The seminary was a fascinating place—every bit the high-powered educational enterprise Miss Crenshaw represents it to be. And because the school accepted students from various socioeconomic backgrounds and with varying quantities of Cherokee blood (sometimes as little as 1/128 Cherokee), it did feature many of the conflicts dramatized in The Revenant.
In developing the story, I made great use of Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909, by Devon A. Mihesuah. Dr. Mihesuah, currently a professor in the University of Kansas’s Department of Global Indigenous Nations Studies, noted a tension between darker-skinned full-blood Cherokee girls and the lighter-skinned mixed-blood girls—with the latter considering themselves more “progressive” than their “traditional” counterparts. However, upon speaking with Dr. Richard Allen, policy analyst for the Cherokee Nation, I learned that many Cherokee scholars feel this tension was less about race and more about class and family background—that cliques arose among the wealthier town girls, who may have found the country girls rather rustic. Either way, factions developed, just as they still do in modern schools. I did my best to explore this in a way that was both honest and sensitive.
Many of the characters and situations in the book were inspired by real people and events. Harriet Crenshaw is loosely based upon the school’s legendary principal of twenty-six years, Florence Wilson. The primaries were housed on the third floor (with older full-bloods educated alongside younger mixed-bloods), and according to the memoirs of seminary graduates, they did stage unofficial performances there. Boys from the male seminary often did serenade the girls at night, and Tahlequah truly did have an opera house, where school plays, debates, and oratory contests were staged. Even Fannie’s warrior dance—so offensive to Eli Sevenstar and others—was inspired by an 1894 photograph of female seminary students wearing feathered headdresses and holding bows and arrows. All Cherokee names were mixed and matched from lists of students and alumni found in male and female seminary catalogs.
Researching the background for this book was an engaging and eye-opening experience, and I was fortunate to have access to a gold mine of primary resources at the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Northeastern State University Archives and Special Collections. As alluded to above, I consulted photographs, school catalogs, newspaper clippings, and oral histories, along with published histories of the Cherokee people and the seminary. These sources helped tremendously in fleshing out the context within which my fictional murders and hauntings occurred. In addition to writing what I hoped would be an entertaining mystery, I endeavored to honor the Cherokees’ pride in their thriving nation. I hope Willie’s growing appreciation of her surroundings, as well as her deepening respect for her Cherokee colleagues, friends, and students, adequately reflects this endeavor.
Finally, legends of a ghost at the Cherokee National Female Seminary continue to this day, though no one can say for sure whether the building really is haunted, and if so, by whom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people deserve recognition for helping me bring this novel to publication. My editor, Michelle Frey, proved a keen critic and kindred spirit as we revised the manuscript, and I am forever grateful to her, Michele Burke, and the entire team at Knopf. (Special thanks go to the art department for the fabulous cover.) My agent, Jennifer Laughran, is to be commended for her shrewd commentary on early drafts, as well as her incredible children’s book knowledge and business savvy. I owe heartfelt thanks to Vickie Sheffler and Brenda Cochran at the Northeastern State University Archives, as well as Delores Sumner at NSU Special Collections, for their generous assistance with primary resources. Brandi Barnett and Martha Bryant, critique buddies and Tahlequah residents, read the ugly first draft and saw some merit in it—to say their feedback was much appreciated is a massive understatement. Diane Bailey, Michelle Lunsford, Lisa Mason, L. K. Madigan, and Richard Allen also read versions of the full draft and provided invaluable input. My wonderful critique group members offered insights (and many laughs) along the way—Lisa Marotta, Kelly Bristow, Dee Dee Chumley, and Shel Harrington. My friends on LiveJournal generously offered feedback to strange questions on terminology and other historical minutiae; I’m particularly grateful to Ellen Maher and Edith Cohn for suggestions that inspired the novel’s tagline. This novel owes a great deal to all the teachers and students who taught me so much over the years, and I especially wish to thank Michael Shapiro for being a brilliant Shakespeare professor and supportive friend (Willie would have taken ALL your classes, Michael!). Of course, none of this would have been possible if Mom hadn’t made a passionate, lifelong reader out of me, or if Dad hadn’t pushed me to love learning for its own sake. I owe so much to my entire family—grandparents, parents, stepparents, parents-in-law, brothers, sisters, and my little nieces—for loving me and making me a better person. (I’m still working on the better-person part, so keep after me, you guys.) I probably should thank my cat for endeavoring so frequently to sit on me as I worked, thus keeping my bum in the chair. And saving the best for last—I thank my husband, Steve, for his faith in me, his endless support, and his shrewd insights as I wrote and revised (and revised, and revised) this manuscript. Steve, you are a better partner than I ever could have wished for, far better than I deserve, and I adore you.
About the Author
Sonia Gensler grew up in a small Tennessee town and spent her early adulthood collecting impractical degrees from various midwestern universities. She experimented with an assortment of professions suitable for a dreamy bookworm—museum interpreter, historic home director, bookseller—before finally deciding to share her passion for stories through teaching. She taught literature and writing to young adults for ten years. Today she writes full-time and lives in Oklahoma with her husband and her cat. The Revenant is her first novel.
You can find out more about Sonia and The Revenant at www.soniagensler.com.
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