My Inspiration and Research for That Smudge of Smoke

Not every author is lucky enough to find inspiration for a historical novel in her own home.  But that’s what happened to me back in 1998 when my husband and I bought a log cabin in Braddock Heights, Maryland.  The cabin was built in 1930, and all its doors were salvaged from an old Chesapeake Bay steamboat, the SS City of Atlanta, when it was sold for scrap. The doors still had their original keys complete with leather tags inscribed with cabin numbers and the name of the ship

For years as I passed through those doors, a story brewed in my head. I tried to figure out how to incorporate two time periods and two settings into one story.  At the time, my sister-in-law worked for the City of Norfolk, Virginia and found an old photo of the steamboat in their archives. We had it framed and hung it next to our fireplace as a constant reminder of the history within our home.

Once I came up with the idea of a diary left hidden in one of those doors as the tangible connection between the two time periods and two characters, Piper’s voice and circumstances became clear in my head.  As soon as I began writing it down on paper, I also dove into research and found out about the Steamboat Era Museum in Irvington, Virginia, about a 4-hour drive away.

The museum was closed for the season, but the director at the time, Terri Thaxton, agreed to meet me there and open it up for me to explore for longer than the original two hours planned.  What a treasure trove of information it proved to be!  Within those walls were models of steamboats and their interior layouts, historic photographs, recordings of steamboat whistles, fine china and glassware bearing the steamboat company’s emblem, old films of steamboats docking at wharfs,  recorded conversations with people who once traveled aboard the steamboats, maps of the Chesapeake Bay and all its tributaries, a very realistic exhibit of a typical country store located at nearly every wharf. The list goes on and on.  Within the last few years, the museum has even added the actual refurbished pilothouse from the Steamboat Potomac where visitors can stand at the wheel just as a captain would have.

You may be able to tell that research is one of my favorite parts of writing, and sometimes I get carried away to the extent that I find far more material than I’ll ever use.  But it all serves to make the time period more real to me (and future readers) as I create my characters, setting, and plot.  Later I toured the Steamboat Ticonderoga at the Shelbourne Museum, located along the shore of Lake Champlain in Vermont.  And, even later, I spent several days in Baltimore finding the former locations of once popular department stores, wandering through Little Italy and Fells Point, and walking up Federal Hill to find the perfect spot where my fictional character Piper might have lived.  I chose a row house at the end of E. Hamburg Street, close enough to the former Light Street Wharf, so she could hear the whistle of her father’s steamboat whenever it docked in the harbor below.

Research involves more than just “place.”  I also had to learn about the type of clothes Piper wore in 1929, the menu options aboard the steamboat, the books she would have read, newspaper articles leading up to the 1929 crash of the stock market, the language patterns of the time, 1920s music, the water birds of the area, and so on. Throughout it all, I followed a 1929 calendar, including the actual phases of the moon during that particular year into early 1930.

When it came time to write Garrett’s story in the 2015 timeframe, I had to come up with a plausible reason to make his circumstances similar to Piper’s eighty-six years earlier. Why was he so drawn to Piper’s experiences, thoughts, dreams, and hopes to the extent they became entwined with his own hopes, eventually driving him to find out what happened to Piper?  I researched not only Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and the long and frustrating recovery, but also clarinet music, middle school band opportunities, and the significant role music can play in TBI recovery.

All of this research and writing was not done in one straight line, but rather in stops and starts, bits and pieces, whenever I was able to work in time around my teaching, caring for my aging parents, and living life in general.  The entire process—from the original idea followed by research, writing, more research, numerous revisions, and multiple submissions to final publication—took ten years!  I am so happy that I eventually found Luana Mitten, who immediately shared my vision of the book, and has given it a home with BeaLu Books.

If you’d like to hear more about That Smudge of Smoke and my writing process, please join me and author/editor, Precious McKenzie for a FaceBook Live Event on Tuesday, September 10th at 7:00 PM EDT by clicking on this link to “In Conversation with Author Edie Hemingway: Writing Books That Heal and Connect Us”