And I’d wondered for some time why Shady kept that bottle of whiskey right out in the open but never touched a drop of it. Gideon said it was because sometimes a man’s demons could creep up on him. He figured Shady would rather know where his demon was so he could keep an eye on him.
As for the Rattler? There had been a mysterious figure known as the Rattler, who had never really been a spy. Just a ghostly figure some would see walking the woods at night, a faint rattling sound accompanying the movement.
But one night had been different—the night Finn met up with Jinx. “Jinx” would be the way I’d always refer to my young father. There were several people in the woods that night. Jinx and Finn were having their argument. Uncle Louver was out setting his raccoon traps. And there was the mysterious shadowy figure that loomed from nowhere, accidentally frightening Finn into stepping in one of Uncle Louver’s traps. The fall landed his head on a rock so hard it killed him dead.
Gideon himself couldn’t shed any light on this mystery. But I could think of one person who would have been walking in the woods after being called to the Cybulskis house to help deliver a baby. And who might look a little ghostly at night dressed in her flowing black gown. And who rattles when she walks. Oh, I was sure Miss Sadie had done her part in tending Jinx’s wound. But a diviner’s jewelry jangles. A nun’s rosary beads rattle. It’s a universal.
With that, I knew I had my story I would turn in on the first day of school. And I formed the first line in my head as Gideon and I walked into town, past the sign with big blue letters: MANIFEST … A TOWN WITH A PAST.
HATTIE MAE’S
NEWS AUXILIARY
SEPTEMBER 6, 1936
Like my aunt Mavis used to say, a whistling girl and a cackling hen had better know when to call it quits. Well, it’s time for this girl to hang up her reporter’s hat. Yes, this will be the final installment of “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary,” and for your years of readership, I am grateful.
But I am pleased as punch to announce that I will be passing the torch to an up-and-coming writer who, according to Sister Redempta, has an eye for the interesting and a nose for news.
This young writer assures me that she will be truthful and certifiable in giving the honest-to-goodness scoop each and every week.
So for all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres, look at the backside of “Hogs and Cattle” every Sunday to your new auxiliary writer—
ABILENE TUCKER
Reporter About Town
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Like many readers of historical fiction, I find it interesting to know what is fact and what is fiction. Sometimes what I find even more interesting is where the fact or fiction came from.
Manifest, Kansas. Moon Over Manifest is a story that came from my family roots. The town of Manifest, although very real and vivid in my mind, is both fact and fiction. Manifest is based on the town of Frontenac, Kansas. Originally, I chose the town of Frontenac as the setting for my story because my grandparents were from that area of southeast Kansas. But in doing so, I stumbled upon a community that was rich in color and history.
I decided to change the name of the town to allow more flexibility in what I could include in it, but other than being a bit smaller and having fictional churches and schools, Manifest is basically the same. Frontenac was a mining town that in 1918 was made up of immigrants from twenty-one countries. In fact, at that time, only 12 percent of the people living in Frontenac had parents born in America. Coal mining was the main industry in Frontenac, and family stories tell of company vouchers and the control of the mine in the town.
The Bone Dry Bill of 1917 made Kansas a “dry state.” This meant alcohol was illegal in Kansas well before Prohibition took effect nationwide. However, the two counties in the far southeast corner of Kansas, Cherokee and Crawford, often called the Little Balkans, were known to be the bootlegging capital of the Midwest.
Orphan trains. Ned arrived in Manifest on what was known as an orphan train. Many orphaned children found themselves on trains heading from the East Coast to the Midwest, where they were adopted by families they didn’t know. Some children, like Ned, were adopted into loving homes; however, not all were as fortunate. Some children were adopted to be used primarily as hired hands on farms or to help out as domestic servants.
Spanish influenza started out as a highly contagious flu that could infect hundreds of people in a matter of hours. Experts believe that it originated at Camp Funston, a military base near Manhattan, Kansas, in March of 1918. Initially, it was not known to be fatal, but after troop ships carried the illness overseas during World War I, the virus mutated into a much deadlier strain. The same troop ships carried the virus back to the United States, and this began the first wave of a worldwide pandemic that took millions of lives before it ran its course.
Immigrants. In my research into immigrants passing through Ellis Island, I did not come across any story like that of Ned and Miss Sadie. However, Ellis Island has been called both the Island of Hope and the Island of Tears. There are countless tales of heartbreak and hardship that immigrants encountered when making their journey to America, not unlike the one I have imagined in this story.
The rest of the story …
Of course most of the story is fiction. But even fiction has to come from somewhere. Many elements in the book were inspired by family stories and newspaper articles from regional papers of both 1918 and 1936.
The boot with Finn’s foot still in it came from a story my dad told about his work investigating airplane crashes. Among the wreckage at one crash site, he found a boot “with the foot still in it.”
The free ice water Mrs. Dawkins gave out came from the story of the couple who started the famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. They advertised free ice water during the Depression, and cars started streaming into town, bringing new business to their struggling community.
The gate to Perdition is based on a real gate that I came across on my research trip to Frontenac. It didn’t say Perdition, but it did have an assortment of metal objects welded onto it: horseshoes, a pitchfork, a shovel, a spade, and two wagon wheels. I was there in the fall, so it even had two jack-o’-lanterns propped on top.
Real people. There are four characters named in the book who are real people. On the last day of school, Sister Redempta calls the names of students to give them their grades. Two of those students are my grandparents—Mary Hughes and Noah Rousseau. There are only two other relatives from that area whom I knew personally—my grandfather’s cousins Velma and Ivan DeVore. They were brother and sister, and neither ever married. I remember them as simple and good-hearted people. I came across Ivan’s name in a newspaper article announcing his new position as the Frontenac postmaster in 1934. So Ivan DeVore is the postmaster in the book, and Velma became Velma T. Harkrader, the chemistry teacher.
Galettes. Finally, galettes are a buttery French cookie that my mother made and her mother before her. My grandmother used a heavy cast iron waffle iron set on an open flame. It is a labor-intensive endeavor to bake one or two cookies at a time, but as anybody who has tasted one can tell you, it is well worth the effort.
SOURCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Mackin, Elton E. Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993.
Minckley, Loren Stiles. Americanization Through Education. Frontenac, KS: 1917.
O’Brien, Patrick G., and Peak, Kenneth J. Kansas Bootleggers. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1991.
Sandler, Martin W. Island of Hope: The Story of Ellis Island and the Journey to America. New York: Scholastic, 2004.
Uys, Errol Lincoln. Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression. New York: Routledge, 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All writers strive to create a good story with colorful characters, a vivid setting, and interesting plot twists and turns. But the elusive element is voice. So first and foremost, I want to acknowledge the four people whose
voices I have heard from the time and place in which Moon Over Manifest is set: my maternal grandparents, Noah and Mary (Hughes) Rousseau, along with my grandfather’s cousins Velma and Ivan DeVore. Their voices and their stories, which I heard as a young girl, are the heart and soul of this book. In the same vein, I thank my parents, Leo and Mary Dean Sander. This book is dedicated to them. You often hear writers thanking the people without whom their books could not have been written. My parents taught me not to waste time trying to figure out if I could do something. Just figure out how to get it done. Without their confidence I would have quit … many times over. Eventually, I would have even quit quitting. I guess that means I wouldn’t even have started. So I thank them, for giving me the fortitude to keep trying and figure out how to get it done.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Andrea Cascardi, for your friendship and guidance. You are a trouper. To Michelle Poploff, every writer’s dream editor. And to her assistant, Rebecca Short. You both made my first experience in publishing a book pleasant and rewarding.
Special thanks to my group of writing friends, Debra Seely, Dian Curtis Regan, and Lois Ruby, for your many readings of this book, both in and out of sequence, for your comments that improved the book, and for your years of support and encouragement. To my friends at the Milton Center—Essie Sappenfield, Jerome Stueart, Mary Saionz, David and Diane Awbrey, David and Virginia Owens, Naomi Hirahara, Gordon Houser, Christie Breault, Nathan Filbert, Bryan Dietrich—all members of my first critique group, where I cut my teeth writing words on a page and listening to what others had to say about them: Thanks for all you had to say.
To Marcia Leonard for her help in shaping this book.
To Kathy Parisio for the phrase she and her siblings made up as kids, which became Miss Sadie’s curse: “Ava grautz budel nocha mole.” I hope my translation of it was acceptable to all. And to Tim Brady for his often-used admonition to our friend Ned Blick in college: “Ned, you’re heading down the path to perdition.” Of course, if Ned was going, we all wanted to tag along!
To my group of book club girlfriends, who insisted that someday, they would read one of my books for book club. That meant a lot. I wasn’t going to name them, but one recently asked to make sure I knew how to spell all their names. So in no particular order, and hopefully spelled correctly—Annmarie Algya, CY Suellentrop, Dawn Chisholm, Julie Newton, Vicki Kindel, Cara Horn, Chandi Bongers, Gigi Phares, Molly Cyphert, Angie Holladay, and Kathy Kryzer.
And to my little sister, Annmarie—because she’s a lot of fun and she would be miffed if she didn’t get special mention. But really because I will never be able to write about a spunky young girl without her being two-thirds Annmarie.
Finally, there is a small but important group of people who bring joy to every day of my life. Luke, Paul, Grace, and Lucy Vanderpool. You’re the best.
And really finally, to my husband, Mark. For being always true blue.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clare Vanderpool grew up reading books in unusual places: dressing rooms, the bathroom, walking down the sidewalk (sometimes into telephone poles), church, math class. She suspects that some of her teachers knew she had a library book hidden behind her textbook, but the good ones didn’t let on.
Clare holds degrees in English and elementary education and teaches a summer writing camp for kids. She loves recommending wonderful books to young readers.
Clare lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband and four children.
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