An Absence So Great: A Novel (Portraits of the Heart) Read online

  Lilly never married either. The story is told that her long-term beau finally convinced her to marry him after years of asking. She’d resisted because he had a tendency to drink. The night she agreed to marry him, he celebrated with pals and drank the first beer he’d had in years. She found out and called off the marriage. I do have a postcard written to her by a Joseph and signed “Joseph 4 Ever.”

  After my uncle Stan married, he helped build two houses side by side in the Minneapolis area: he and his family lived in one, and Roy and Lilly lived in the other.

  Many of the smaller details are true as well: Lilly was the secretary of the Stott Company Young Women’s Industrial Association; the North-Western School for Stammerers was in Milwaukee (a piece of history I discovered on a penny postcard, and later I found the winter program for the school on eBay); my grandmother worked for “a healer in Winona,” and Ralph Carleton was such a minister, whose activities were reported in the paper.

  Russell married a woman who had gotten his name when, like many soldiers, he wrote his name on a piece of paper to toss from the train window. Young women then wrote to the soldier whose paper they picked up. He lived in Winona all his life and was an electrician who loved photography. One of his children, Patricia Butenhoff, worked for the Republican-Herald as a proofreader. Winnie married and had children and also lived along the Mississippi River near Winona. Robert, too, worked as an electrician and raised his children in Winona. One of his daughters, upon her marriage, lived in the house near the railroad tracks, and both Molly and Bruce, two of his children, were wonderful resources for this novel.

  My grandmother Jessie died in 1990, at the age of ninety-eight, leaving numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren to mourn her passing.

  What do you hope a reader will take away from this book?

  I hope they hear a story about listening to one’s heart, learning from missteps, and redeeming grievances—though not without cost. I hope people consider the talents they have and how they’ve invested them. I hope this story affirms that accepting the gift of forgiveness is the hardest yet most meaningful work of the human spirit. And I hope that readers might use the story to consider the absences in their own lives and hearts and to examine what actions they can take to fill them and thus cherish more deeply the relationships in their lives.

  What’s next?

  More stories about remarkable men and women, ordinary souls perhaps, but people who lived lives worthy of remembering. I feel so fortunate to have both the passion and the support necessary to research and write these stories. I hope readers keep reading them!

  Readers Guide

  By appointment, the author is available for phone interviews with book groups. Visit www.jkbooks.com to arrange a thirty-minute conversation with Jane, or visit www.waterbrookpress.com for more information.

  This book is titled An Absence So Great. What were the absences revealed in this story? How did each character attempt to fill the void? What worked? What didn’t work?

  How would you describe Jessie Gaebele’s efforts to be an independent woman working in a profession that largely excluded women in the early twentieth century? Do businesswomen today face similar challenges? How have things changed, and what has remained the same?

  What kind of isolating experiences did Jessie Gaebele impose upon herself while in Milwaukee and Eau Claire, and even in Winona when she had her own studio? Did she rebuild those barriers in Bismarck, or did she learn from her experiences?

  How would you respond to Mrs. Bauer’s remark: “Maybe that was the way for women: having time without a man around offered relief, but they didn’t ever dare say so, not even to themselves, for fear the thought violated heavenly law”?

  Do you think Jessie overreacted when she learned of ways Fred hoped to advance her career, to be helpful, as he put it? If talent is in part a currency meant to be invested, how did each of the characters invest their talents? Did Jessie misuse the “credit” and “meaningful deposit relationships” she’d established in her life? How else might she have handled the men who offered to assist her?

  What did each of the main characters want? Why is it so difficult for us to name our desires? What did you think about Jessie’s reliance on the proverb, “Desire accomplished is sweet to the soul”? What does that proverb mean to you?

  How would you characterize Fred Bauer? Was he unfaithful? Was Mrs. Bauer unfaithful to her vows? Was Jessie? How does emotional infidelity affect a relationship? What actions did the characters take to find new directions? Were they successful?

  Virginia Butler says, “It’s human nature to mistrust goodness. Part of our exile from Eden, I suspect. We have to be vigilant in remembering that we all mess up our houses. And with grace we’re allowed to straighten things up once again.” Do you agree with Virginia? Why or why not? Have you mistrusted goodness? Messed things up in your life? What brought you through to “straighten things up once again”?

  On top of the Missouri bluffs, Jessie says, “Unless she saw self-pity and envy and despair as acts of willfulness, she’d always feel set apart, never have the Guide she sought.” What do you think Jessie means? What sorts of acts keep us from spiritual wholeness? Is the trail back to wholeness from self-pity and envy different from the way back from other hurtful and self-destructive decisions we make in our lives?

  The author told this story through Selma’s letters, through Jessie’s photographs and her commentary about them, and through the third-person narratives of Jessie, Fred, and Mrs. Bauer. How did each of these elements move the story forward, or did they? Did you find that the letters or photographic commentary distracted from or enhanced the narrative? Did you see things revealed in the photographs that Jessie missed in her telling?

  When preparing to write this book, the author said her purpose was to prove that “accepting the gift of forgiveness is the hardest yet most meaningful work of the human spirit.” Did she accomplish her aim? Why or why not?

  AN ABSENCE SO GREAT

  PUBLISHED BY WATER BROOK PRESS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  Scripture quotations or paraphrases are taken from the King James Version.

  This book is a work of historical fiction based closely on real people and real events. Details that cannot be historically verified are purely products of the author’s imagination.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-45927-5

  Copyright © 2010 by Jane Kirkpatrick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  WATER BROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kirkpatrick, Jane, 1946–

  An absence so great : a novel / Jane Kirkpatrick. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Portraits of the heart)

  1. Women photographers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.I712 A64 2010

  813′.54—dc22

  2009040201

  v3.0