Compromise with Sin
Page 33
Keller was such a tireless reformer, however, that in retrospect her labor reform, anti-war, and other activities to aid blind people must have eclipsed her role in the babies’ sore eyes movement. In her autobiography Midstream, published in 1929, Helen devotes just three pages to the subject where she says prevention is near to her heart and she wishes she could devote more time to it.
Helen and Peter’s romance was real, but I’ve changed her age. You can read more in her autobiography Midstream: My Later Life and the biography, Helen Keller: a Life, by Dorothy Herrmann.
Helen and Annie did tour with the tent Chautauqua and even went to Nebraska, but not when I said they did. There was no Durfee Chautuaqua Bureau, and most of the acts I describe were made up.
The Ladies’ Home Journal did in fact lose 25,000 subscribers after Bok’s editorial on venereal disease.
Baby Giveaway Saturday was a real event held at Burgess-Nash Company, “Everybody’s Store,” in Omaha, Nebraska. The event was called Adopt a Baby Saturday, and the orphans came from Child Saving Institute. You can see a copy of a 1916 newspaper ad on my blog.
Many of the towns in my novel are fictional, but St. DeRoin was a real town devoured by the Missouri River as it changed course. The town sat on the edge of the vanishing Halfbreed Tract.
I based my novel’s axe murders on an unsolved crime committed in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912.
The early twentieth century saw protests to halt immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.
“They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin” wrote Helen Keller in her essay for The Ladies’ Home Journal. Keller took the phrase from the poem, “The Present Crisis,” by James Russell Lowell.
“The Wreck of the Hesperus,” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, challenged many an elocution student. “Little Flo’s Letter” is usually attributed to Anonymous but was actually written by Eben E. Rexford. I have fond memories of sitting with family at the kitchen table of my late mother-in-law, Clesta Gabrial, while she recited this and other poems she’d learned as a girl.
Please sit back and forgive—or enjoy catching--the anachronisms. There are quite a few. For example, the Cadillac Osceola that Frank bought in 1905? Well I needed a closed-body car, and although it was invented that year it wasn’t put into production until 1910. Also the story demanded that I get some Nebraska towns prematurely wired for electricity and phone service.
You’ll find an abundance of background material on my blog:
NovelWords.Cafe
Looking For More?
Go to my blog, NovelWords.Cafe for more of the story behind the story. There you’ll find, among other things, Helen Keller’s complete Ladies’ Home Journal essay, pictures of cars, a link to a video about lighting a Coleman iron, and an Editor’s Cut: scenes that didn’t make the book.
Maybe Compromise With Sin left you wanting to know more about certain characters. Irina Taylor, the nurse with the blue-violet eyes and silver-bells laughter, intrigued me. Why did she disappear from Riverbend? Watch for publication of her story. Its working title is You Knew I Was a Writer.
One More Thing
With this novel, I set out to write a book I’d want to read. I hope it’s one you enjoyed reading. What do you think? I’d appreciate your comments on Amazon or Goodreads or my blog:
NovelWords.Cafe
About the Author
I stumbled into writing Compromise With Sin when life handed me something I couldn’t resist. While serving on the board of the Nebraska chapter of the National Society To Prevent Blindness, I was intrigued to learn that the organization was founded in 1908 to promote passage of legislation to prevent a blinding condition known as ‘babies’ sore eyes.’ That term grabbed me. My initial research revealed a disease caused by gonorrhea and responsible for one-fourth to one-third of all admissions to asylums for the blind. If that wasn’t enough of a hook, discovering that Helen Keller played an important role clinched it. From there I started to wonder what might happen to a family whose child was blinded by babies’ sore eyes.
Causes on behalf of preventing blindness and serving blind people have been a lifelong interest. I once belonged to a little band of volunteers who transcribed print books into Braille. Years later, I had an opportunity to use my ability to read Braille (by sight, not by touch) and write it when I taught the first blind student mainstreamed into an Omaha, Nebraska, high school.
I now live with my husband, Timothy, in Austin, Texas, where we volunteer as narrators for the Texas Talking Book Program. Inline skating and polymer clay are favorite activities, along with anything that involves my two children, grandtwins, and extended family.
Leanna Englert