Broken Ground
Page 26
I look at the truck again, the things piled there. “It’s not too late now. Not yet.”
“Ruth,” Thomas says, and then he is quiet. But his eyes are bright with understanding.
I get in the truck and settle myself behind the steering wheel. Thomas climbs in beside me, props his crutches between us.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he says.
“Far easier for us than for Silvia, Luis, and the children.”
“We don’t know where we’re going.”
“We’ll go back to the train station, and ask where they were bound.” I shrug. “Then we’ll get a map—and there will be people to ask.”
“We might not find them.”
“But we can try. We have that privilege, and with it comes a certain responsibility, don’t you think? And if we don’t find them, say we don’t find them . . . maybe there will be a school that needs supplies.”
His eyes brighten with understanding. “You’re sure.”
I turn the key. The truck rattles to life. “Let’s go.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I started researching Broken Ground, I had no idea that I would end up writing about the deportations without due process of untold numbers of people of Mexican heritage, many of them U.S. citizens. In fact, I knew nothing about the involuntary “repatriations” of the 1930s. I started out writing a story about a young woman who, after experiencing devastating loss, makes a journey west to pursue an education. In fact, I wanted to write a novel based on my mother’s experience—an experience that has always inspired me, though she never had the chance to speak of it to me herself.
It wasn’t too long after I began work on the book that a black-and-white picture popped up on the Web and stopped me short. It showed a crowded train station and cattle cars filled with people. World War II, I thought, the death camps. But then I looked at the caption and read for the first time the word “repatriation,” and my understanding of history, as well as my novel, began to change. After some searching, I found other related photographs of displacement and deportation. It took me longer, however, to find credible written sources that confirmed what the pictures showed. There simply hasn’t been a whole lot written about this event in U.S. history.
For this reason, I want to begin by thanking Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, an account that is both substantive and evocative and proved to be my greatest resource of information for Broken Ground. Many thanks to the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago as well, particularly Salvador Vergara, who welcomed me into their wonderful library and encouraged me in my research there.
Needless to say, I love libraries, and I think it’s about time I expressed my gratitude to the Wheaton Public Library, too—second home of my childhood, go-to workspace of my adulthood. In these last years, I’ve most often set up shop in the Quiet Reading Room, a room with a view that is not at all my own and all the more precious for that fact. My gratitude also extends to the First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn, in particular to the Reverend Lillian Daniel, who let me spend time in Sunday school again when nobody else was there. I accomplished a fair amount upstairs in the Temple of Light. And surrounded as I was by the many wooden story figures, the silence there always felt companionable.
I’ve been privileged to work on two books with Beth Adams. Without Beth these two books would not have come to be. Thank you, dear editor, for being the great guide you are—for listening well, thinking clearly, reading between the lines, and keeping your sense of humor. And to Amanda Demastus, Bruce Gore, Katie Rizzo, and all the terrific folks on the team that is Howard Books: many, many thanks for believing in the manuscript that was and seeing it through to the book it is.
Sandra Bishop, as an agent and advocate, is simply the best. As a friend, she’s better yet. Thank you, Sandra, for being courageous and empathetic and wise in the face of every challenge and change.
I am indebted to my friends who are writers, in particular those with whom I meet once a month to hash things out. Beth Franken, Eve Gayley, Sherrie Lowly, and Jack Zimmerman, I’m so glad for you in this season of life.
Joni Klein and Jan DeVries, thank you for Sunday night dinners, ongoing conversations, and a whole lot of music and laughter. Thank you, Cheryl Hollatz-Wisely and Kate Gray, for your deep understanding of what this process takes. Thank you, Cookie Murphey, for opening doors to the past. And thank you, Randi Ravitts Woodworth and Mark Woodworth, for journeying with my family and me down so many roads and over so much broken ground.
And as for my family . . . Magdalena and Teo, thank you for being your beautiful, unique selves. You two are there behind every word of this book. Greg Halvorsen Schreck, thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made and the support you’ve given so I could keep on trying, word after word. Thank you beyond words, dearests. I love you.
Finally, to those who live the unofficial stories, and to those who speak what some may prefer suppressed: thank you.
Also by Karen Halvorsen Schreck
Sing for Me
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© GREG HALVORSEN SCHRECK
KAREN HALVORSEN SCHRECK’s novel Sing for Me received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Her previous novels include While He Was Away, a finalist for the 2012 Oklahoma Young Adult Book Award, and Dream Journal, a 2006 Young Adult Book Sense Pick. Her short stories have received various awards, including a Pushcart Prize and an Illinois Arts Council grant. Karen received her doctorate in English and creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives with her family in Wheaton, Illinois.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Karen Halvorsen Schreck
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First Howard Books trade paperback edition May 2016
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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco
Cover design by Bruce Gore
Cover Image by Getty Images and Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schreck, Karen Halvorsen.
Broken ground / Karen Halvorsen Schreck.—First Howard Books trade paperback edition.
pages ; cm
I. Title.
PS3619.C4619B76 2016
813'.6—dc2
3
2015028887
ISBN 978-1-4767-9483-9
ISBN 978-1-4767-9485-3 (ebook)