Werewolves where? – Guest Post by Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shiver and Linger

Jul 192010

Maggie Stiefvater is the author of the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, the first two editions of which – “Shiver” and “Linger” – are available at your local bookstore. She is also the author of the A Gathering of Faerie series.

I get asked a lot about what it is that attracted me to the werewolf legend and how long I’ve been a fan of werewolves and what werewolf novels inspired me. I always feel a little silly when I have to tell readers that I really am not a werewolf person at all. I fell into them by accident — a fortuitous combination of me wanting to write a bittersweet love story and finding a werewolf short story contest at the same time. In my brainstorming for the contest, I put together the plot of Shiver, or “Still Wolf Watching,” as the short story was called. I wasn’t immediately sure that I could pull off an entire novel about werewolves. But I was sure of one thing: if I did, there would be no slobbering.

Technically, my werewolves are shape-shifters (at least that’s what they tell me), not true weres. Because when it’s winter, they are wolves; pure wolves, no touch of humanity. And when it’s summer, they’re humans; no touch of slobbering. I really didn’t want to write horror. I wanted to write about losing your identity, and I didn’t want to bury the pain of that behind a whole bunch of half-human half-wolf antics. It’s difficult to maintain a bittersweet mood when your protagonist’s lover is mauling a check-out clerk. But while being a wolf? Natural wolves are enigmatic and beautiful and sometimes cruel. They don’t need more spectacular special effects. The loss of conscious human thought is enough.

That’s not to say I didn’t read up on werewolves — but apart from laughing over some more hilarious bits of German legends, I found much more to love in wolf documentaries. No danger of me revamping Teen Wolf any time soon.

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Be sure to follow Maggie @mstiefvater and Kristi @thestorysiren before the party!
Anyone who tweets during the party using #Linger is entered to win a limited edition Linger tank top!
Watch for questions from @thestorysiren and win awesome prizes including an iPod Touch, Maggie’s artwork and gift cards!
To join the party, you can use our official party tweetgrid or just search #Linger on Twitter.
Ask Maggie questions or chat with other partygoers—just use the tag #Linger in all of your party tweets! (This is added automatically in TweetGrid.)
Please don’t post any spoilers and don’t forget to pay attention to the time zones, the party starts at 8:30pm EST.

Market Making – Guest Post by Richard C. Morais, author of “The Hundred-Foot Journey”

Jul 062010

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Richard C. Morais is the author of “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” which I reviewed yesterday and a reporter for Forbes magazine for 25 years. Please see the end of this post for a giveaway.

I learned the value of food as cultural commentary when I was Forbes’ European Bureau Chief, stationed in London. That job routinely parachuted me into remote cities in China, rural villages in Hungary, jungle outposts in Madagascar. The difficulty was, staggering jet-lagged off the plane, I had to quickly get up to speed to write a credible and accurate story on the country’s business or economic scene – even though I had never before set foot in the place. In other words, I had to learn how to convincingly and instantly fake it.

It was under this pressure to produce credible copy in far-flung corners of the globe that I developed my personal reporting technique: I always headed, first thing, to the local food markets and had a meal. When needing to quickly understand where a country is on the global scale of economic development, there is nothing like seeing and smelling and tasting the foodstuffs found at local markets, where the stalls are lorded over by colorful spice merchants, butchers, and fishmongers, and the very air of the market is filled with the farmers’ lively chatter and vicious gossip. It was like magic. You couldn’t help but absorb the country’s state-of-existence – right through your pores.

In the Ugandan capital of Kampala, for example, I went to Rufula, the city’s livestock market. Mesmerized, I followed brown-hide longhorns into the abattoir, where the walls were splattered with blood and the steers’ hacked-off hooves were stacked and sold as a culinary delicacy. An animal was felled before me, hoisted up on hooks and hauled along on chains. When the butcher’s ax fell into the steer’s chest cavity, blood splattered across my shirt. The sickly sweet smell of death hung in the air an stayed in my nostrils for the rest of the day.

From there I went to Nakasero, the vegetable market, where the teenage “coffee boys” guided the newly-arrived farmers, for a fee, to the merchants offering the highest prices for arabica and robusta beans. At the basket-filled spice market, a hallucinatory mix of bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and vanilla pods greeted me. Meanwhile, over in the 20 square blocks that made up the Owino Market, a kind of biblical-era department store, I watched fascinated as the locals got their hair cut and dyed in the open air. Under the flame trees, women sipping milky tea shelled beans and sold Nile Perch broth or a peanut sauce to go with a starchy-green banana mush called matoke.

It was through these markets that this hardscrabble African nation entered my soul, and the descriptions in the subsequent article made Forbes’ readers in New York or Seattle viscerally understand Uganda’s economic landscape, far more effectively than the dry recitation of per-capita GDP statistics every could.

My senses were aflame. That same trip, near the headwaters of the Nile River as it flowed from Lake Victoria, I had a lunchtime red-curry with the prominent Madhvani family. This was an entirely different sort of an experience. Here we dined on white tablecloths on the family’s homestead’s porch, overlooking their 25,000-acre sugar estate. Pointy-eared Scotties scampered through the garden; strutting peacocks shrieked and fanned their tales. In the far distance, the hills of Africa were airbrushed with a purple hue. The servants served us tea.

It is this tactile taste for ripe-smelling markets and savory meals that mysteriously came to my aid when I turned to fiction. Consciously or not, it helped my protagonist, Hassan Haji, find his way through the culturally diverse worlds of Bombay, London, Lumière and Paris.

The Power of Friendship – Guest Post by Beth Hoffman, Author of “Saving CeeCee Honeycutt”

May 182010

Thank you to Beth Hoffman for writing this piece for DevourerofBooks.com. I reviewed Beth’s novel yesterday and, let me tell you, it really made my day when I read it last week. For this post I asked Beth to simply write about what was nearest and dearest to her heart: friendship. Please read to the bottom for giveaway details.

One of the themes in Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is the undeniable power of friendship. True friends see our goodness and flaws, strengths and weaknesses, and they love us for who we are rather than in spite of what we might lack. Throughout my life I’ve valued my friends, and among the most important things I’ve learned is that friendships come in all sorts of surprising ways and shouldn’t be limited by differences in age, background, or race.

The formative years of my childhood were lived on my grandparents’ farm. It was a rural area and there were very few kids to play with, so I was raised among the easy, unhurried ways of older women. From my garden-loving grandma, to the widow who lived up the road and created hand-made paper dolls, to the wise African-American cook who worked for my great aunt Mildred, each one made an indelible impression upon me.

How blessed I was to be exposed to the simple yet oftentimes remarkable words of wisdom that came from interacting with women who had lived through decades that encompassed everything from unexpected joys and triumphs to unspeakable tragedies. Those day-to-day interactions gave me a foundation that has held me up ever since. Never have I heard more profound truths than those that were spoken in my grandmother’s big old kitchen during the hot, humid days of canning season.

Then came the day that I entered first grade. From the moment I took my seat in that tiny classroom, I found myself feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Who were these squealing little people in lace-topped socks and crisp gingham dresses, and what on earth did I have in common with them? I was so accustomed to interacting with older women that the giggling language of girls my own age left me tongue-tied. It took me a long while to adjust to my classmates, and even after I did, I was always glad to return to my grandmother’s kitchen where, as far as I could tell, things just made a whole lot more sense.

When I left my career in interior design and set out to write a novel, it never occurred to me that I would draw so heavily on the simple but rich experiences I had with my grandmother and her friends. But when a little girl named CeeCee arrived in my imagination and her story began to unfold in ways I never would have guessed, the years I spent surrounded by older women gave me the foundation to build upon—those were precisely the kinds of friendships that CeeCee needed during her summer of healing.

An email was forwarded to me not long ago, and as I read it I kept nodding in agreement. I’ve never been able to find out who wrote it, but it sums up so much of what I feel about friendship and I’d like to share it.

Girlfriends

Time passes.

Life happens.

Distance separates.

Love waxes and wanes.

Hearts break.

Careers end.

Parents die.

Colleagues forget favors.

Marriages collapse.

But …

Girlfriends are there no matter how many miles are between them. A girlfriend is never farther away than needing her can reach.

When you walk that lonesome valley and you have to walk it for yourself, your girlfriends will be standing on the rim, cheering for you, praying for you, and waiting with open arms at the valley’s end. Sometimes, they’ll even break the rules and walk beside you. Or, they’ll come in and carry you out.

The world wouldn’t be the same without them, and neither would I.

When we began this adventure called womanhood, we had no idea of the incredible happiness and sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we would need each other.

Every day, we need each other still.

Seeing What You Read: An Author’s Perspective – Guest Post from Kristy Kiernan, author of “Between Friends”

May 152010

Earlier this week, I told you a little bit about how I read, and asked how you read – specifically about whether or not you visualize characters as you read and, if so, if you use the author’s descriptions to do so – in my post entitled: “Seeing What You Read.” This post emerged from divergent opinions held by Natalie and I about the book “Between Friends” by Kristy Kiernan. Well, the topic elicited a fair amount of discussion, with people coming down on both sides of the issue. A few hours after I posted, I received an email from Kristy Kiernan, who had been following the discussion. She had written out a response, since this is clearly something she has a vested interest in, but hesitated to post it because it got quite long she didn’t want to kill the discussion (as an author posting occasionally is want to do). After a couple of emails back and forth, we decided that I would post her comments as a guest post. I think this is a worthwhile post both because it is interesting to see why she does not choose to describe her characters in detail and also because she raises some bigger questions about publishing and an author’s responsibility to be responsive to her readers. So, without further ado, I give you Kristy’s take on this topic:

It’s difficult to decide if I should pipe up here or not, as it was my book that sparked this discussion, but at the risk of being misread as defensive, I’d love to talk about this, too!

First a disclaimer: A writer is always (or at least by his/her sixth or seventh book!) aware that everyone has their own reading quirks and that s/he won’t always please everyone. The best we can do is to please ourselves first and hope we’re somewhere near the target for a large percentage of other people. I am a reader, first and foremost. I have opinions like any other reader, and that will naturally spill over into what I write. I have great respect for others’ opinions, and offer my own only to add to the discussion of a topic that interests me, a topic that I’ve given a good amount of thought to over the years, not as a defense of my choices as an author.

As a reader I completely skip over character description unless it’s integral to the plot for some reason. Like, say, it’s important to know some physical characteristics of Owen Meany. But other than that, it has been my reader experience that character description is often substituted for character development, and lack of character development is the main reason I will put a book down. I actively dislike it, and it is a deliberate choice to leave it out of my own books.

This is such a point with me, in fact, that I’ve even named it: auburn curls tumbling over the back of her green sweater syndrome. And it loses me as a reader every time. Tumbling auburn curls tell me nothing about a character. How she speaks to her family, how she goes about doing her job, how she feels about the choices she’s made in life, how she deals with the obstacles the author has deviously placed in her way–those are the things that give me a fully-rounded idea of who a character is.

And that takes time. Which, is, of course, why it’s called “development.” Characters are like friends to me, and I don’t care about what my friends look like (though all of mine are shockingly gorgeous, of course!). It has nothing to do with who they are, and who they are won’t be fully revealed to me until we’ve been friends for a while.

However, and this is a big however, this is certainly not the first time this particular criticism has been leveled at one of my books, and I do feel myself beginning to break. Unless you’re in a rarefied position in your publishing career, you’d be a fool to not take note of the things that seem to consistently crop up as issues for readers. And since criticism is nearly always more specific than praise (I frequently hear: “I didn’t like that I didn’t know what the characters looked like.” I rarely hear: “I loved that she left it up to me to visualize what the characters looked like.”), writers do tend to hear specific criticisms whispering in their ear when they start a new book.

So the question turns to: how much do you adjust your own writing style in order to please the largest number of readers? Is it selling out, or being smart? Is it capitulating, or is it learning? It’s a fine line, and it’s something that almost every writer I know struggles with.

Believe it or not, most of us do read nearly everything out there about our books. We read the reviews on Amazon and GoodReads and blogs, we read the responses, we read it all. And we want to please readers – heck, we want to please a lot of readers…or we simply won’t be in this business for long.

So, with my third novel published, and still hearing this criticism from readers (interestingly, I’ve never heard it from anyone within the industry itself, which brings up a whole other issue–are those in the industry in touch with what readers want?), there’s no question that it’s one of those choices I struggle with when writing my new book.

Do I actively change my writing style to suit more readers, despite the fact that I don’t personally like whatever it is? Or is that just stubborn? Am I saying I have nothing left to learn about how to write a book? That seems a little arrogant. Do I, instead, try to learn from it, and then look for a way to include it, but in a way that fits my style? After all, surely I don’t have to use tumbling auburn curls? If I’m talented, shouldn’t I be able to figure out how to balance the cheesiness factor of that kind of construction (my opinion) with my own, more subtle sensibilities?

And that’s where I’m at now. It’s been mentioned too many times for me to ignore it. I am not yet in that rarefied position in which I can. Few are, really, and even if I were, would I want to ignore readers? Another fine line. You can’t please everyone, and trying to is a mighty short trip to insanity.

I’m more than halfway through my new novel, and I have made an effort to include more character description, while trying to not use it as a crutch for character development. We’ll see how it goes.

I know I’ll be reading about it when it comes out though.

Catholicism and Perceived Witchcraft in Reformation-Era England – Guest Post by Mary Sharratt, Author of “Daughters of the Witching Hill”

May 112010

Please read through to the bottom of this post for giveaway details.

In 1612, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest in Lancashire, Northern England were hanged as witches, accused of committing murderous acts of diabolical sorcery. My novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is based on this tragic history.

The prosecution, wishing to provide evidence of this alleged satanic magic, cited the charms and spells of accused witch Mother Demdike’s family. (Mother Demdike, whose real name was Elizabeth Southerns, died in prison before she could come to trial, but she was the most notorious of the accused, the supposed ringleader who had initiated all the others.) Her charms, recorded in the trial transcripts, reveal absolutely no evidence of devil worship, but instead use the ecclesiastical language of the Catholic Church, the old religion outlawed and literally demonized in Reformation era England. Mother Demdike’s incantation to cure a bewitched person—quoted by her granddaughter Jennet Device, one of the main witnesses for the prosecution, and considered damning evidence of diabolical sorcery—is, in fact, a moving and poetic depiction of the passion of Christ, as witnessed by the Virgin Mary.

What is yonder that casts a light so farrandly,
Mine owne deare Sonne that’s naild to the Tree . . . .

In places, the text of this charm is very similar to the White Pater Noster, an Elizabethan prayer charm which Eamon Duffy discusses in his landmark book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580.

Her charm to get drink is in ecclesiastical Latin:

Crucifixus hoc signum vitam Eternam. Amen.

(Literal translation: the crucifix is the sign of eternal life.)

Mother Chattox, Demdike’s sometimes friend, sometimes rival, also employed charms full of this same Catholic imagery. The following is Chattox’s incantation to cure a bewitched person:

Three Biters hast thou bitten,
The Hart, ill Eye, ill Tonge:
Three bitter shall be thy Boote,
Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost
a Gods name,
Fiue Pater-nosters, fiue Auies,
and a Creede,
In worship of fiue wounds
of our Lord.

In modern language the last part would read: five Pater Nosters, five Ave Marias, and a Creed, in the worship of the five wounds of our Lord—the cunning woman would then say these prayers while contemplating the five wounds of Christ.

It appears that Mother Demdike and Mother Chattox were practitioners of Catholic folk magic that would have been fairly common before the Reformation. Pre-Reformation Catholicism embraced many practises that seemed magical and mystical. People used holy water and communion bread for healing. They went on pilgrimages, left offerings at holy wells, and prayed to the saints for intercession. Some practises, such as the blessing of the wells and fields, may indeed have Pagan origins. Indeed, looking at pre-Reformation folk magic, it is very hard to untangle the strands of Catholicism from the remnants of Pagan belief, which had become so tightly interwoven.

Unfortunately these cunning folk of Pendle Forest had the misfortune to live in a place and time when Catholicism was conflated with witchcraft. Even Reginald Scot, one of the most enlightened men of the English Renaissance and a great skeptic regarding witchcraft accusations, believed the act of transubstantiation, the point in the Catholic mass where it is believed that the host becomes the body and blood of Christ, was an act of sorcery. In 1645, in a pamphlet by Edward Fleetwood entitled A Declaration of a Strange and Wonderfull Monster, describing how a royalist woman in Lancashire supposedly gave birth to a headless baby, Lancashire is described thusly: ‘No part of England hath so many witches, none fuller of Papists.’ Keith Thomas’s social history Religion and the Decline of Magic is an excellent study on how the Reformation literally took the magic out of Christianity.

Mary Sharratt’s acclaimed new novel, DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL (my review), is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To learn more about her and the history of the Pendle Witches, visit her website: www.marysharratt.com

A Modern Working Mother – Guest Post by Nancy Woodruff, Author of “My Wife’s Affair”

May 092010

“My Wife’s Affair,” recently published by Amy Einhorn books, is the story of loving married couple Georgie and Peter. When the two move to London, Georgie plays Dora Jordan, mistress of King William IV, in a one-woman show. As Georgie begins to identify more and more with Dora, she has to question the assumptions of her life. I will be reviewing “My Wife’s Affair” later this summer.

My husband loves to tell people that I had one child in my twenties, one in my thirties, and one in my forties, suggesting that I am some sort of agelessly fertile being who chose to spread her pregnancies out over three decades. In truth, my first child was born five days before I turned 30, the second when I was 32, and the last just six weeks after my fortieth birthday. The age spread is really only ten years, but even that wreaked a fair amount of havoc on my life, work and otherwise. It’s a rare woman who could say that the arrival of any child didn’t catapult her immediately and permanently into some version of the work/motherhood conflict. I reflected on that lately as I studied and wrote about another working mother, one whose children have a far wider age spread than I have.

Her name is Dora Jordan. Her first child was born around her 21st birthday, her last when she was 45. Altogether, she had fourteen children, including one boy who died in infancy, and on top of that there were several miscarriages. For the better part of 25 years, she was pregnant, or nursing, or both.

And she was also working. She worked right up until the birth of each child and did not usually take any maternity leave at all–she simply brought the latest baby to work with her. Her usual commute was two hours each way, and she travelled extensively for work; often, she was away from home for weeks at a time. She stayed in constant touch when she was on the road, sending daily messages to her partner and all of the children. Her working was a necessity: although her partner had some income, there were long stretches where her earnings alone supported the entire family. But that was okay, because like many women she loved her work. Perhaps she even lived for it.

4588240098 e6945cfd61 m picture She was a stage actress, wildly successful, much beloved, the most famous comic actress of her time–which you may have guessed was not our time. With her star power, her high-profile romance, and her large family, Dora Jordan was a kind of Angelina Jolie of her day, though she didn’t need to scour the world’s continents to adopt babies. She simply had them on her own.

Dora Jordan lived from 1761 to 1816, Georgian England, and yet as I studied her life, I found her conflicts remarkably similar to mine and my friends’, two hundred years later. She missed her children desperately when she was away from them, yet she missed her job and sunk into melancholy when she tried—for short periods of time—to forego her career to stay at home and manage the unruly household. Sound familiar?

Yes, there were nannies and servants, but she was a real mother, tending to her children’s needs. Even in an age of wet nurses, she chose to breastfeed them herself. She slept with the babies in her bed, she kept up their immunizations, ordered their clothes and shoes, sent them packages when they were away at school or in the army, took them on long walks, devised amusements for them all. In short, she did everything any modern mother would do. Nannies and servants made it easier, but this was a time when every bit of food had to be cooked from scratch, when washing clothes took all day, when the toilet facilities were. . . questionable. Who knows what they did about diapers–the safety pin wasn’t even invented until 1849!

Dora also had another job—as a royal mistress. Although her first child was the product of a seduction or quite possibly a rape and the next three were from a liaison with a commoner, she had ten children with the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV of England, and Queen Victoria’s uncle. He was her domestic partner for a full twenty years.

We know a lot about Dora Jordan’s life because hundreds of her letters to the Duke survive. She worries about her little ones: “The doctor has advised postponing inoculating little Tuss until the weather is decidedly cooler. Poor dear, I must wean him tomorrow. The rest of the young ones are well, though Lolly’s cold is rather troublesome.” When her eldest daughter hits puberty, she writes, “Sophy has come in very cross, I’m afraid, an complains of a headache. I fear her constitution will shortly undergo a change. It is with the greatest difficulty that I can get her to stir out of her bedroom or hit on anything to amuse her.” Another letter , written as she contemplates yet another renovation of her house, says, “Honestly, I really didn’t know how on earth to manage the bricklayers!”

These are just the kind of messages you can imagine passing between a husband and wife today, via email or phone conversations. The actual concerns of day to day life as a mother haven’t changed all that much in 200 years. Are the children healthy? Is anybody miserable? Is my house ever going to not be a wreck? Because of the 25-year age spread, her duties straddle all facets of child-rearing, providing dowries for her older daughters while nursing the younger ones, saying goodbye to the sons who went off to boarding school (at seven!) or to the sea as navy midshipmen (at eleven!) I think about this when I am struggling with two teenagers and a kindergartener, trying to figure out how to combine a college-hunting trip with a visit to Sesame Place, while still getting my own work done. I am grateful for the things I have that Dora Jordan didn’t.

4588503247 d00a90b968 m picture Dora Jordan’s life ended sadly. The Duke eventually dumped her for a younger, richer woman, and though her children weren’t specifically taken from her, she needed them to live under their father’s protection. “Giving the children up would have been death to me,” she said, “if I were not so strongly impressed with the certainty of it being fort their future advantage.” As an actress, she had no social standing; as a woman she had no power. Her children entered royal society as the Fitzclarences, the bastard children of the Duke. The sons were successful; the daughters married well; UK Conservative Party Leader David Cameron is one of Dora’s direct descendants. And Dora herself? She retired from the stage at 53, became ill, and died penniless and alone. This is the part where she ran up against the 18th century. In this regard—though I have never been famous or consorted with royalty—I am luckier. I have power, equality, birth control.

Researching and writing a historical novel: bringing all the pieces together – Guest Post by Stephanie Cowell, Author of “Claude and Camille”

May 062010

Giveaway closed

It begins with an utter fascination for a place, a time, an historical person: something that will not let you go. Claude and Camille began when I visited an art exhibition of the early works of the impressionists. I stood before one of Claude Monet’s paintings of a stormy seacoast and a weary horse making its way down the sand, and said “What sort of intense man painted that?” I was fascinated by the friendship between the young artists, all then unknown, and thought, “Who were the women who were close to them?” Who loved this sexy, dark-eyed young Monet?

The idea for a novel begins perhaps with a few lines on paper and after a time grows into scenes and sections. Characters and place begin to emerge. And then the writer has the most passionate desire in the world to know every single thing about her historical characters and their times. When I first began to write historical fiction you spent long days in research libraries and haunted used bookshops. Since the internet you can find all sorts of information, or almost any old book, or find access to scholars who can help you.

I ended up buying sixty books on impressionism and Paris and reading and reading and haunting several art museums and walking the streets of Paris that Claude Monet walked and traveling to Giverny. You take all that research and combine imagination with it. The most challenging part for me is plotting the events which lead the characters to the last pages. Eventually you have a full novel and hopefully one good enough that an editor will offer to buy it.

The editor works with your novel, giving suggestions to strengthen it. Often a writer knows so much about her world and characters that she does not realize some of it is still in her head and not on the page. And of course friends have also read it and commented on how it could be strengthened. After that, the copy-editor points out that your heroine’s hair changes color from page 36 to page 94!

But when it is all proofed and printed between the covers with an evocative jacket, the writer hopefully has created a world for readers to enter and live in, a world deep and true and real which may take them on a remarkable journey to places and people all over time.

Discovering Madame Grandin’s Chicago – Guest Post by Mary Beth Raycraft, Translator of “A Parisienne In Chicago”

Apr 132010

Mary Beth Raycraft is the translator for “A Parisienne in Chicago.” The book’s website is currently under construction, but does feature some interactive maps.

While translating Madame Léon Grandin’s 1894 travel memoir, A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, I also played the role of tag-along tourist. Since I am not a Chicagoan, I allowed Madame Grandin to lead me around the city, pointing out its most striking aspects. From strolls in Washington Park, busy circuits of shopping and culture in the Loop, and long days exploring the Exposition at Jackson Park, Madame Grandin took full advantage of her ten month stay to discover many different facets of the city.

Mapping the neighborhoods and places in Chicago mentioned by Madame Grandin helped me to visualize her movements throughout the city. Madame Grandin and her husband, the sculptor Léon Grandin, lived in a series of boarding houses located near Jackson Park. Upon arrival at the train station in Chicago in August of 1892, they were greeted by a grueling heat wave and headed to the south side of the city. Since Léon was part of a team of sculptors working on the Columbian Fountain for the exposition, the boarding house at 3700 South Ellis Avenue was convenient to the fairgrounds. Although they complained about the miserly landlady and the insubstantial meals, their room offered a pleasant view of Lake Michigan. In search of more comfortable accommodations and better food, the Grandins moved to another rooming house near Drexel Boulevard, which Madame Grandin compared to the elegant Avenue des Champs Elysées. During the final months of their stay, they lodged at the Everett Hotel at 3619 Lake Park Drive.

After spending several weeks exploring the south side of the city, Madame Grandin discovered that a tram car conveniently shuttled between Jackson Park and The Loop. The throbbing heart of the city, The Loop was the focus of many of her expeditions, including visits to the Athenaeum, the Chicago Public Library, and the Auditorium, where she and her husband attended the Inaugural Ball of the Exposition in October 1892. Madame Grandin also frequented the commercial establishments of The Loop, including the elegant Siegel Cooper department store and Gunther’s Confectionary on State Street, where she found the candies far superior to those in Paris and indulged her sweet tooth. Madame Grandin’s outgoing personality and curiosity about the city soon led to a flurry of social activity. Her friendship with two instructors at the Art Institute, Lydia Hess and Marie Gélon Cameron, enabled her to visit their studios and classes, located at the time in the Athenaeum. She even managed to obtain an introduction to Bertha Palmer and attended numerous receptions at Palmer’s elegant home on Lake Shore Drive.

Although the primary reason for her trip was to accompany her husband to the Exposition, it seems that the city of Chicago was the most impressive spectacle of all. As Madame Grandin circulated in the bustling streets, explored exhibits at the fair, strolled in the parks, and socialized at parties, dances, and cultural events, she discovered a dynamic urban setting which, in many ways, she found preferable to her home city of Paris.

Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

Werewolves where? – Guest Post by Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shiver and Linger

Market Making – Guest Post by Richard C. Morais, author of “The Hundred-Foot Journey”

The Power of Friendship – Guest Post by Beth Hoffman, Author of “Saving CeeCee Honeycutt”

Seeing What You Read: An Author’s Perspective – Guest Post from Kristy Kiernan, author of “Between Friends”

A Modern Working Mother – Guest Post by Nancy Woodruff, Author of “My Wife’s Affair”

Researching and writing a historical novel: bringing all the pieces together – Guest Post by Stephanie Cowell, Author of “Claude and Camille”

Discovering Madame Grandin’s Chicago – Guest Post by Mary Beth Raycraft, Translator of “A Parisienne In Chicago”

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