History and Mystery…

I was divorced when I was 23 and my children were babies , one  12 months old  and her sister 12 days old.  (They’re nearly 2 and 3 in the photo above!)  I was trained only as a portrait painter, had no alimony or child support to see me through, and didn’t think my babies would appreciate living in a garret while I tried to write the Great American Novel, although that was my only and forever dream.

 

So naturally I got a job in advertising and stayed in the business world for a number of  years!   I’d like to tell you a little about how my dream finally managed to come true, so you don’t lose hope that yours will, too.  But to do so I must go back even further than my childhood, back in fact, to 1874.

 

Ireland

In that year, in the workhouse in a small village in Ireland, my grandfather was born.  According to family legend, he was the illegitimate child of a titled young Anglo-Irish aristocrat and a maid in the great manor house in which they lived.  (The house pictured here is just one example of the beautiful dwellings of those times.)

 

My grandfather always maintained that despite his illegitimacy, his father loved him… taught him to ride and to understand horses… taught him the manners befitting a gentleman… kept mother and child in a small house on the great estate.  His father even promised that someday, when he had money of his own (being a younger son in those days was not a lucrative condition)… someday, he would marry the woman he loved and acknowledge his son.  He would take them both to America.

 

Sadly, that was never to be, for my grandfather’s father was killed in a riding accident, the boy was sent to an orphanage, the unwed mother forced to go to America to be a housemaid in New York City.

 

Beyond those rudimentary facts I knew nothing more of the story, for my grandfather was ashamed of his illegitimacy and would never name his father’s family or discuss his past in detail beyond what I’ve just told you.  But the story (spoken in hushed tones by others) was a powerful one for me… powerful enough to lodge itself in my subconscious for several decades.

 

So Many Partings

 

Then one night I had a most peculiar, un-dreamlike dream.  It began with a story like the one I’ve just told you, but with a different cast of characters.  And it didn’t stop where my grandfather’s story had… instead it went on to America and the fight for scarce laboring jobs  between the Irish and the Italians… to the struggle for unionization of the New York City waterfront… it touched on power politics, and on the travails of a beautiful young madam and the men who loved her.  In short, it wasn’t  my grandfather’s tale any longer, but it had grown to be the beginning of a saga and a love story.

 

From Cosmetics to Characters

I got up out of bed and started writing… and I never stopped until So Many Partings was done.  The hard part was to find time in my life that didn’t belong to somebody else – my husband, my daughters, my business.  You see, in my real life, as my children would call it, I ran my own advertising and marketing agency.  My specialty was helping people invent cosmetics and fragrance brands.  Over the years, I’d helped La Prairie, Chanel, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Yves St. Laurent, Armani and quite a few others.

 

I think I’d probably subverted my need to write stories into the image-making of these brands.  When you create a cosmetic or fragrance, you must invent a dream to walk into… I found that only in the hours between 4:30 and 7 a.m. did no one need me or want me, so that became my private time to write my novel.

 

A Book is Born

 

My characters became so much part of my psyche, their loves and hates and triumphs and tragedies so real to me that I felt an inordinate sense of obligation to them.  I carried the finished So Many Partings manuscript back and forth with me for five days before I could find the courage to let it out of my hand so an agent could even read it!

 

Just in case you think I’m complaining – trust me, this wasn’t martyrdom, it was pure joy and freedom to fulfill a lifelong dream.  To be able to leave the here-and-now at will and go to another time and place… to partake of dock strikes and Tammany politics, of houses of ill repute and four generations of love stories… was a monumentally, blessedly, pleasurable gift from the Gods and was grateful.

 

I still am!

 

Research

 

I interviewed longshoremen and learned of Andrew Furuseth, a hero I’d never heard of before… who became a character in my tale… I studied the tenements on the waterfront… I learned how little girls were taken in by brothels when their parents died and landlords would force them out into the mean streets no matter how tender their age, leaving them destitute on the streets of New York.  Their only hope to be picked up by gangs or brothels.

I delved into Tammany Hall and  the politicians like Boss Tweed who kept the immigrants alive…

in return for their votes.

 

I followed the fate of the Irish immigrants who rose from the desperate poverty of “no Irish need apply” to the heights of the American political scene.  I loved every single minute of the adventure – my only fear that once I was done, no one would ever read my story.

 

The Miracle

 

So Many Partings made the New York Times bestseller list and my life as an author began.  It was the life I’d always dreamed and it has never ceased to be that for me.

 

To all of you out there who are so kindly responsible for carrying this dream of mine the last few feet of the way by reading my stories, I’d like to thank you for caring and for  writing to  me … it’s the greatest pleasure on earth to have the chance to be with you in this world of storytelling, in which miracles still do happen and dreams still do come true.

 

 

Buy the So Many Partings e-book today!

 

 

 

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