Meet Jane Kirkpatrick

Author Jane Kirkpatrick

I’m delighted to welcome Jane Kirkpatrick to Sites and Stories.  Jane grew up in Mondovi, Wisconsin, but has made a home in Oregon for  thirty-four years.  She is a gifted speaker, and author of (among other things) fifteen historical novels.  Her work has received many honors, including a WILLA Literary Award and a Wrangler Award.

Jane’s Change and Cherish Historical Series fictionalizes the story of Emma Wagner Giesy, a real German-American woman who in the 1850s was sent West with nine men to secure land for her religious community.  Emma helped found a communal society in the Oregon Territory.  Nearly 600 people, almost all German and Swiss emigrants, lived in the Aurora Colony from 1856 to 1883.  Today, it’s possible to visit the Old Aurora Colony Museum, tour buildings, and enjoy exhibits that focus on Colony families, crafts and history.

Q:  I read that you first “met” Emma when you saw a photograph of a quilt she’d made.  At what point in the process did you actually visit the Old Aurora Colony Museum?

A:  I visited the Aurora Colony Museum early on.  It had been a favorite place to just explore, look at the herb garden, etc. before I ever thought I write about it.  Actually, there were three museums to get connected to:  one in Bethel, MO; one in South Bend, Washington and the one in Aurora.

When I decided to write the book, I approached the Aurora museum, but they were remodeling and not too excited about having to help me access the files.  So I went to the other museums first.  Then while accessing photographs for another project at the state historical society, the photographic assistant and I chatted about my work in progress, the Aurora communal society in Oregon.  She said her father so loved communal society studies he moved to Aurora.  He turned out to be James Kopp, head of the library at Lewis and Clark College, a scholar (his latest book called Eden Within Eden is about the many utopian societies in Oregon) and he was on the board of the Aurora museum!  So my door was opened and they’ve been wonderful to work with!  Oh, and I’d have to add the State Historical Society museum as one of my resources.

Old Aurora Colony Museum

Q:  What were some of the special moments at the site?  Did any artifacts or other discoveries provide particular insight as you developed your stories?

A:  In Washington state, it was a lantern said to have been made by Emma’s husband that caught my eye.  He was a fine tinsmith and had made designs in the tin reflectors that with a candle behind them would have sent lovely images across the log ceilings and walls.  He died there in the Willapa country and yet Emma stayed on for several years after the colony split.  I suspect some of those memories harbored in the artifacts brought her comfort through the rainy winters.

At Aurora there were so many artifacts.  The quilts, of course; but also musical instruments (the colonists made many of their own and were composers and had two bands that traveled to play for the Governor’s inaugural, etc.), the furniture, the detail of other textiles, the collection of cookie cutters hand made, the fancy calligraphy and brightly colored chairs and petticoats…all told me something about the nature of the community.  One could see in their artifacts that they made practical things beautiful, taking a little extra time to  bring a bit of sunshine into everyday items.

Emma's story begins in A CLEARING IN THE WILD.

Q:  Did you travel to Missouri to explore the beginnings of Emma’s journey?  Is the landscape still similar to what she knew?

A:  I did!  My husband and I actually stayed in the old stage stop in Bethel that has been converted to a B & B.  While Emma’s family home no longer stands, there are several other homes open for tours from that period and I could see on the maps where Emma’s home was.

I suspect much of the landscape was the same:   low rolling hills, greenery galore, little streams and the brick houses for the bachelors and the “old maids” of the community.  Down the road from Bethel, in Shelbyville, is another museum!  We spent the afternoon with the curator who then took us to her home.  She singlehandedly saves old records that the county otherwise plans to throw out.  While we were in her basement lined with files and files and files, I asked if she might have the marriage license of Emma and Christian and you know what, she had it!  The original from 1852!

And it also had a note on the back of it, something about “beef” signed by a person she said was the speaker of the house several years later who was impeached! So they must have used some of the documents for notes and isn’t it grand that there are people so passionate about documents?

Q:  In addition to writing three novels, you produced a beautiful nonfiction book about the colony as well  (Aurora: An American Experience in Quilt, Community and Craft).  Earlier this year, an exhibit at the museum highlighted the book, and relevant collections .  It seems that you developed a wonderful collaborative relationship with museum staff and volunteers.

A:  They have been terrific!  They call it being on the “Jane train” and they’re along for the ride.  That’s not actually true.  They’re the train:  they’ve kept these artifacts and continually change the displays so people can come there over and over and discover something new about the colony and about themselves.

For the past three years we’ve had a Mother’s Day event there with up to 250 people attending.  It’s something to do on Mom’s Day after the meal and apparently a lot of mom’s ask to come there to get their books signed.

Incidentally, I learned a new word from the museum staff to identify parts of the historical records that are not documents or maps…all those other special things we save aren’t junk, they’re ephemera!)  The museum’s ephemera are displayed beautifully which pleases potential donors of items who want to see their gifts shown to the public.  That’s not easy for a small museum to do but they do a beautiful job and I’m pleased to call many of the volunteers and staff and board my friends!

I helped expand their collection through collaboration I had with descendants who then became more involved with the museum.  So it’s been a mutually satisfying relationship.  Just two weeks ago we gave away a replica of the quilt that first inspired the series.  Pendleton Woolen Mills donated the wool and the Aurora colony quilters quilted it.  There’s a photo of both the original and the replica on my blog  www.janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com.

AURORA: AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN QUILT, COMMUNITY, AND CRAFT provides a gorgeous peek at the colony's material culture.

Q:  At what point in the process did you decide to undertake the nonfiction book?  Any surprises along the way?

A.  After I finished the second novel, one of the board members approached me about writing a quilt book that they might publish on their own.  I suggested that if I were them, they  ought to look at more than just the quilts but rather the entire colony story as told through quilts and crafts.  They thought that a good idea and told me they really didn’t want to self-publish.

I then approached my publisher with the idea of a book about community and about the stories that are told through quilts and crafts as a companion book to the novels.  We get the word craft from the Greek word poema, meaning poem, and I think that’s part of what attracted me to this idea of letting more people outside of Oregon know about the poems left behind.

Now, surprises?  Yes indeed!  I’m not a quilter so I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know and how important details are to quilters:  the size of stitches, the patterns, the  uniqueness of each work, pieced vs. machine stitched, etc.  So I relied heavily on quilters to get that part right.

Then there were the thousands of photographs (historical) to manage, and we took hundreds of contemporary shots (my husband did most of them) that had to be sorted and determined where to place them within the text. I had a wonderful woman volunteer to scan and manage the photographs.  She has a great artistic eye, quilts and is also a writer and had produced some books herself. She also took some of the photographs. She brought all her equipment to our ranch for 10 days and endured her dog allergy so we could put the many photographs into a format that I hoped would help the publisher know what I hoped the book would look like.

Arranging for taking photographs of colony items in private hands also took lots of time and we had to decide things like whether to name the person who had the item or whether to not name them so some disorderly soul wouldn’t try to break in to their homes seeking it!  We compromised and listed people in the back but not with their actual artifact.  It was the details that drove me crazy! The publisher did a terrific job though and the book has gotten good reviews.  It was even spied at the Smithsonian, face out!  And it was a finalist for the WILLA Literary Award, of which I’m very proud.

***

A FLICKERING LIGHT fictionalizes stories from Jane's grandmother.

I’m grateful to Jane for taking the time from a crammed schedule to chat!

Jane’s latest novel, A Flickering Light, was based on her grandmother’s life as an early photographer in Winona, MN.  It’s a story of shadow and light, and includes photographs from Jane’s grandmother’s photographic collection.  It received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and was just named to Library Journal’s Best Books of 2009.  The sequel, An Absence So Great, will be published in March.

Backstory

I’m working on whittling a manuscript of 100,000 words down to something approaching 80,000.  I actually don’t mind this kind of edit.  Having to cut forces me to consider every scene, paragraph, sentence, and word.  Do I really need it?  Does it serve the story?

One of the things to evaluate is backstory—events that shaped characters’ lives before the book’s opening scene.  It’s essential to convey information readers need to understand the motivation driving a protagonist through the story.  Slowing a story down with excess information is a problem.  Sometimes a very fine lines separates those two things.

Near Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario

As I work on this, I’ve been thinking about stories that interpreters related during my recent visit to Fort George National Historic Site of Canada, in Ontario.  During the War of 1812, Fort George served as the headquarters for the Centre Division of the British Army.

One of the places I most wanted to visit was the enlisted mens’ barracks.  I was particularly interested in learning about the lives of the handful of wives and children who lived there, in the same room with 40 or more soldiers.  The interpreters shared a number of fascinating stories about family life, and I instinctively made mental notes for future book projects.  (I can’t help myself.)

Interpreter in the enlisted men's barracks.

This young woman painted a vivid picture of the day a regiment left Britain.  The soldiers, who had enlisted for 21 years, were marched onto a waiting ship.  If they were married, their wives and children waited on the dock.  Then a lottery commenced.  A few lucky women were chosen to accompany their husbands to North America.  The rest knew that they’d probably never see their men again.

The interpreter spoke of a pregnant woman who threw herself into the sea when her number was not selected.  She spoke of wives who, although lucky enough to be chosen, were told that they could not take all of their children.  In that heart-wrenching moment, some children were left behind to make their way on the streets, or to seek shelter in an orphanage.

It is hard to imagine the grim necessity that forced families to face the enormous gamble that began with a married man’s enlistment.  It’s also hard to imagine the chaos on the dock, and likely also within the ship, as children, women, and men listened for results of the lottery.

Hanging blankets provided a family's only privacy. Children slept wherever they could find a spot. Wives and children were expected to work.

These stories might be considered backstory for the people interpreted at Fort George.  They worked because of their emotional resonance.  They provided a new layer of understanding about the fort’s soldiers and their families—those who came, those who stayed behind.

I’m hoping I can do as good a job of choosing bits of backstory to leave in my novel.

Old Friends

Scott and I visited Old World Wisconsin yesterday.  The site is a beautiful place to wander in autumn, and I wanted to say hi to several old friends still working in the interpretive ranks.   I was delighted to find Jean Hornburg busy cooking in the 1860 Schulz house.

Jean Hornburg, Koepsell House, Old World Wisconsin, 1982

Jean and I both started working at OWW in 1982, in the German area.  I had a shiny new college degree and could speak about diverse learning styles and Tilden’s principles of interpretation.   I’d cooked in a summer camp kitchen, so I knew how to make spaghetti for 120 people.

I had no idea how to bake bread in a woodstove.  Pluck geese.  Darn socks.  Grow rhubarb.  Etc., etc.

Jean, like many not-in-their-twenties interpreters, brought a tremendous store of practical knowledge to work with her, and kindly helped me figure out what needed to be done.  We worked within the parameters of our interpretive plans, of course.  But some of the most important skills an interpreter needs can’t be learned from books and reports.

Yesterday, Jean was explaining to visitors how the Schulz family might have preserved their garden bounty in 1860.  One of the things I loved in my time at OWW was watching storerooms fill with produce from the gardens.  Perhaps it was genetic memory, or perhaps simply empathy with the people I spent my days discussing, but it was enormously satisfying to complete a successful harvest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Sanford farm yesterday, Scott and I got into a discussion with two interpreters about the renewed interest in gardening and preservation processes.   In this era of tight personal finances, and with the growing interest in the local food movement, visitors are discovering that the stories they hear at historic sites can have enormous relevance today.

Me at the Schulz House, 1982.

That’s certainly true for me.  I’ve often mentioned how details from my OWW experiences find their way into novels.  What I learned is still resonating in my personal life too, however.

I don’t live on a farm, but Scott and I are trying to live as lightly on the planet as possible.  Many of the skills I learned during my site years—gardening, canning, baking, handwork—are still serving me well.

So:  in case I never expressed my gratitude at the time, I’m saying thanks to Jean Hornburg, Bobbie Brandenburg, Bea Peyer, and many other people who were patient with me during those early years.

Jean Hornburg and me, Schulz House, 2009.

Mark My Words

MARK MY WORDS, at the Pump House Regional Arts Center in La Crosse, WI

When I worked at Old World Wisconsin, I read every account left by 19th-century immigrants to the Upper Midwest that I could find.  These diaries, letters, and reminiscences continued to be relevant (and compelling) after I took a job developing and scripting instructional video programs for Wisconsin Public Television.  Most recently, while writing a novel about Swedish immigrants (The Runaway Friend), I went back to archives and local history collections to see what else I could find.

I’ve been developing a collection of poetry about immigrant experiences.  I was honored to have one of my poems, “Facing Forward,” chosen for the MARK MY WORDS exhibition at the Pump House Regional Arts Center in La Crosse, WI.  The exhibit organizers selected twenty poems and twenty artists, and asked each artist to create a piece in response to one of the poems.

My poem is about a Norwegian immigrant couple starting a new life.  I wrote “Facing Forward” to honor those women who faced inconceivable hardships, but still took joy and strength from Wisconsin’s landscape and opportunities.

Facing Forward

In the old world, Emil muttered prayers over trenchers
of lutefisk, peered at the sky and sniffed the air to decide
when to plant potatoes, counted coins before Rilla shopped.
She tended her hearth as she’d been raised to do, an endless
chain of chores, and worn-fingered women doing them.

In the old world, when the hungry time came,
rye crop blackened with rust, children whimpering,
empty bellies and purses, Emil said We will go.
Rilla wept to leave her mother and sisters, lefse and cod,
smoke-stained village, mossy gravestones, all she knew.

In the new world, walking west, Rilla bore weight:
an unborn child in front, the toddler on her hip, worry.
When the oxen foundered she knotted her mother’s
kale seeds and candlesticks into the shawl
tied over one shoulder, and hefted the rifle too.

But in the new world Rilla walked with a step lighter
than heels rubbed raw, feet on fire, muscles’ ache,
sunburned skin.  She walked toward the prairie,
the unexpected promise of possibility, new grace
in her heart, a life not defined before her wedding day,

while Emil trudged behind, dragging an anvil
of doubt and fear, missing his father,
looking over his shoulder; but looking forward, too,
toward the woman he once knew, wondering
what he’d lost, and how she’d come to find it.

Reading "Facing Forward" at the MARK MY WORDS reception

“Facing Forward” was given to Monica T. Jagel.   Monica, a certified botanical illustrator who works primarily with colored pencils, does exquisite work.  I spent months wondering how she would illustrate a poem that covers travel from one continent to another!

The artist, Monica T. Jagel. What talent!

Last Saturday evening, my husband Scott and I attended the opening reception for MARK MY WORDS.   Seeing my poem hanging beside a gorgeous work of art was one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me as a writer.

Monica made an unexpected choice.  Instead of simply illustrating my poem, she chose to continue the story.  In her own words:  “Now time has passed, the struggle is over.  The kale seeds were planted and harvested.  Her memories are carved in stone but the future holds possibility.  This strong woman can rest with the warm light from her candlestick that she has carried so far.  She is Facing Forward.”

I love it.

Facing Forward, by Monica T. Jagel. All rights reserved.

If you look closely, you can see a map of Scandinavia “hidden” on the tombstone.  Monica also told me that in order to paint the kale, she called Seed Savers Exchange, ordered the oldest variety of kale they had, and grew some in her garden.

Heartfelt thanks to Monica; also to Lynne Valiquette and the rest of the MARK MY WORDS committee for putting the exhibition together.

At the reception, poets read their work, and artists explained how the poems inspired theirs.  The collaborative effect is fascinating!  The show will be at the Pump House Regional Arts Center through November 14.  From there it will move to the La Crosse Public Library.  If you’re traveling through the area, check it out!

Whitewater Canal State Historic Site

When I was a kid, I attended a summer camp perched on a steep rise above the C&O Canal near Sandy Hook, Maryland.  We hiked miles and miles along the shady towpath, finding the ruins of old lockhouses, and wood ducks, and all kinds of adventures along the way.  Later, during one very rainy spring break, my friend Ruth and I biked the entire length of the canal.  So my fondness for canals goes way back.

In fact, my first published book, The Night Riders of Harpers Ferry, is set along the C&O Canal.  During one long Wisconsin winter, the writing process took me back—at least in my imagination—to some of my favorite haunts.

Replica packet boat, Whitewater Canal State Historic Site, Indiana

All those memories came back last weekend, when I visited the Whitewater Canal State Historic Site in Metamora, Indiana.  Visitors to Metamora can take a short ride on a replica packet boat, the Ben Franklin III.   What struck me the most was the peaceful sensation of silently gliding along the waterway.   It wasn’t hard to imagine the lure of 19th-century canal life.

The Whitewater Canal was conceived in 1836, when Indiana legislators passed the Internal Improvements Act to help entice new white settlers and business to the area.  Unfortunately, the state of Indiana actually went bankrupt in the 1840s, and private investors had to take over the canal project.

In my own travels along canals and towpaths, I’ve been most fascinated by the lives of those who worked the boats and the locks.  The guide on the Ben Franklin III did talk of those people.  (I learned that fistfights sometimes broke out among rival boatmen wanting first passage through a particular lock.)

Today, Belgians do the work once done by mules.

However, he spoke most about the men who built the canal.  Most of them were Irish laborers who had fled famine in Ireland, working for years to pay off their passage to America.  It took eleven years to build the canal (which then operated for only eleven years.)   Some men, perhaps those with big families, were still in debt when the canal was finished; they were then assigned to labor on one of the new railroads.  The guide made me wonder what life was like for these men and their families.  Poor, illiterate, more likely to rent shabby shacks than to own homes, they left little evidence of their personal lives behind.

I actually touched on this topic in another book, Retreat From Gettysburg, which is about an Irish-American boy in the canal town of Williamsport, Maryland.  That book is set during the Civil War, however, and explores different themes.   If I ever write another book set along a canal, I’ll dig a little deeper into the lives of those immigrants who gambled their future on new lives as laborers in America.  And the next time I walk or bike along a canal towpath, I’ll remember the men who sweated to provide me such a pleasant outing, all these years later.

The Gift of Bees

Little House in the Big Woods

Growing up a pastor’s kid in suburban Baltimore, I knew almost nothing about the Midwest and it’s history.

What little I did know I gleaned from books.  Like thousands of other American girls growing up in the 1960s, my first exposure came from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series.   My hardcover copies, graced with Garth Williams’ lovely illustrations, still have a place of honor on my bookshelf.

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, is rich with the details of life for this family as they made their home in Wisconsin.  For example, I remember being intrigued by the descriptions of Pa getting honey from “a bee tree.”  Before reaching the honey, he needed to chase away a hungry bear.  Pa brought home a wagon’s worth of honey in pails and buckets, two washtubs, and a washboiler, all “heaping full of dripping, golden honeycomb.”

Caroline and Charles Ingalls

Laura felt sorry for the bees.  “But,” Ingalls Wilder wrote, “Pa said there was lots of honey left for the bees, and there was another large hollow tree nearby, into which they could move.”

This scene, like so many in the book, firmly places the Ingalls family’s endeavors within not just their own clearing, but the surrounding natural environment.  To fully appreciate their experience, readers must imagine much more than the methods used to harvest wheat or churn butter, or the joy taken from family gatherings.  As the book’s title makes clear,  the little farm was a tiny part of a much larger historical landscape.

When I started working at Old World Wisconsin, many memories from the “Little House” books suddenly became relevant.  I kept a journal in those early years.  Here’s one July entry:  “I came upon a swarm of bees today as I walked the path from Schulz to Koepsell (two farms in the German area).  I heard them first, and looked up.  They were dark against the sky, and quickly disappeared over the trees.  Their buzzing song was wonderful.”

Twenty-six years have passed since I saw those bees.  I spend a lot of time outdoors, but I have never again seen a swarm passing overhead.

The historians responsible for designing the layout of Old World Wisconsin might have clustered the buildings together, creating an “architectural park” to display the 19th-century homes and service buildings.  Instead they chose to spread the buildings out among the Kettle Moraine’s ponds, prairies, and woods.  Their choice ensured that visitors—and interpreters—can get at least glimpses of the natural world that the people who lived in those homes understood intimately.

No visitors were in sight when I saw the swarm that summer day.  Since I couldn’t share the moment, I simply savored the unexpected dark swirl against the sky, and its “buzzing song.”  One more detail from Little House in the Big Woods shifted from imagination to experience.  And I came one minuscule step closer to understanding the world of the immigrants I spent my days interpreting.

Inarticulate

A cabin at the Hensley Settlement

The southern Appalachians hold a special place in my heart.  A few years ago I finally had the chance to visit the Hensley Settlement, within Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.  This community on Brush Mountain, established in 1904, remained home to two extended families until 1951.   It is remote, accessible only by an eight-mile hike or a guided tour via a small park service van.  Once on the mountain a visitor can look across the way, or out of a cabin window, and see a landscape completely devoid of modern intrusions.

The ranger providing the tour on the day I visited did a superb job of bringing the settlement to life in our imaginations.  I found one offhand comment particularly intriguing, though.  After showing us the trap door to an interior root cellar, she said, “The man who built this cabin must have loved his wife.  He didn’t want her to have to go outside to fetch potatoes in the winter.”

In my motel room that night, I thought about her remark.  How else might someone in this time and place have demonstrated their feelings?  (Authors think about such things a lot, since “show, don’t tell” is hammered into our brains at every workshop and critique session.)

I began scribbling.  The result was the following poem.

“Inarticulate, 1908″

He never said he loved her,
but he dug a ‘tater hole by the hearth
so she wouldn’t have to go outside.
He split extra rails, and stuffed hay in the deep fence angles
to catch snow before it drifted across her path
when she fetched eggs in bitter dawns.
He ordered a cookstove at the valley store
and groaned it up the mountain
with a stout sled and team of oxen,
and he built a fire at four each morning
so the kitchen was warm when she started breakfast.

She rarely met his gaze,
but she made twelve-layer apple stack cakes
because his eyes crinkled at the corners when he ate them.
She scrubbed sand into wide popple boards
with a break-back broom so the floor
stretched smooth white beneath his boots.
She chopped her own kindling so he’d have time
to play his fiddle on summer evenings.
She saved flour sacks’ shiny blue liners
and papered the wall by his pillow
so the firelight glowed pretty as he drifted to sleep.

They never rose above their raisin’ with fancy talk,
just pondered the night-dazzled skies and knew
she had captured the stars in her apron,
he the moon in his sickle-scarred hands.

(Originally published in Appalachian Heritage)

Coming full circle

That's me, churning butter at the Schultz house back in 1982

In 1982, I went to work for an historic site called Old World Wisconsin.  It is an amazingly wonderful site–over fifty historic structures moved to a sprawling tract within the Kettle Moraine State Forest, in southeastern Wisconsin.  I was hired as Second Lead interpreter in the German area, which at that time consisted of three fully restored farms.  Later I moved behind the scenes, and ultimately served as Curator of Interpretation and Collections.

I worked at Old World Wisconsin for twelve years.  During those years I developed my writing skills, as well.  What better training could someone writing historical fiction ask for?  After I left Old World, I often relied upon memories as I wrote historical novels.  Did one of my characters need to warp a loom, harvest heirloom cucumbers, bake in a brick oven?  Check.  Did I need to describe the feel of flax fibers, the shadows in a room lit by an  oil lamp, the taste of currant kuchen, the rattle of a threshing machine?  Check.

Over the past decade, I’ve written eight historical mysteries for young readers.  A few years ago, I decided to write an adult mystery set at Old World Wisconsin.  My fictional protagonist, Chloe Ellefson, is Curator of Collections.  The year is 1982.  Old World Wisconsin came back to life in my mind as I wrote the book.  I started visiting the site again, and remembering how much I loved working there.

The book took a long time to finish because I was under contract for other projects, and had to work around those deadlines.  But I did finish it.  And I’ve been offered a contract for it.  So now, I’m looking forward to returning to Old World Wisconsin–in print.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about historic sites in general.  The stories they tell.  The stories they inspire.  Hence the blog.   I hope you’ll visit often!