His heart raced. He was trying to decide whether to open it right then or wait until he was safely alone on the train when he turned it over to find that someone, undoubtedly the landlady in search of money, had already torn it open. He pulled out several sheets of hotel stationery, unfolded them carefully, ran his eyes along the first lines, then rapidly shuffled through more of the pages. It was almost entirely nonsense. Long lines of writing that contained no recognizable words. His heart fell. Page after page, front and back filled with gibberish, with random slashes of ink. What had she thought she was telling him?
But there was one sheet containing a poem that was written in her true, sober script, and another page with a letter that appeared to make sense, dated just eighteen days before. Before she was delirious with pain. Eighteen days. Eighteen days ago, she could still feel; she could write. Oh God help him, just eighteen days ago she could still think. It was too much…that she should be nothing now, her body like a fish on the beach. Nothing more than the dead gull they had noticed together once as it floated in to the shore, head twisted and wings splayed on the autumn waves. The two of them had watched, nearly indifferent—because they were among the living.
In the dim light, he struggled to focus on Mary’s ink.
November 12, 1939
Dear Robert,
The saving grace of my new apartment is the patch of sky I can see from my window. It is sometimes the same color as it was at home over Lake Michigan. I receive my entertainment from the streets full of strangers whose faces and voices are from European countries, the Orient, Africa… From the front stoop the other day, I watched them pass for hours.
Robert, I have something to tell you that I’m afraid will make you unhappy. Four days ago I had an operation. It was the operation that I most needed, for I am not fit to have a child. I have known this for years, and I told you. I cannot give what is needed, especially not with the calling I have to do other work entirely. Thoughts of mothering terrified me.
Soon I will begin publishing and teaching. I just need to rest a bit more. The poem I have enclosed was composed on your boat—as you carried me into the unknown, my mind flew free. You see, even in the earliest hours of my departure from White Hill, I felt the thrill of my soul coming out of hiding. So already, it has been worth the cost of losing my home.
I can only be what I am,
Mary
P.S. Later this winter, please deliver this poem to Bernard. Perhaps he will suppose that it is about my love for him and how sorry I was to leave. Maybe then he will remember me kindly. Let him imagine I’m dead.
Robert’s heart hammered furiously, and his thoughts raged. She had deceived him about everything. And he’d fallen for all of it, like a fool. She’d lured him into taking her to a strange city where she had no means of survival and no intention of keeping her child or quitting her addiction, leaving him to suffer guilt for her fate, and now he was to give this poem to her husband so that the brute she fled might love her? It was intolerable, all of it—the lies, the recklessness, the needless loss.
He stood abruptly, folded the papers together inside the envelope, and slid them into an interior jacket pocket. His unseeing gaze swept around the room once more as he tightly rolled up Mary’s coat and tucked it under his arm. The poem would have to wait until he was on the train. He should have waited to look at any of it.
As fast as he could, Robert Kenilworth descended the three flights of stairs, pushed through the front door, and entered the twilit city street. He would take the coat and the papers home and get back to his work and the care of his family. His wife. His son. His livelihood and his soul. He would hide these remnants of Mary, bury them, hide all of the traces from himself. He must concentrate on his responsibilities and never be misled again. There was nothing else to be done. For the cold fact was that the living needed him—and the dead did not.
That was all there was to it, and he would have to find a way to live fully within that reality. In spite of loss. And not crippled by dreams.
• • •
For my dearest,
In remembrance of our time together…
Unopened dream,
the tide comes in
and we so near the shore house
want for nothing.
(the burden of the boat
depressed the hull against the sea—
three outward-bound redemptionists
hunched low into the spray)
Imperfect dream,
we pull the grass,
we slash the wind; before us
is the winter.
(the burden of the boat
depressed the hull against the sea—
with nothing left before it
but the purple heel of day)
Enshadowed dream,
we’ve locked the door,
we’ve torn the bread and poured
the coastal wine.
(the burden of the boat
depressed the hull against the sea—
their hats were low, their coats were tight—
Fall shriveled on the quay)
Uncensored dream,
what voice is yours,
behold our anxious faces
around the table.
(the burden of the boat
depressed the hull into the sea—
three strangers rising into night
would not return this way)
Unopened dream,
the tide comes in
and we inside the shore house
want for nothing.
M. S. Walker
November ’39
Reading Group Guide
1. The Lake and the Lost Girl focuses on Mary Stone Walker and Lydia Carroll, two female protagonists living at different times in the same small town. What are the similarities and differences between the two women, and how do their stories mirror each other? Which elements seem to be different because of the different time periods in which they live?
2. Mary Stone Walker finds meaning in life through her poetry. Do you have a passion or hobby that drives you forward in the same way, and if so, where does it live in your mind, and what emotions does it inspire?
3. Describe the Carroll family dynamic in the beginning of the novel. How does Nicholas relate differently to his mother than he does to his father? What family elements are having the most impact on him, and did you experience any similar pressures growing up?
4. Both Lydia and Mary are writers, albeit in two very different fields; however, would you agree they had parallel visions for their lives? How are their views of motherhood different, especially in relation to their careers?
5. Frank’s hobby costs the family thousands of dollars in antiques. In one scene, he spends over half of the family’s savings on a single piece of furniture. If you were Lydia, how would you have reacted in that situation? How far should a partner or family member go to be supportive of another’s hopes and dreams (however ambitious or impractical)?
6. Nicholas said that he forged the poem in order to help his parents be happy. Frank was understandably disappointed, and Lydia was at first hurt and confused. If you were his parent, how would you handle this situation?
7. Jack Kenilworth claims he never shared the information he had about Mary Stone Walker because of a promise to his grandfather to protect her secrets (as well as his own). Do you think his secrecy was justified?
8. The Lake and the Lost Girl addresses at least two different addictions: Mary’s addiction to morphine, and Frank’s addiction to solving the mystery of Mary. Do you see any similarities between their downfalls?
9. How are addictions and delusions about reality connected in this story?
10. Lincoln Babcock says “a stack of poems, no matter how exquisite, does not make up for an immoral l
ife.” Do you agree with this statement? Do you agree that Mary Stone Walker’s life was defined by immoral behavior?
11. If you found out your favorite author wrote his/her best works under the influence of a heavy drug addiction, would that change the way you felt about them?
12. How do you feel about the final chapters of The Lake and the Lost Girl and how you left the characters you met? Do you think Frank and Mary “deserved” their respective endings, and could they have avoided them?
A Conversation with the Author
What was your inspiration for The Lake and the Lost Girl?
We all see slightly different worlds through the filters of our limited minds. But sometimes this tendency seems to grow extreme. People turn away from living beings and issues, seduced by some story that they’ve made up or adopted from a group. Or they give over to an addiction, and that destroys their moral compass. I’ve seen so much damage caused by this preference for fantasies over reality, and I wanted to create a novel that showed this conflict play out. Frank is doing this in the most obvious way, but Lydia is also ignoring key elements of reality for the sake of her personal story line. Mary Walker is also hopelessly caught up in addiction, self-delusion, and an unhealthy marriage—she becomes a lightning rod for wishful thinking.
The theme of interpreting fragments of writing or the past just as we wish to is related to seeing the present through blinding filters, and this was also an inspiration behind this story. Reading a stack of texts left behind by a person and imagining we can really understand them or the past is similarly self-centered activity prone to delusion. I hope that juxtaposing scenes of Mary Stone Walker’s life against the people of 1999 who are speculating about her illustrates that the past had as much vitality and complexity as our present and is not actually accessible through the handful of “clues” that have survived the destruction of Time.
The Lake and the Lost Girl is set along the beautiful, and often mysterious, Michigan lakeshore. Why did you choose this place for your story to unfold?
The setting of a book is basically where your mind lives during the hours you are writing it, and I deeply love Lake Michigan and its coast—it’s a place I always want to “be.” I also know it and feel it in my heart, so to me it was as alive as any of the human characters and, in fact, could have had a much larger presence, had the plot allowed! As for it being mysterious, it certainly is at times; that liminal realm of the shoreline, where liquid meets land, the known merges into the unknown… This is where lighthouses are built, and the edge from which people and ships depart, sometimes forever… That is endlessly captivating to me, and a presence that intensifies the themes of so many tales.
Both Mary and Lydia are writers like you. Which character did you feel more closely connected to, and why? Do you see any qualities of yourself in either of them?
I felt more connected to Lydia, primarily because of the main condition of her life: balancing the emotional demands of relationships, day-to-day life, and creative work. We say that kind of thing all the time—“balancing career and family”—but what do we mean? In The Lake and the Lost Girl, Lydia needs to write genre fiction to support her family, so she has not been able to dedicate her time, her energy, her focus, or even her belief in herself to the task of writing something that might not provide income. Additionally, her husband’s lifestyle takes from her financial resources and her mental health, and her son also clearly deserves her thought and time. So the question becomes not so much where to find the “hours” to do all of the things we care about, but how to grow the self that can see what matters most and what needs to be done, which might include important changes, sometimes extremely difficult ones.
Neither of these characters reminds me much of myself, although I tried to draw each one with that essential passion for language that brings life alive in the specific way that wanting to create with words does. Relating to those things I witness through language has been a defining feature of my personality for as long as I can remember, and I feel so grateful. For me, it is a quality that adds intrigue and possibility to life.
Do you have a favorite poem, and if so, why does it continue to resonate with you? We can easily conclude from the story that Frank’s favorite author is Mary Stone Walker. Who are your favorite authors, and can you say their work shaped how or what you write?
These questions are worthy of long, long answers that would bore everyone except me. Favorite poem? So many of them, depending on the emotion and experience I want to immerse myself in. Favorite authors? The same.
But as a very general statement, the most affecting writers and poems for me have been those that capture something elusive, something that reflects qualities of life you rarely see captured in human expression except in dreams and other subconscious flickers. Then again, those same transcendent pieces of literature have a powerful and accurate grounding in the earthly detail from which the sublime arises. I try to learn from this—how to look, what to care about, what language, stories, characters, details might capture some slight filament of what I see and love.
Of the poets I used quotes from at the beginnings of this novel’s chapters, I most adore Edna St. Vincent Millay and Louise Bogan. I am so proud to have a handful of their words on the pages of a book with my name on it.
The Lake and the Lost Girl has a wonderful past-present dual narrative. What research did you do to bring the late 1930s Michigan to life, and what advice do you have for aspiring writers who wish to visit a period era?
I read a lot of books and online pieces about specific issues, including morphine addiction; abortion techniques and laws; the fishing and lumber industries in 1930s Michigan; clothing and other daily use objects; food and alcohol; the music, drama, and literary scenes of the time; furniture (future antiques) and furniture companies; Chicago tenements; medicine and herbal remedies; and every other related thing that arose in my imagination. I also read a lot of poetry by female American poets of the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as critiques and biographies in some cases.
Not all of the information I read and jotted down was used, of course, but together, the details helped me have a sense of the era, as did reading some other nonfiction and fiction books set in that general time. I would advise that this process is the way to go: immersion in detail, creating a milieu in which your imagination can play with your story elements and characters until they come alive. A friend of mine who has written numerous history books about Michigan said that he could research endlessly and forgo the writing part. I can see why—it’s fascinating to discover facts about the past that simultaneously reveal rich variations on the human experience and yet so many continuing themes. Fortunately for me, I find both the research and the writing completely engaging.
Frank has the strange, almost romantic hobby of “treasure hunting” for Mary Walker poems. What are your hobbies (and do you share a similar obsession with them)?
Frank’s treasure hunts for Mary Walker poems is a romantic hobby, for he is driven merely by notions that delight him, almost nothing more. Except for writing, my own hobbies are less mysterious and not obsessive: reading, watercolor painting, gardening, kayaking, cycling, the study of Lithuania, volunteering at lighthouses, and other nonprofit work. I wouldn’t fit well as a character in this novel, except perhaps as a random figure walking in the distance on a pier…or something.
If you could study one author and their works for the rest of your career, what author would that be?
Only one? That would have to be Shakespeare! I can’t imagine another writer I would learn more from or whose works would keep me better company through all of life’s turns. During college, and later in other periods when I’ve read a great deal of his work at once, I felt almost as if my mind began to vibrate at a different (more enlightened) frequency.
The fact is, I would like to study a number of authors more closely. And I am really grateful that it does not
have to be just one.
Near the beginning of the book, Lydia stands in the attic where Mary crafted many of her poems. Do you have a special sanctuary where you do your writing?
I do. I have had more than one profoundly special sanctuary where I have written over the last twenty-five years. All of them had a door that shut, many books within reach, and at least one window revealing trees and a patch of sky and through which I was visited by breezes and birds’ voices. I am incredibly lucky.
What would you like readers to take away from your novel?
That there is a high price to pay for ignoring reality.
Acknowledgments
To Elaine Fox and Beth Harbison, my marvelous sisters: thank you for being soul friends to me through every life journey, even the creative process. Elaine, this novel in particular owes you special debts. Deepest appreciation to my cherished friend Mark Nepo, spiritual mentor, nurturer of creativity, and helping hand into the publishing world. To Scott: for the gift of our shared writing journey, I possess love and an ongoing gratitude as it continues to unfold. Thanks to the inimitable Becky Cooper, inspiration in every area of life and brilliant poet who wrote “Lydia’s” poem “The Study of Lakes.” Marsha Nuccio offered just the right prompt, at just the right time and has always offered brilliant insight. Profound gratitude to Kevan Lyon, my agent, and Patricia Nelson, her assistant, for their transformative ideas and exceptional professionalism. My editor, Anna Michels, has also been a class-act partner in the understanding and fine-tuning of this work. Love and thanks to my “kids”—Chapel, Warren, Alexander, Jason, Ashleigh, Megan, Michael, Paige, and Karli—extraordinary souls who always provide light on the darkest parts of my path. Chris Smith, you hold the Truth near enough to believe in, and there are not words enough to express my gratitude. To Liga and Dawn, my incomparable friends with seemingly boundless hearts, I sing your praises in my heart daily. Paula and Melissa, you have been heroes in my life, through all things, and to Ballakeyll, I owe my prologue. Cheers and kisses to my amazing mother, who always believes in all of us…somehow. And to Bob, my beautiful man: thank you. Thanks for reading every version of this book, and for enjoying the process with me and caring so passionately about this part of my life. To say I miss you doesn’t touch the feeling your absence has brought.
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