What Heals the Heart
Page 30
The preferred routes for 19th century medicine shows covered the Midwest and rural South. In eastern cities, the shows were likely to be larger and take place in theaters. I have not been able to confirm that Joshua could have seen such a show during his childhood in Philadelphia.
I invented a dramatic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for Joshua, Freida, and Alton to read together — though there may conceivably have been such an adaptation of which I’ve found no mention.
I have not confirmed that a Pullman car was actually available when and where Joshua and Clara encountered one, though it is not particularly unlikely. (They might well have needed to change to a less luxurious car for the final leg of their journey.) As for the porter’s ingenious solution to the absence of a kitchen or dining car, it is based on speculation, rather than any reference I’ve been able to find. Porters were apparently not allowed to handle railroad money, which would have been a logistical complexity.
The sources I consulted differed somewhat as to when cards were first produced with differently colored but otherwise similar designs on their backs. I have chosen to go with the date that served my narrative purpose.
For more information about the magic tricks Joshua performs for Clara on the train, see “Easy Magic Tricks for Beginners and Kids” at https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/magic-tricks-for-beginners-and-kids-2267083.
“The Great Grasshopper Plague of 1874-1875” was often, and appropriately, referred to in biblical terms. In the areas most affected, including much of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and other states, the devastation was unimaginable. Clouds of “hoppers” blackened the sky, coated the land, invaded houses, and ate every growing thing and more. Farmers said grimly that the grasshoppers “ate everything but the mortgage.” Cowbird Creek, however, is located in one of the more fortunate counties that largely escaped the grasshopper invasion. The story I wanted to tell would not have suited a place and time where farmers as well as their livestock were threatened with starvation, and many were forced to abandon their farms and their dreams and go back east.
Finally, I wanted to note that what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and doctors during World War I called shell shock, was sometimes, during the Civil War, called “soldier’s heart.” That fact gives a certain additional resonance to this book’s title.
About the Author
Karen A. Wyle was born a Connecticut Yankee, but eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. She now considers herself a Hoosier. She and her husband have two wildly creative daughters. (Return readers may notice that I no longer claim to have a sweet though neurotic dog. She left us in June 2019. We miss her.)
In addition to writing fiction (science fiction, afterlife fantasy, and now historical romance), Wyle is an appellate attorney, photographer, and politics junkie. Her voice is the product of almost five decades of reading both literary and genre fiction. It is no doubt also influenced, although she hopes not fatally tainted, by her years of law practice. Her personal history has led her to focus on often-intertwined themes of family, communication, personal identity, the impossibility of controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.
Connect with the Author
Learn more about Karen A. Wyle by looking her up on
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