Since the story is set in the late 1870s, I had to make a concerted effort to establish in the reader’s mind, particularly young readers, that Hattie’s world was very different from today. I could have come out and said from the start… It’s 1878 blah, blah, blah. But, it’s better to be subtle about it and let the story establish time and place. To do that, I’d drop tiny clues here and there in the text.
For instance, on page one:
“I’m in the kitchen, Momma!” Thinking fast, I figured under the circumstances it was best to meet her halfway. I damped down the wood cookstove, took a deep breath, and scooped up a cookie. “Coming, Momma!”
So, right away, we learn Hattie’s not standing at a modern Kitchen Aid range but is baking cookies in a wood cookstove.
A few paragraphs later, Hattie tells her mother about Arthur grabbing her slate at school. A slate is a small chalkboard for writing and, in Hattie’s case, drawing too. Later I show the reader an image of a slate that Hattie has drawn Raven on.
In Chapter Two – There Was Nothing Good About Dying, we learn where she lives and that her great-grandfather was one of the original settlers in the area. Then, we find out about her father’s death, which firmly establishes the time period. From there, we learn that mourning death was very different from today when Hattie tells us:
It all changed one day, Martha said, when Momma came downstairs wearing a long black dress, surprising everyone. She’d finally accepted Daddy’s death. She wore that black dress every day for two years.
I was only two years old at the time. I don’t remember much from when I was little, but I remember that dress.
A page later, we gain more insight into Hattie’s personality and the time period when she tells us about speaking her mind.
Grandpa was always good-hearted about it and would say, “Young lady, you could talk a gate off its hinges.”
I suppose he was right. I had a habit of talking my way into trouble, but more often than not, it got me out of a tough spot too. Except with Grandma.
She had a different opinion about me speaking at all. “Ladies should be quiet until spoken to,” she used to say. “Keep your thoughts on your husband and children, practice your penmanship, and memorize your Bible verses.”
I loved Grandma, but after hearing her say that for about the tenth time, I couldn’t help myself.
“Grandma, you know that’s not right.” Well, you should have seen the look on her face. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but I wanted her to know I had my own ideas. “I want to be an artist like my daddy.”
Here are a few other examples:
- In Chapter Six, Hattie tells us about winters in Hector and quotes the pastor’s wife: “The winter of 1877 is one for the record books.”
- Hattie writes a letter to her friend Marion to ask her to come to the house (sorry, no telephones in the 1870s).
- Hattie rides Polly, her horse, to Marion’s house.
- Their house has a cistern (a water storage tank) in the basement with a pump in the kitchen sink—no running water.
- Hattie reads and draws by oil lamp.
- Hattie always wears a dress, never pants. Sometimes she wears “an old work dress.”
- School ends in 8th grade.
One of the most important anchors to setting and time
Again, in Chapter Two- There Was Nothing Good About Dying, I felt it important to clearly indicate the enormity of death and suffering that many families endured during and after the war. I did this by having Hattie recount the girls she knew who had fathers in the war. I also returned to the black dress metaphor, symbolizing death and mourning. Soon, we’d learn that the black dress also symbolized Hattie’s melancholy (depression).
It was sad to say, but I wasn’t the only girl in town who lost her father in the War. Maudie’s daddy died at Gettysburg like mine. Lucinda Hawkins’s daddy got killed at a place called Antietam. We tried to find it on a map and learned that Antietam is a creek, not a town.
Sarah Adams’s daddy got sick and died of something called dysentery. A cannonball blew Bessie Conklin’s daddy to pieces. The only thing they found of him was a tiny Bible with his name in it. She showed it to me after school one day.
Even if your father came home, he was not the same as when he left. Abby Crane’s daddy had his arm cut off. “Practically every night, he wakes up screaming something terrible,” she told me in tears.
Marion’s daddy was in the War too. She was my best friend. Her daddy got sick before the fighting started and was sent home. He was lucky, and so was she.
Our town had a shared sadness. We didn’t talk much about it; we didn’t have to. Everyone got used to living that way, deciding it was easier to keep it inside.
I did too, until my sadness became so deep, I couldn’t find my way out. That black dress had come back to haunt me.