Presto

Back to the novel I began... could it be ten years ago? No, but it was almost seven years ago when I was leafing through materials at the beautiful Newberry Library in Chicago, viewing microfilm of newspapers from 1919, and  happened upon the week I soon after decided to use as the basis of an historical novel I am now calling Presto. I talked a bit about this on artchat podcast, 11/12/12 The title could change. With so much having happened that week, I would need a long story, I thought, but in the process of discovering and writing my first historical novel, I came to the simple and not so simple story of a young woman who happens to be living in Chicago during a week when catastrophe after catastrophe filled the pages of the many newspapers published in the city. Ah the old days. Newspapers! Part of what amazes me is what must have been so absolutely memorable to the people who lived through that week, in the same sense that we who lived through Kennedy's assassination or the  attack on the World Trade Center towers ask...what were you doing then? .. are virtually unremembered now. Until I read the front pages of the  Daily News and the Trib, I had no idea what a dramatic week began July 21, 1919.

A commission to write a play, Imperfect, interrupted my progress and gave me time to reflect. Now I am back for the finish.