Hick really did survive a childhood of abuse by her father and set off on her own at age fourteen to work her way up as a journeyman reporter, from the Battle Creek Journal to the Minneapolis Daily Tribune to the Associated Press. Hick’s field reports from her time as a federal investigator offer a remarkable portrait of Depression-era America and also capture her wry, vivid voice. In those pages, she reveals her flaws too—racial prejudice and lazy thinking due to her lack of historical perspective, which sometimes made her less than objective. But she also showed deep empathy for people of all backgrounds who were living in poverty. Her report on the conditions in Scotts Run, West Virginia—and her frantic calls to Eleanor about the place—helped launch the creation of Arthurdale, a project that rescued many families from sickness and starvation and ultimately made an impact that echoed through those families’ future generations, just as Eleanor predicted it would.
Prinz the German shepherd really was a fixture in Hick’s life. Ruth, however, is a fictional creation based on a real woman Hick met on her visit to West Virginia. I also created the character of John based on some of Hick’s tales of her beloved colleagues, to give her an ally in an industry dominated not just by men but by a definition of women that simply did not include an individual like Hick. Hick was as “out” as a person could be in 1932; she didn’t talk openly about her preference for women, but, as she said, she “made no bones” about who she was. Her colleagues respected her, but the truth is her work life was probably lonelier than the one I’ve depicted.
The longer I worked on this novel, the more I came to feel a sense of responsibility to engender the imagination that has so far failed us: to wonder about the secret heart of Eleanor Roosevelt, the woman whose ethics and compassion we claim to admire so deeply. And to finally give Hick a chance to speak for herself.
Acknowledgments
As part of my research for this novel, I drove from Chicago to West Virginia in one day. I arrived in the tiny town of Reedsville very late, only to careen, aimlessly, up and down hills so enormous they posed an existential threat to this flatlander. I could not find the place I’d booked online. It existed, in theory, but the darker it got, the more I started to doubt that the house that had looked so welcoming in the pictures could be real. I’d been driving for nine hours. With no cell service, I had to keep pulling over to turn on the dome light and consult the printed map, but that didn’t do me any good since I had no clue where I was.
The process of writing, revising, submitting, absorbing many rejections, rethinking, rewriting, and revising many times more was exactly what it felt like to be stranded on that hill. These are the people who kept reminding me there really might be a room out there waiting, with a light in the window: Kate Harding, Molly Backes, Claire Zulkey, Wendy McClure, Susan Gregg Gilmore, Lori Nelson Spielman, Kelly Harms, Eleanor Brown, Ellen F. Brown, Erin Blakemore, Julie Mosow, Mary Bisbee-Beek, Renee Rosen, Tasha Alexander, Anne Hawkins, Ruth Mills, Bonnie Perry, Emily Williams Guffey, Mary O’Connor, Steve O’Connor, Matt O’Connor, Julie O’Connor, Ann McNees, Bob McNees III, Andy McNees, Megan McNees-Smith, Kelley Smith, and all my other long-suffering friends and family who have listened to me talk about Hick for years. And thank you to Beverly Donovan, Katie Viernum, and Jenna Koph for the magical and loving haven that is Loyola University Preschool.
Gratitude to Jeanne Goodman, executive director of the Arthurdale Heritage site, for driving me around to see some of the original homes in Eleanor’s “Little Village.” To Rick North, for help with Bluette. And to Virginia Lewick, archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, and all the dedicated archivists, historians, and guides who bring Springwood and Val-Kill to life. Hick’s framed portrait sits in a place of honor on the mantel at Val-Kill, just where Eleanor always kept it.
I am grateful to the work of Blanche Wiesen Cook, Susan Quinn, Rodger Streitmatter, Doris Faber, Hazel Rowley, Michael Golay, Richard Lowitt, and Maurine Beasley. And I am particularly indebted to Lorena Alice Hickok herself, for her extraordinary reporting that amounts to a vital oral history of the Depression. It goes without saying that I take full responsibility for all flights of fancy and outright mistakes in this novel.
I am grateful for every rejection I received (really!) because they made the book better. Thank you to Kate McKean for seeing what this novel could be, and to Iris Blasi for giving it a home; to Claiborne Hancock, Katie McGuire, and all the other members of the outstanding Pegasus team.
Willa, to love you is to love the whole world more, and better. Thank you for keeping me from giving up. And to Bob, for everything.
I used to think long acknowledgments pages were embarrassing. But the more time I spend at this, the more I see I am one lucky soul to have so many people to thank that it has probably bored anyone still reading this to tears.
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ALSO BY KELLY O’CONNOR MCNEES
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
In Need of a Good Wife
The Island of Doves
UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
Pegasus Books Ltd
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2018 by Kelly O’Connor McNees
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition March 2018
Interior Design by Sabrina Plomitallo-González, Pegasus Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-68177-679-8
ISBN: 978-1-68177-727-6 (e-book)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Undiscovered Country Page 24