Yesternight
Page 31
Some examples:
From 1871 to 1873, a group of innkeepers known as the Benders of Labette County, Kansas, brutally murdered an estimated one to two dozen guests in their hotel. The “Bloody Benders” have gone down in history as America’s first documented case of serial killers.
In 1912, an unknown attacker killed eight people with an ax in a farmhouse in Villisca, Iowa. The “Villisca Ax Murder House,” incidentally, now operates as a tourist attraction that includes overnight tours and ghost hunting (www.villiscaiowa.com).
In 1959, two ex-convicts out on parole tied up and murdered a family by the name of Clutter in their home in Holcomb, Kansas—an incident that Truman Capote turned into the bestselling true-crime book In Cold Blood.
For Cornelia Gunderson’s character, I combined the crimes of the aforementioned Benders, who reportedly attacked their Bender Inn guests with a hammer before cutting their throats, with traits of Belle Sorenson Gunness, a Norwegian-born Indiana woman who murdered somewhere between twenty-five and forty people in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including her two husbands, her children, and numerous suitors, the latter of whom she lured to her “murder farm” through newspaper ads in lovelorn columns. According to numerous reports and rumor, both the Benders and Belle Gunness fled the scenes of their killing sprees when they came close to getting caught and went into hiding for the rest of their lives. Investigators found multiple bodies buried on the grounds of both properties.
Friendly, Kansas, and the Hotel Yesternight, Nebraska. Both locations are fictional; however, all of the homes and the inn discussed in this Author’s Note—as well as my own visits to reputedly haunted houses and hotels—infuenced the creation of the Hotel Yesternight.
Reading Group Guide
1.Yesternight is a novel where the known and unknown collide and paranormal events are definitely a possibility. Have you ever experienced something in your life that can’t be explained away rationally?
2.At one point in the novel Alice maintains that “psychology explains everything.” Is it possible that psychology can explain Alice’s increasing conviction that Janie is indeed Violet reincarnated?
3.Alice’s life at first seems like an open book. However, as the novel progresses we discover that her family represses not only their acknowledgment of her sister Bea’s sexuality, but also any acknowledgment of Alice’s sexuality. And Alice herself has repressed her memories of her unwanted pregnancy. Did the Linds’ tendency to avoid such subjects strike you as normal behavior for the time period? Or did you find the family’s repression to be extreme?
4.Is it possible Janie is a child prodigy with high mathematical ability? Is it possible Alice was just a child with behavioral difficulties? Or do you feel that the only way they could know what they do is to truly be the products of reincarnation?
5.Bea insists to Alice, “Don’t insert yourself into other people’s lives.” How do you think that Alice’s tendency to do this has affected her life so far?
6.Hotels play a large role in Yesternight. Alice stays in Michael’s hotel at the opening of the book, as well as in the Hotel Yesternight and others. What do you think hotels symbolize with regard to the story?
7.Is Rebecca right to be suspicious of Michael’s motives with regard to their daughter? Is he a man who only wants to discover the truth, or does he want to exploit his child for profit?
8.What do you think the police think happened to Michael that would make him run off into the blizzard?
9.What do you think of the ending? What do you believe is really going on with John?
10.What do you think will happen to Alice in the future?
Read on
Further Reading
“Barriers against Women in Early Psychology,” from Research Methods: A Process of Inquiry, Eighth Edition, by Anthony M. Graziano and Michael L. Raulin (Pearson, 2013).
Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune, by Mary Jo Ignoffo (University of Missouri Press, 2010).
Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation, by Ian Stevenson, M.D. (McFarland, 2000).
Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz (Broadway Books, 2006).
“Grandmothers I Wish I Knew: Contributions of Women to the History of School Psychology,” by Joseph L. French, Professional School Psychology, vol. 3, no. 1 (1988), 51–68.
Heartland Serial Killers: Belle Gunness, Johann Hoch, and Murder for Profit in Gaslight Era Chicago, by Richard C. Lindberg (Northern Illinois University Press, 2011).
Life before Life: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, by Jim B. Tucker, M.D. (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008).
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Robert Whitaker (Perseus Publishing, 2002).
Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives, by Jim B. Tucker, M.D. (St. Martin’s Griffn, 2013).
A Saga of the Bloody Benders (A Treasury of Victorian Murder), by Rick Geary (NBM Comics Lit, 2007).
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, by Ian Stevenson, M.D. (University of Virginia Press, 1980).
Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues: Incredible True Tales of Mischief and Mayhem, by Paul Martin (Prometheus Books, 2014).
Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, by Ian Stevenson, M.D. (Praeger, 1997).
“The Woman Who Bested the Men at Math,” by Mike Dash (Smithsonian.com, October 28, 2011).
For more information about current studies on children who remember past lives, visit the website of the University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies.
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Praise for The Uninvited
“Part ghost story, part love story, part historical fiction, this tale set in a small Midwestern town during the Great War is compulsively readable, beautifully written, and populated with characters that will hover in the air around you long after you’ve set the book on your nightstand. I finished this story and wished very much I had written it. Bravo, Cat Winters.”
—Wendy Webb, author of The Vanishing and The Tale of Halcyon Crane
“Evocative and lushly written, The Uninvited also features a twist I never saw coming.”
—April Henry, New York Times bestselling author
“Dark and romantic [ . . . ] The author effectively captures the dangers of the period, and yet Ivy finds bastions of human kindness and acceptance. Her compelling voice carries this gothic coming-of-age story, at once horrifying and tender, toward a revelatory yet hopeful conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Uninvited is an affecting novel, dark in fiction and in fact. Set in 1918 against the parallel epidemics of the Spanish influenza and an equally terrifying strain of ‘superpatriotism,’ Cat Winters’s latest offers resonant characters, a stunning twist, and an emotional, satisfying conclusion.”
—Michelle Gable, international bestselling author of A Paris Apartment
“A wonderfully atmospheric and intriguing novel. Cat Winters portrays a fascinating period in American history with clever writing and a delicious plot twist. A novel that is sure to keep readers hooked to the end.”
—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author
“A mesmerizing story of life and death in one of America’s darkest periods.”
—Megan Shepherd, author of The Madman’s Daughter
“Winters’s novel illustrates how the tenacity of the human spirit combines with the audacity born of necessity to triumph over even the most unthinkable challenges. Would that every chapter of history be presented in such captivating, lushly written prose.”
—Sophie Littlefield, bestselling author
Also by Cat Winters
The Uninvited
YOUNG ADULT
In the Shadow of Blackbird
s
The Cure for Dreaming
The Steep and Thorny Way
Credits
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photographs: © Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images (woman); © Judy Burns / Shutterstock (background)
Photograph on title page © Stefan Holm/Shutterstock, Inc.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
YESTERNIGHT. Copyright © 2016 by Catherine Karp. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Winters, Cat, author.
Title: Yesternight / Cat Winters.
Description: First edition. | New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016016049 (print) | LCCN 2016022728 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062440860 (softcover) | ISBN 9780062440853 (ebook reflowable) Subjects: LCSH: Women psychologists—Fiction. | Child psychologists—Fiction. | Reincarnation–Fiction. | Paranormal fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Horror. | FICTION / Occult & Supernatural. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.I6743 Y47 20016 (print) | LCC PS3623.I6743 (ebook)| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016049
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ISBN 978-0-06-244086-0
EPub Edition October 2016 ISBN 9780062440853
16 17 18 19 20 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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