Empty

A year or so ago, the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville announced plans for an online literary journal.   I submitted five poems to the editor, and was pleased when they were accepted as a collection.  These poems are part of a larger collection I’ve been slowly assembling about 19th-century  immigrant women, and the varied experiences they had in the Upper Midwest.

Publication was delayed—not sure why—and the Driftless Review evolved into a blog, instead of a website.  Nonetheless, I’m delighted to announce that my poems have been posted.  If you’d like to take a look, the easiest thing to do is Google “Driftless Review” and my last name, which will get you to the proper string.

For now, I’ll share one of them here.  “Empty” was inspired by my time at Old World Wisconsin both in content, and in style.  On the surface, it’s the story of an immigrant woman.  But I tried to tell her story with images of her things, and her place, instead of with her own words.  When I was a curator, I might have tried to tell the same story by carefully choosing artifacts, and their placement within an historic structure.

An unidentified woman.

Empty

The immigrant trunk, where she’d tried to tuck
the essence of home—an embroidered collar,
her mother’s prayer book—among the fry pans
and hatchels and sturdy boots.

The cradle, after her daughter died.
Faded blue blanket gone for a shroud,
no lingering scent of urine or milk,
no echo of chortles or cries.

His seat at the table, too, more and more often
as the wheat was devoured by chinch bugs,
so thick on the ground that her boots crunched
as she walked the scoured field.

The jug as well, cast aside on the threshing floor
meant for sprawling piles of golden grain on canvas,
the measured tread of oxen or the rhythmic beat of flails,
baskets brimming with winnowed wheat.

And the cracked blue crock on the pantry shelf
where she tucked coins earned
selling her noodled geese on market day.
Empty now, set a bit off-angle, as if ashamed.

Creative Blogging

I’m stepping away from my usual focus because Amy Alessio nominated Sites and Stories for this award.  Thanks, Amy!

For this award, I have to share 7 new facts about me, and 7 blogs I like to read.  Okay, I’ll play!

Fun facts:
1.  I went to Forestry school at West Virginia University.
2.  While there, I once earned a blue ribbon in the Jack-and-Jill Crosscut Saw competition.
3.  I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years.
4.  I once spent two months hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
5.  My husband and I have driven all the way around Lake Superior.
6.  I wrote novels for 20 years before having one published.
7.  I’m an historic sites junkie (no surprise there, hunh?)

For my favorite blogs, I’ll provide an eclectic mix:

1.  Honestly, I have to start with Amy’s blog, Vintage Cookbooks.   Amy is a librarian extraordinaire, writer and editor, and busy mom…and she still somehow finds time to serve up a a fun blog of retro recipes.  The pictures alone often take me back to my childhood.  vintagecookbooks.blogspot.com.

2.  I’ve never met Meg Justus in person, but we’re on the same wavelength.  Her Repeating History blog features posts about writing, history, museum studies, the Pacific Northwest, traveling, national parks, geyser gazing, reading, quilting, gardening, meteorology, and the occasional cat.  Good stuff all.  mmjustus.blogspot.com

3.  The subtitle of Susan Tweit’s Walking Nature Home blog is “Living a green and generous life.”  Susan writes lyrically, and with deep honesty.   susanjtweit.typepad.com

4.  Sarah Johnson is another person who evidently does not sleep.  On her Reading the Past blog, she shares news, views, and reviews on historical fiction, old and new.   readingthepast.blogspot.com

5.  In the mood for something different?  Lee Lofland is a veteran police investigator, who now helps mystery writers get the details of law enforcement right.  He writes about cops, crooks, and crime scene investigation at The Graveyard Shift, which you can access through his website, www.leelofland.com

6.  Here’s a brand new blog that looks fascinating.  Scene of the Crime:  Focusing on Mysteries with a Spirit of Place will feature interviews with authors of mysteries and thrillers who have a particular connection with a city or locale.  jsydneyjones.wordpress.com.

7.   Finally, here’s one for knitters, especially those who are interested in the historical and cultural aspects of knitting.  Donna Druchunas covers it all on her Sheep to Shawl website and blog, and her books are wonderful too.  (And she’ll be guest blogging about ethnic knitting for me next week!)  www.sheeptoshawl.com/blog

A Single Pear

Last week I wrote about heirloom apples.  Well, yesterday Scott and I picked up our final box of fresh fruit from our CSA, Future Fruit Farm in Ridgeway, WI.   Among the varieties included was an Aurora pear. Ellen, who tends the orchard with husband Bob and daughter Selena, made a note in our newsletter:  ”We’ve been taking care of these trees for 28 years and this is the first year we have received fruit from them!  We got 1 bushel of these pears, so each member’s box includes one Aurora Pear.”

Aurora pear from Future Fruit Farm

Yikes.  Twenty-eight years.  I am in awe of Ellen and Bob’s patience and labor and faith.

The pear also reminded me of the passage I shared last week about Kristina, an immigrant woman who longed for a taste of her favorite apple.

When I searched for more information about Aurora pears, I quickly found a catalog description:  “Exceptionally high quality—maybe the world’s best.” (cumminsnursery.com)

The Aurora pear in our box was not fruit to be casually chopped into a crisp, or mushed into jam.  I sliced it up.  We savored each piece.  It was delicious.

Ready to enjoy.

Immigrant Apples

I am mourning the approaching end of fresh fruit for the year.  Soon Scott and I will get our final box from Future Fruit Farm. When we joined this Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, I knew we could look forward to local and organically-raised apples, pears, and plums. And that would have been plenty!

To my delight, some of the varieties we receive are also heirlooms, or antiques. Heirloom varieties have been documented and preserved for at least a century.  Many immigrants crossed the Atlantic with precious seeds tucked into their trunks, or even stitched into the hems of their garments for safekeeping.

Antique apples have far more taste and variety than varieties bred to look good over long transports.

I began learning about heirloom fruits (and vegetables and flowers) when I worked at Old World Wisconsin.  I also started reading immigrant fiction.  When Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg wrote the four novel suite The Emigrants, he used apples symbolically.  The stories follow Karl Oskar Nilsson and his wife Kristina as they leave  Småland for a new home in Minnesota.

Kristina, who never stops longing for Sweden, lies awake at night and remembers:  “Against the evening sky the young Astrachan apple tree stood out clearly—she had planted it herself….  Each autumn she had dug around the little tree; it had carried its first apples the last fall they were at home—big juicy apples with transparent skin; how many times she had gone out just to look at the apples; and how delicious they had been.”  (Unto a Good Land, Moberg)

Kristina, forever looking over her shoulder, is immortalized in Lindstrom, MN.

Karl Oskar grows an Astrachan tree, but it doesn’t bear fruit until Kristina is on her deathbed.  He brings her the first ripe apple, which she is barely strong enough to taste.  “It’s an Astrachan…!” she breathes.  “…Our apples our ripe.  I’m home.”  Those are her final words, and the apple falls to the floor.  (The Last Letter Home, Moberg)

Astrachan (Astrakhan) apples, which evidently originated in Russia and came to the United States from Sweden in the 1830s, were once very popular.  Unfortunately, the variety has fallen out of favor over the past few decades.  I haven’t yet had the opportunity to taste one, but I do enjoy the antique Winesap and Cox Orange Pippin apples I get from Future Fruit Farm.

When I make apple pies, I always use a recipe shared by German-American Otto Hilgendorf.  Two of his family farm’s outbuildings were moved to Old World Wisconsin in the 1970s, and when I began working in the German area in 1982, he sometimes visited. I’m very grateful that I had the chance to meet him.  I wish now I’d thought to ask him what kind of apple he favored, but I love thinking about his family—and all the other immigrants who cherished their apple trees—when I make pie.

Me and Otto Hilgendorf at Old World Wisconsin, 1982.

Otto Hilgendorf’s Sour Cream Apple Pie
Line a pan with your favorite pie pastry, and fill with apples.  (I don’t peel the apples, just core and cut and chunks.)

Mix 1 c. sugar with 1 T. flour, 1 T. cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. Sprinkle half of that mixture over the apples.

Spread 1 c. of sour cream over the apples, and sprinkle the rest of the sugar mixture on top.

Bake about one hour at 350 degrees, and serve cold.

Otto Hilgendorf's Sour Cream Apple Pie

Meet M.P. Barker

M.P. Barker

I met M.P Barker last summer, when she and I sat on the J/YA panel at the Historical Novel Society Conference.  I knew right away that we spoke the same language.

M. P.  got a firsthand taste (sometimes literally) of nineteenth-century New England rural life when she worked as an interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village (OSV), Massachusetts.  There she milked cows, mucked out barns, and found inspiration for her historical novel, A Difficult Boy (Holiday House, 2008).  When she left OSV, she became an archivist at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum, which provided more fodder for her fiction.

A Difficult Boy is set in 1839.  Nine-year-old Ethan does not want to be an indentured servant, but his family has no other way to pay off their debts.

Q:  Were you writing, or thinking of writing, historical fiction while working as an interpreter?  Or did that come later?

Interpreters' days aren't filled only with chores!

A:  Actually, I was thinking of NOT writing historical fiction when I was an interpreter.  To begin with, I didn’t start thinking about writing fiction at all until I was in my last few years at OSV.  Being a novelist had been a childhood dream that I’d laid aside when I was in my teens as impractical and  unrealistic (so what did I go and do? I majored in English and history and went to work at OSV.  Talk about impractical and unrealistic!!)

I started playing around with fiction again when I was in my 30s, not thinking I’d ever get published, but mostly to entertain myself.  And when I started, I was terrified of writing  historical fiction BECAUSE of working at OSV!  The more I learned there, the more I realized I could get wrong. And I’d have no end of merciless mockery from my co-workers for it!  But then the idea for A Difficult Boy came to me, and the characters insisted that I get over it and tell their story.

A DIFFICULT BOY

Q:  You mention that an archival document sparked the idea for A Difficult Boy.  What was that?

A:  The document was an 18th-century bill sent to the parents of an indentured boy from the boy’s master after the boy had run away.  The master apparently chased the kid down and brought him back, then billed the parents for his expenses—use of a horse, overnight stays in a tavern while chasing the kid, court costs, and so on.  And to top it off, he billed them for the value of seven months’ lost labor for the time the boy was missing.  The bill was about $1500-1600 in today’s money.  It made me wonder why the boy ran away, what the  relationship was between the master and servant, and how the parents were going to pay the bill.  At the time, I was in a writing group, and I decided to use the master and servant in one of the writing exercises that we were asked to do.  I moved them into the 1830s, because I knew that era better than the 1770s.  I kept returning to those characters, and pretty soon others developed, and a bunch of random scenes and character sketches eventually evolved into a story.

Q:  I appreciated how skillfully you wove in some ideas that were perhaps secondary to the plot trajectory, but so true to the period.  For example, reading A Difficult Boy made me think about how hard life would have been for a person with dyslexia, or a person with severe vision problems.   Did you have any particular inspiration for including those things?

A:  Thanks, Kathleen!  On the surface, I needed to have the villain bamboozle a couple of characters, so giving them dyslexia or poor eyesight was a convenient way of doing that! But it wasn’t just a convenient plot device; I think that giving these characters two fairly commonplace problems that we consider fairly manageable today really makes the contrast between past and present more immediate and personal to readers.

I also wanted readers to grasp the idea that 19th-century people aren’t just like 20th or 21st-century people wearing funny clothes and doing without electricity.  They actually thought differently from modern Americans.  I’m always fascinated by—and thankful for—how our perception of people with mental and physical challenges has changed by leaps and bounds since the 1830s.  And those changes are perhaps even more significant than the technological changes.

Garden, Old Sturbridge Village

Q:  I’m guessing that the excellent descriptions of agricultural life emerged from your memories of your time at OSV.  Are there other aspects of the book that you can trace to your interpretive years?

A:  Lots!  There’s Nell.  (For those who haven’t read the book yet, Nell is a particularly obnoxious cow).  She’s the only character in the book who’s based on a real, um, being.  We had this brindle cow at OSV who would kick or hook you as soon as look at you, and gave you a devil of a time to milk.  So I put her in the story.  Everyone who worked on the Freeman Farm immediately recognizes her when they read the book!

M.P. Barker at Old Sturbridge Village

While at OSV I did research on peddlers in New England to provide information for interpreters who would role-play as storytelling peddlers.  Some of that research went into the character of Mr. Stocking.  Also, the lines from the songs that Mr. Stocking sings during the horse race are altered versions of tunes I learned in the OSV Singing School.

In one scene, Ethan teaches Daniel to play some games, like ninepins (bowling) and shuttlecock (badminton).  Ethan doesn’t have any proper game pieces, though, so he makes his ninepins by standing kindling wood on end, and he whittles down a beet to make a bowling ball.  Ninepins and shuttlecock were among the games that were demonstrated at OSV—with proper 19th-century equipment, of course.  I think the beet-and-kindling-wood version was inspired by a similar game of ninepins that a couple of friends of mine played in the barn, except that instead of a beet they used a particularly stony loaf of bread for their bowling ball.

Q:  Your figurative language is beautifully anchored in the time period.   (Ex., “Lizzie’s stained and faded brown flannel dress was the color of an overdone Indian pudding.)  Did you work particularly on those details at some point in the writing process, or did you find them presenting themselves in the flow of writing?

M.P. Barker, former interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village

A:  A little bit of both.  Sometimes I could see the scene very vividly as I wrote, and I just described what was in my imagination.  At other times the dialogue came first, and I really didn’t have a good sense of what the setting was.  Then I’d go back later and figure out where the characters would be speaking, what they were wearing, what they might be doing while
they talked, their gestures, etc., and I’d add those details in later.

Q:  What’s next?

A:  I’m working on a sequel to A Difficult Boy in which Daniel joins up with Mr. Stocking, the peddler, and they join a traveling show.  Complications ensue involving a runaway child, an East Indian mystic and conjurer, Irish railroad workers, six dancing ponies, and a rope dancer.  I’m having a much harder time with this second book because the story and settings are more complex than in the first one.  I keep saying “I’ll have it done in three months,” and then the three months go by and I’m still nowhere near finished.  I’m nearly finished with a second draft, but it’s still very VERY rough, and I need to go back and do LOTS of rewriting and filling in research holes.

***

A Difficult Boy was named an International Reading Association Notable Book for a Global Society, and a PEN New England Children’s Book Caucus Discovery Award winner.  For more information about M.P., see her website:  www.mpbarker.net or visit her blogs at mpbarker.livejournal.com OR mpbarker.blogspot.com.

The Spirit of Christmas Past

Old World Wisconsin began offering a Christmas program in the late 1980s.   As curator of interpretation, I was lucky enough to have a role in researching and presenting the special event.  We knew that holiday programming could easily become more about fostering nostalgia than presenting accurate impressions of Christmas past, so we approached the research carefully.

A new edition of a classic.

Before beginning the project, my own images of early Midwestern Christmases were once again fostered by my memories of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series.    The pictures painted in those books do convey a time when children were truly grateful for what many or most American children would consider the tiniest of trifles:  gifts made from scraps, the thrill of finding a penny in a Christmas stocking, a Sunday-school Christmas tree, the joy of sharing the day with family and friends.

Could Old World’s Christmas program convey an accurate picture of life for the families we interpreted, and still satisfy visitors?  Would high-tech kids be too cool to appreciate the joy children once took from a single piece of candy?  Would evidence of simple celebrations disappoint adults who might arrive with particular expectations?

Me at the Ketola Farm. (All photos in this post were taken about 1990.)

Old World Wisconsin’s geography limited the possibilities for winter programming.  The Crossroads Village, the Sanford Farm (Yankee) and the Ketola Farm (Finnish) were the only exhibits within easy walking distance of the Visitor Center.  Even so, those provided enough diversity to let interpreters help visitors compare and contrast what they were seeing.   Visitors experienced holiday traditions ranging from 1860 to 1915.  They got a sense of community celebrations at St. Peter’s Church, and family festivities in the rural, northwoods Ketola home.   They could think about how the holiday was observed by families with different income levels and social aspirations.

Most concerns I might have had about Christmas programming conjuring images of something “simpler and better” evaporated that first December.  Every interpreter (and historical novelist, perhaps) should have the chance to work in their historic structures in the winter.  Two words:  cold, and dark.

Renee Raduechel, left, and a colleague heading to work.

We all quickly learned which buildings got cozy with the wood stove going, and which never, ever warmed up (by modern standards, anyway).  Visitors’ comings and goings had a lot to do with that, of course, but I remember well the difficulty in simply preparing certain buildings for the event.   If the temperature was too low, or the winds too strong, no amount of wool clothes and firewood kept us warm.

Mary Kilps Ramstack, Benson House.

Similarly, days were short.  Oil lamps and candles may be pretty, but they give precious little light if you really need to get something done.   The cold and dark were things I had always understood intellectually, but getting even a little real experience made an impact.

The Sanford House is beautiful, hard to heat, and hard to illuminate well.

And it did for visitors as well (although it was more noticeable to the interpreters, who couldn’t keep moving or wear down parkas).  Even bundled up, upon entering a building visitors often headed straight for the stove.  Even knowing they were entering a period structure, they sometimes reached for nonexistent light switches.  Cold days made people think about the difficulty of travel before the advent of cars.  Warmer days brought slushy mud, helping guests imagine the challenge of keeping floors clean with water hauled from a pump outside.  Visiting in December provides a visceral experience that can’t be duplicated.

Many churches used evergreens to create Bible verses. The tree is laden with gifts.

When I attended Old World’ Christmas programming this year, after a long absence, I was reminded of those things.  But I also had the chance to reflect on the other aspect of programming.   St. Peter’s Church was decorated and interpreted to reflect services described in early newspaper accounts, and the effect was lovely.  Visitors settled in to sing period carols.   Children made popcorn strings, then grinned with pride as an interpreter carefully added them to the tree.

In the historic homes, visitors lingered, enjoying the stories.  They sampled traditional baked goods.  They paused to reflect upon simple decorations.  Parents helped their children understand what they were seeing, and make connections to their own lives.  Grandparents told their own stories.

The Benson House parlor.

I am certainly biased.  Still, I think the site does a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of Christmas past—the challenges, the charms.   Put a visit on your 2010 calendar.  You won’t be sorry.

Specific Sensory Details

I don’t think I’ve ever taught a writing class without invoking that phrase.  How can an author whisk a reader into another time or place, without bringing the action to a clattering halt with a data dump of description?  Invoke the senses.  Sifting a few fresh details into a  scene can instantly bring it to life in a reader’s imagination.

I was reminded of that when Scott and I visited Old World Wisconsin’s Christmas program last Sunday.  It was a great day weather-wise.  The Crossroads Village, Yankee Sanford Farm, and Finnish Ketola Farm looked charming with a dusting snow.

Some of the moments that are still most vivid, however, involved senses other than sight.  At St. Peter’s Church, we were treated to the sound of period music played on a 19^th-century pump organ….

Bea Jacobson at the pump organ, St. Peter's Church.

and a cornet.

Ed Pierce, playing an 1855 cornet, St. Peter's Church.

Anne Danko, preparing a holiday meal in the Sisel kitchen.

At the home of Bohemian immigrants, we were greeted with the sharp tangy scent of cooking cabbage.

“Something stinks!” a small boy said, as he stepped inside.

“Ooh, that’s good eating,” an elderly man countered.

Whatever the reaction, the smell triggered quick reactions.   Other food was being prepared as well, but the most pungent prompted the most comments.

The Finnish sauna smelled of smoke when we arrived, since a fire had been built among the sauna stones earlier that afternoon.

While we were inside the small structure, imagining the immigrants who once used the sauna in Wisconsin’s deep-snow northwoods, the interpreter poured water on the stones.

The sudden burst of steam could be heard, seen, and felt! That's Karl Kaphengst, tending the firepit.

We heard the hiss of cold water on hot stone.  We felt the dry air turn moist against our skin, as steam displaced the smoke.  We tried sitting on higher and lower benches, experimenting with the different temperatures.

I often suggest that beginning writers train themselves to collect sensory details by keeping a writing journal.  Every evening, write a brief description of something seen, heard, tasted, touched, and smelled.  It’s a fun thing for diarists or journalists to do, also.

Even after fifteen books, I often find that in rough drafts I’ve relied too heavily on visual description, and have neglected other senses.  Visits to sites like Old World Wisconsin help remind me how to build upon that foundation.

Old Stuff, and Stories

My first artifact. She's about 5" tall.

I bought my first antique when I was about nine.  No lie.  My family visited a doll museum while on vacation.  A case in the gift shop offered a few old dolls for sale.

The doll pictured here captured my heart.  As I recall, it was priced at about ten dollars.  That was a lot of money for a kid way back when, but I had to have her.  I think I blew my entire vacation stash that afternoon.

I loved the doll because she wasn’t perfect.  I imagined some long-ago little girl, heartbroken because an arm somehow got broken from her beloved china doll.  I imagined the child tearfully stitching a new doll’s dress with one armhole.

In my world, artifacts are most valuable for what they have to say about the people who once made, owned, or used them.   That’s true for historical novelists, and it’s true for interpreters and reenactors.  Most objects don’t offer such tangible clues as my one-armed doll does.  But if we’re trying to engage readers and visitors, telling or suggesting stories can work magic.  Facts and lessons and themes can come once folks are intrigued.

What stories does this quilt tell? (Hoard Historical Museum collection)

Last Saturday, I showed my one-armed doll to 19 young historians.  We’d gathered for one of the “Calling All Scholars” programs offered by the Hoard Historical Museum in Fort Atkinson, WI.  What a joy—a room full of kids already excited about history!

A few items from the Hoard Museum collection.

Museum director Kori Oberle and I offered a variety of photographs and objects, and each child chose one of each.  With just a little guidance, most were soon scribbling away…finding their own stories in the artifacts and images.  It was awesome.

Some of the young scholars, creating their own stories.

They started by bringing a scene to life in their imaginations. Then they created a main character for that situation.

I hope some of the students went home and finished their stories.  And I hope that the next time they visit the Hoard Historical Museum, they wonder about the real people who inspired each exhibit, or left each artifact behind.  The next time you visit your local museum or historic site, why not give it a try?

The next generation of historical fiction writers, at the Hoard Historical Museum.

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.

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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.