At least, that was what his son-in-law said, and Stephen agreed. He’d gone to the Soldiers’ Home to talk to other veterans, like the doctor suggested, but it didn’t help any. The men there were even more stuck in the past than he was, and living insularly and idle like that had made them hard to relate to. None of them had survived Andersonville either.
He missed the friends he’d had.
But he’d been working with Nate on a project to bring them back with the printed word. He woke early and made the coffee before Sylvie stirred. After feeding Oliver and spending time in the Bible, memories spilled through his pen. It was a strange thing. Years he never meant to mention again before he met Nate Pierce, he now committed to paper. He’d kept them corked up for so long, the released pressure brought a relief he hadn’t expected. His pages were scattered and disordered, but Nate sorted them into something that was coherent, asking questions when blanks needed to be filled in. One day his story would be fully told—beyond what the tiny columns of a newspaper could hold—and in so doing, he’d tell the stories of his friends. The notion satisfied him.
Stephen would never be the man he’d been before the war. But he didn’t think that was what God had in mind anyway.
He leaned back in the chair, lifting his gaze to the heavens. Glory spread across the sky in royal shades of crimson and purple, so beautiful it stung.
Was the world a broken place? It was. Despite his improvements, would some degree of soldier’s heart be a thorn in his flesh to the end of his days? He reckoned so. But wasn’t there still a Light the darkness could not destroy? Didn’t God still love Stephen Townsend and have a plan for his good, and a plan for the good of his family?
He did.
As soon as Meg opened the door to the roof, her father was up out of his chair, spinning toward her.
“Meg? What are you doing up here?” His tone was surprised but not dismayed. She only hoped she hadn’t rattled his heart. He’d gained a healthy amount of weight since his release from the asylum, but he still seemed frail.
Crickets creaked. “I thought—I was hoping you’d let me paint you.” She stepped over the threshold, and Nate followed her, carrying the easel and canvas. “Please?”
Blinking, her father smoothed his grey-threaded hair into place. “You want to paint me? Why?”
She approached him, her skirt billowing behind her. “I’ll sketch you tonight. Painting will come later. But yes, I want to capture you looking out like a sentinel over a new Chicago.” He would think she’d lost her wits if she used the word beautiful to describe this scene.
A year ago, she would have agreed with him. They were surrounded by buildings in various stages of completion. Streets were virtually impassable. Hoists and derricks stabbed at the sky, ready to lift masses of bricks and stone. It was disordered, chaotic. Dangerous.
Tomorrow there would be another trade union burial for more laborers accidentally killed on the job. Walls made in haste still toppled. Derricks—narrow cranes—made the work go faster, but too often dropped their cargo. Tomorrow a thousand bricklayers would set aside their work and parade the coffins to their graves. Meg would be there to paint that too, for no depiction of the Great Rebuilding would be complete without recognizing those who died in the process.
But today she saw progress, not just in the floor-by-floor reconstruction, but in her father, who’d been restored to her more than she’d thought possible mere months ago. Stephen was not patrolling in the dark with a gun, but watching the world around him without panic. And she, with hands forever marked by the fire, would somehow transpose this wonder to canvas.
Her mother’s words echoed somewhere deep inside her. “There is beauty in the imperfect too. You are a God who uses broken vessels. You are not afraid of human limitations or scars.” She’d been right.
Stephen looked at Nate, who waited for his response to set up the easel. “I suppose it’s all right. If you think it would help your show.”
“I do.” Gratitude—to her father, to God—expanded inside Meg, not just for this small concession, but for the uncounted steps, small and large, they’d all taken to reach this point. “Thank you.”
Nate set the easel and canvas in the spot she requested, then came to stand beside her father. His chestnut hair ruffled in the breeze. “I can see why you like it up here.” After that, his low voice was heard only by Stephen before the wind snatched his words away. Whatever he said put her father at ease, and that was all that mattered.
She and Nate wouldn’t always live in the apartment above Stephen and Sylvie. Soon enough they would move into a home set apart, with room to grow a family. But for now, the arrangement suited them. She had no wish to skim over the present with expectations for the future. If time were a tangible thing, she would hold this moment like a pearl in her hands, cherishing it for the treasure it was.
This was why she painted now. Not to escape into her imagination and create harmony she didn’t feel in life. But to preserve reality that ought never to be forgotten.
Charcoal in hand, Meg adjusted the pressure in her grip to match the lines she wanted to draw and set to work. After more than six months of practice, she rarely dropped her charcoal or brush anymore. The mechanics of working with her scar tissue figured out, she’d learned to paint with her mind, not with her hands, as Michelangelo had said.
Clouds thinned and stretched apart, allowing the sun to make her final caress before bending her head to the night. Windows dazzled, bricks turned a rosy gold, and steel winked from below. Years webbed at the corners of Stephen’s eyes as he stood gripping the back of the chair. Sleeves rolled to his elbows, Nate stood near enough to talk to him, but not so near that he blocked Meg’s view. Light gilded them both before fading into softer, velvet tones.
A firefly landed on the top of her canvas, throbbing yellow before flitting away. Soon the dusky sky blinked with tiny glowing insects. Sunset lingered, and Meg lingered with it, sketching as much as she could before calling it a day.
Her father circled around to face the canvas and smiled. “Tomorrow you’ll add the colors?”
“I will,” she told him. “We’ll make a start of it, anyway.”
He nodded. “Well, good night, then.” He didn’t open his arms for an embrace or offer his cheek for a daughter’s kiss. But he did leave the roof of his own accord, before dark, and this was beautiful too.
Nate looped his arms around Meg’s waist. After the day at work he’d described over dinner, she’d thought he was exhausted. But the fresh spark in his expression suggested otherwise. They’d been married for two months, and she was still learning to read the lights and shades in his eyes, the tilts of his lips. Every line and curve in his handsome face was a language she intended to master. But more than that, she would spend a lifetime as a student of her husband’s heart and mind, and never grow weary of it.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Are you ready to go in for the night too? Or do you prefer a romantic serenade of mosquitoes as they have us for dinner?”
She laughed. “As tempting as that sounds, I think we’re done here.”
“Almost.” He enveloped her in his arms, wrapping her in comfort and belonging while the cool of evening deepened.
Linking her fingers behind his waist, Meg rested against his chest and watched the sun set over the city she loved. One might mistake the reconstruction for ruins, for in the shadows, they looked remarkably the same. She knew better.
Nate kissed the top of her head. “It’s getting dark,” he whispered.
But light would come again.
Author’s Note
While the Townsend family and Nate Pierce’s family are fictional characters, many details in this novel are true to history.
The fire did begin in the O’Leary barn on DeKoven Street. Other details of the fire’s progression and firefighter and citizen response to it, as represented in the novel, follow what history tells us. Readers who want a detailed accounting of the Great Fi
re will find it in Chicago and the Great Conflagration, written by Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin in 1872, and in the impressive website GreatChicagoFire.org.
Catherine O’Leary and her cow were first blamed for starting the fire by reporter Michael Ahern of the Chicago Republican, an accusation that was repeated all over the city. In 1893, Ahern finally admitted he made up the story.
Precise figures are impossible to determine, but the estimate is that more than 300 people died in the fire. More than 17,000 buildings were destroyed, leaving 100,000 people homeless. The property damage was $192,000,000, which would be $3,692,307,692 by today’s standards.
The Chicago Fire was not the only one taking place at the time. The Peshtigo Fire swept through northeast Wisconsin on the same date (October 8, 1871), destroying 1.2 million acres and taking at least 1,200 lives, and other fires burned in Michigan at Holland, Manistee, and Port Huron.
The newssheet Stephen picks up dated October 9, 1871, was the actual newssheet put out by the Chicago Evening Journal.
The Tribune did run personal notices for people to be able to find each other after the fire. The examples used in the novel are taken from actual notices.
The Board of Police and Fire Commissioners found Catherine O’Leary not guilty at the conclusion of their 1871 investigation, but public opinion was not swayed. In 1997, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution formally exonerating her—and her cow—of all guilt.
The Sherman House hotel did exist opposite Court House Square, but Corner Books & More and Hoffman’s Bakery are fictional.
The Chicago Relief and Aid Society distributed millions of dollars’ worth of donations, provided vaccinations, and provided shelter houses (referred to as shanty houses in the novel) and barracks for one thousand families in the North Division, all of which were outfitted with the items mentioned in the book. For more on how Chicago dealt with the magnitude of need, see Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire 1871–1874 by Karen Sawislak.
Historical characters who really lived during that timeframe include: Fire Chief Marshal Williams; James Hildreth, who blew up some residences to create a firebreak; Joseph Medill, City Editor of the Chicago Tribune who was elected mayor; Bertha Honoré Palmer, philanthropist and wife of Potter Palmer; Philip Sheridan, the Civil War general who established martial law with his troops; Thomas Grosvenor, the attorney who was shot and killed by student Theodore Treat for breaking curfew; Daniel F. Brandon, Camp Douglas photographer.
All the anecdotes about the Brontë family are true. The Charlotte Brontë quotes come from The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Some of the interior details of the fictional Hiram Sloane’s house were inspired by interior details of the Driehaus Museum, which you can visit at 40 East Erie Street in Chicago.
Hiram Sloane’s Prairie Avenue neighborhood was a real location. You can visit the Prairie Avenue Historic District in the 1800 and 1900 blocks of South Prairie Avenue.
Camp Douglas was founded as a training center for Union troops in 1861 in the present-day Bronzeville area of Chicago and served as a permanent Confederate prison camp from 1863 to 1865. Though built for 6,000 prisoners, at its peak it held 12,000. By the end of the Civil War, 26,000 men had been imprisoned there. More than 4,000 died in the camp (17 percent of the inmates).
Most Galvanized Yankees, Confederate prisoners of war who obtained release by enlisting with the Union army, came from camps in Illinois (Rock Island, Camp Douglas, Alton, and Camp Morton); Columbus, Ohio; and Point Lookout, Maryland. They were mustered out in November 1866.
Stephen Townsend’s memories of Andersonville include experiences that really happened there, including the conflict between the Raiders and the Regulators. On June 29 and July 1, 1864, with permission from Confederate authorities, the Regulators hunted and arrested at least seventy-five Raiders, who were then held outside the stockade. After a court-martial found many guilty, the six most notorious Raiders were hanged. Like Camp Douglas, Andersonville held twice its intended capacity. In all, 13,000 men, 28 percent of the prison population, perished there.
The Cook County Insane Asylum became notorious for its treatment of inmates. In fact, it wasn’t until Mrs. Helen S. Shedd led a reform movement that the asylum was made to stop its wholesale drugging of the patients.
The file that Nate Pierce read in Dr. Franklin’s office contained real, historical anecdotes of veterans with soldier’s heart. Readers who want more information on soldier’s heart and PTSD in Civil War veterans ought to consult Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War by Eric T. Dean Jr. Stephen Townsend’s symptoms and signs in the novel are based on real experiences detailed in Dean’s book.
The benefit concert is an event I invented for the story, but Turner Hall did host events like it. The song lyrics quoted were from actual songs written and performed in honor of the Great Fire.
The French style of painting Bertha Palmer refers to in the novel would come to be known as Impressionism. In the early 1870s, the trend was only just beginning to take shape.
The library mentioned in the epilogue is the Chicago Public Library. It was established in 1872, and opened in January 1873, largely based on an 8,000-volume donation of books from Great Britain, sent as a mark of sympathy after the fire.
The Great Rebuilding was an amazing time of growth for Chicago, but more lives were lost during the reconstruction than in the fire itself.
The name of this series of novels, THE WINDY CITY SAGA, comes from Chicago’s nickname as the Windy City. The origins of this moniker aren’t entirely clear, but most agree it refers to the boastful “hot air” claims made by politicians and city boosters, particularly while competing with other cities to host the World’s Fair in 1893.
Acknowledgments
As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to many people who have had a hand in the creation of this novel.
To my editors Dave Long and Jessica Barnes, for believing this story was worth investing in, and for helping shape it into something worth reading.
To my agent, Tim Beals of Credo Communications, for his continued support and enthusiasm.
To Kevin Doerksen, owner of Wild Onion Walks in Chicago, for giving me a personalized tour of Chicago during my research visit, for staying in touch afterward and responding to all my follow-up questions, and for reading the novel in advance with a lookout for any historical inaccuracies. (If I’ve made mistakes in this regard, the blame is mine alone.) Psst, readers! Next time you’re in Chicago, look up Wild Onion Walks! Kevin is a phenomenal tour guide.
To Lesley Martin, reference librarian at the Chicago History Museum Research Center, for supplying the materials I requested both in person during my visit and through continued correspondence afterward.
To Ken Hall, professor of art at the University of Northern Iowa, for spending hours with me talking about oil painting techniques, creativity, and how a burn injury might affect an artist’s psyche and methods.
To Dr. Neil McMahon, for answering my many questions about burn injuries and the recovery process.
To Dr. Dave Beach, mental health director at VetGR in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who lent his expertise working with veterans with combat trauma as I was shaping the character of Stephen Townsend and his spiritual and emotional arcs.
To all the people who prayed for this story and for me as I was writing and editing, and especially Susie Finkbeiner, whose daily encouragement bolstered my spirit.
To my husband, Rob, and children, Elsa and Ethan, for all the grace and patience you display during the multiple deadlines associated with each book.
Last and most important, thank you, Lord, for being a God who uses broken vessels, and for not being limited by that which limits us.
Dear reader, thank you for devoting your time and energy to this story. I pray that God has used it to inspire you in some way, and shine some hope into whatever fire or ashes you may be experiencing in your own life.
Let�
�s stay in touch. Connect with me at www.jocelyngreen.com.
Discussion Questions
The history of the Great Fire of Chicago and the Great Rebuilding contains countless stories of human resilience. What is something you experienced that you never would have chosen, but from which you came through stronger?
Nate Pierce is convinced that a story that tells only one side is dangerous. When have you seen half-truths cause harm, either in your own life, someone else’s, or on a larger scale with the news?
Even aside from owning a bookshop, the printed word plays a role in each member of the Townsend family. How did literature influence Stephen? How did it influence Sylvie’s perspective? How did Meg relate to Charlotte Brontë?
Stephen replayed his past in his mind for years. Is there an experience in your past that still affects you today?
How have books influenced you and your own worldview? Are there particular titles of fiction or nonfiction that have played a prominent role?
In Chapter Sixteen, Meg learns a secret Sylvie kept from her regarding Hiram Sloane’s will, and feels betrayed. Are there any legitimate reasons to keep secrets from your loved ones? If so, what would those circumstances be?
When Meg was relearning how to draw and paint with her left hand, she compared her attempts with what she’d been able to do before she was wounded. She struggled to give herself grace during the process. When do you struggle to give yourself grace?
Ruth Townsend cleaned to the point of obsession during and after the war, since it was the only thing she felt she had control over. What other ways do people tend to cope when they feel life is spinning out of their control? What are some healthy methods of responding to stress?
In Chapter Twenty-Seven, Stephen quotes from Shakespeare, “Make not your thoughts your prison.” How do you think a person can be imprisoned or limited by their own thoughts? How can one break free of that?
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