is one's character shaped by crisis? How does the survival of devastating circumstances afford opportunity for growth? Passages, Sheehy's landmark bestseller of the 1970s, studied predictable adult life crises; Pathfinders profiled people who have emerged victorious from crises or accidents of life; and her last book, Spirit of Survival, is her account of her adopted daughter's survival of the Cambodian genocide.

This singleminded passion of Sheehy's has recently culminated in another examination of character titled, appropriately enough, Character: America's Search for Leadership. She has spent the last two years flying around the country, interviewing present and now former...