The House of Closed Doors (45 page)

“Goodbye, Victory,” said Tess.

I said nothing, but set my face resolutely away from the familiar sights of home. What ties I had now were the ones I had chosen.

Author's Note

The genesis of this novel was a photograph in a local history book my husband gave to me as a Christmas present, one of those slim volumes full of pictures of times past. The photograph that stood out to me was the County Poor Farm, long since replaced by a very large nursing home (although the cemetery remains).

“What an interesting location for a novel,” I thought. “Especially if there were a murder…” and soon, by the strange alchemy of imagination, a cast of characters walked on to my mental stage and began supplying me with a story that was tremendous fun to write.

Nell’s home town of Victory and the Prairie Haven Poor Farm are entirely fictitious, although loosely based on a compilation of locations with which I am familiar. I have always been fascinated by enclosed communities, and the relative isolation of Victory (not yet connected to Chicago by railroad) is meant to mirror the more complete isolation of a Poor Farm set among prairie and cultivated fields. Each place has its own rules; they may not reflect with entire accuracy the social structure of any real historic place, but I hope they are plausible.

I’m a storyteller first and foremost, and on no account would I claim the noble title of historian. So please take any of the details contained in this novel with a large pinch of salt, and feel free to notify me of any disastrous mistakes. Naturally I’ve taken huge liberties with the weather, shaping the seasons to conform to my story with the exception of the hot, dry wind that carried the fire so swiftly over Chicago; that’s an unfortunate fact.

As background material for the Poor Farm I relied heavily on
Inventing The Feeble Mind
by James W. Trent (1995 edition), from which I learned about the work of Édouard Séguin, who, in the 1860s, was doing some important work in America to improve the lot of the “feeble-minded” by teaching independence and self-reliance via work and education. Although all the explanations of Monsieur Séguin’s work were edited out of the text because they got in the way of the story, Mrs. Lombardi is a dedicated follower of his methods; her rivals are intent on following the later 19
^th
century progression toward a more custodial (and abusive) model of institutional care.

I trust this explains why the Prairie Haven Poor Farm is such an unexpectedly enlightened and even happy environment. I can only hope such places existed, somewhere.

Tess, as some readers may realize, is a woman with Down Syndrome. I have the privilege of knowing many children and adults with Down Syndrome and have based her feisty, independent character on their abilities. I could not afford Tess a “label” other than the unpleasant 19
^th
century ones of “idiot” and “feeble-minded” because even the term “Mongoloid” would not have been in widespread use in 1871; Dr. Down described the syndrome in 1866 and the term “Mongoloid” comes from his belief that the genetic variation was a degeneration of the European race, which was trying to revert to an earlier, Asiatic type. A strange theory, but quite consistent with other 19
^th
century scientific misconceptions.

Other locations and events in this novel are as historically accurate as I could get them. The Chicago Fire, in particular, has been very well described and documented. My personal favorite among easily available books on the Fire is
The Great Chicago Fire
by Robert Cromie; get hold of the 1994 oversized, illustrated edition if you can.

I am not nearly as expert a seamstress as Nell, but
Dressed for the Photographer
by Joan Severa was a goldmine of details about the costumes worn by ordinary Americans in the mid- to late 19
^th
century.

And of course my thanks go out to all the many, many online sources of knowledge and anecdote. I wish I could have packed all the things I found out into the novel.

Acknowledgments

A self-published author may seem like the most independent of writers, with no agent, editor or publisher to answer to; but in truth I doubt many self-published books see the light of day without considerable input from others. This is certainly the case of
The House of Closed Doors
; I’m not sure what shape the novel would have taken without the critiques and encouragement of a number of writer friends who scrutinized problem scenes, acted as beta readers at a critical stage of the editing process, and generally cheered me on as I waded my way through the different levels of joy and gloom that accompany the creative journey.

So many people contributed, in fact, that I am hesitant to single out individual names for fear of forgetting someone. But I can’t
not
mention my critique partner Katharine Grubb, who returned to me a manuscript so heavily overwritten (in orange pen) that it almost glowed in the dark. I challenged her to be as picky as possible, and she rose to the occasion magnificently by putting every thought down on paper‌—‌it must have taken a very long time. For the rest of you‌—‌some know who you are, others may not even remember the advice they gave‌—‌just know that every suggestion, comment or incredulous reaction was carefully considered and the majority of them resulted in changes for the better.

As I neared publication I was incredibly fortunate to have the generous help of three expert professionals. Thank you Jill Battaglia for making my dream of a cover photo come to life; thank you Wayne Kijanowski for putting up with my vague design suggestions and building them into something more beautiful than I’d imagined; and thank you Joseph O’Day for making my text clean and consistent.

Thanks to the David Adler Music and Arts Center for letting me pretend they were the Poor Farm for the duration of a photo shoot, and to Kate and Philip Haslar for being Nell and Sarah for a few hours.

And, of course, thanks to my family for putting up with my many absences from family life and the blank stares that they received if they happened to come near me when I was writing, and above all for acting as if writing novels is a perfectly normal occupation.