Deeanne Gist shares the inspiration behind It Happened at the Fair
An interview
with
Deeanne Gist,
Author of
It Happened at the Fair
I’m
always drawn to events in our country’s past that are strangely absent from our
history classes. Why the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition has been left out, I
don’t know, especially since it was such a pivotal event for us. It set the
standard for architecture in the upcoming century; it introduced foreign
cultures to our amazed population. It wowed the world with our scientific
innovations, and it gave women their first official, recognized board position
and approved by an Act of Congress (all before we had the right to vote). But
it was technology that claimed the day as it nipped at the heels of horses,
buggies and man-powered tools. Between that and the evocative backdrop that
lent itself to so many possibilities, how could I resist?
Q: What were some of your favorite
details to share with readers from your research?
All
of them were my favorite! So much so, I had a horrible time trying to decide
what details to leave out. I read thousands of pages about the Fair, its
exhibits and its programs. All of them fascinating, all of them worthy of being
included. Some that I found particularly interesting were among the
applications submitted for exhibit space.
One
hopeful wanted to make a suite of apartments beneath the waters of Lake
Michigan. Someone from England wanted to be placed on exhibition as the
Messiah. A father of an “infant prodigy” wanted his baby to introduce the
leading orator at the dedication ceremonies. And a vendor of cosmetics wanted
to “varnish” half of a “wrinkled hag’s” face with his products and at the end
of the Fair reveal her features (on that half) to be “sleek and smooth.”
Q: Your main character, Cullen,
struggles with his hearing, especially amidst the noise in the Machinery Building. How were you able to
incorporate his inability to hear into the dialogue?
When
I write, I try to get deep into my character’s “head” so the reader will
experience what the protagonist is experiencing. I removed parts of the words
in the dialogue between Cullen and the other characters. Therefore, if Cullen
couldn’t hear a word and had to figure it out by context, then by default, so
did the reader.
Hopefully,
I was effective in demonstrating the kind of context clues Cullen would have
had to decipher. It was difficult to find just the right balance. I needed to
show his struggle with hearing—and it needed to escalate—yet I didn’t want to irritate
the reader, especially the fast readers who were bound to get tripped up by the
abbreviated words. Trying to find that line was definitely a challenge.
Q: At the end of the last century,
there was quite a bit of disagreement about sign language versus lip reading
for the deaf. What do you think about the views of the oralists and manualists
from that time period?
I
was amazed at how the entire debate was symbolic of a much deeper struggle
going on in America. Keep in mind that only 28 years had passed since the end
of the Civil War, and every generation was still feeling its after-effects.
Because of that, divisions within the nation were not only suppressed, they
were considered to be downright dangerous.
Before
the Civil War, the motivation for teaching sign language was to tell the deaf
about Christ. At that time, society was extremely concerned about a person’s
soul and inner being. After the Civil War, the motivation for teaching
lip-reading was to make everyone more inclusive, less different. Ever since,
our society has become more and more focused on outside appearances and less
concerned about the inner essence of an individual.
Explains
a lot about today’s culture, doesn’t it?
Q: Della seemed to be ahead of the
curve when it came to women’s rights. Did you intentionally write her character
as more feminist?
There
were a lot of feminists at the World’s Fair in general and in the Woman’s
Building in particular. In May, women held a “World’s Congress” at the Fair. It
marked the second greatest international convention of women. (The first had
been in Liverpool ten years prior.) Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Clara
Barton were among the speakers. The newspaper reported, “The hall of Washington
was a sea of bonnets, with here and there a scared-looking man peering between
them.”
It
ended up being a standing-room-only event. The convention hall became so
crowded they had to bar and bolt the entrances. When one of the speakers, Mrs.
J. Ellen Foster, was caught outside and not permitted entrance, she crawled
through a cellar window, walked rafters by the pale glimmer of distant electric
lights and climbed a ladder up to the main floor.
So
with that in mind, I felt I needed to have Della in-the-know as far as the
feminist movement went. So that’s why she might have appeared “ahead of the
curve.”
Q: Do you prefer writing historical
novels over modern-day? What is your favorite time period?
I
much prefer historicals to contemporaries. Things were simpler, more charming,
and the dresses were downright yummy. I also find it intriguing that the things
they struggled with are so relevant to what we still struggle with today.
So
long as it happened in America, I enjoy writing about it. I’ve written in every
time period from 1644 to 1903. I do seem to have an affinity for the
turn-of-the-century, though. But then, I like the mid-1800s, too. The 1600s
were pretty tough to research. There’s not a lot of records from Pocahontas’s
day, so I don’t know if I’ll want to tackle that time period again.
Q: What is your favorite thing about
writing in the romance genre?
That
initial spark of attraction between a man and woman, and the push-and-pull of
emotions during the courtship are my favorite. That’s such a fun time. I love
to recollect those times in my own life when my man was courting me 30 years
ago.
Q: In addition to It Happened at the Fair, you also wrote
an e-short that took place at the expo. Tell us more!
I
wrote a fun short story about another romance brewing at the World’s Fair. You
can download Tempest in the White City for
99 cents from your favorite online bookstore.
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