Yesterday I sent my seventh novel off to the editor, Seven. I remember the excited relief I felt on finishing my first novel, and this is no different. Honestly, books are like children (although I only have two of those), each one has its own personality. My first three were Young Adult historical fantasy, featuring flying horses living high in the mountains of medieval-ish Wales and competing in Aerial Games. The next three, however, are heritage fiction. (To find out more about heritage fiction, read my previous blog post) Novel #7 was also inspired by my ancestors. It’s called Innocents at Home.
A five-month voyage to the Holy Land in 1867 led Mark Twain to write his novel Innocents Abroad. But what happened to those innocents after they returned to New York? Innocents at Home tells the tale of Nina Larrowe and Emma Beach, two of Twain’s shipmates.
How’s that for a taste? Does it make you want to find out more? I first learned about my family tree as a child from my grandmother’s stories and my aunt’s research. I’ve continued the research and uncovered lots of great stories. One of those involves Emmeline (Emma) Beach, daughter of Moses Beach, who owned the New York Sun. My ancestor in common with Emma Beach is her grandmother, Mary Ely. The family story is that Emma fell in love with Mark Twain but her father said, “You will never marry that Western roughneck.” (This is when Mark Twain is still Samuel Clemens and hasn’t published any books.) Nonetheless, Mark Twain remained a close friend of the Beach family, and his novel Innocents Abroad was his most popular novel during his lifetime.
As any researcher knows, it is very easy (and sometimes exciting) to get distracted by historical nuggets and veer off the path of the topic of your research. I found a copy of the manifest for the Innocents Abroad cruise aboard the Quaker City. Scanning it, I found the surname Lockwood. If you’ve read my most recent novel, The River Remembers, you’ll recognize that name, too. In that novel, one of the main protagonists is Samantha Lockwood. The passengers on the Quaker City cruise were Mr. and Mrs. E. K. Lockwood. Further research revealed this to be Edward Keeler Lockwood and his wife Harriet. They aren’t part of my direct genealogy, but right next to them on the passenger list is Mrs. Nina Larrowe. I already knew that Samantha Lockwood’s daughter, Nina Churchman, married Marcus Larrowe. Could this be her? I discovered it was, indeed, Samantha’s daughter in a major research Eureka! I also found that Nina Larrowe hated Mark Twain.
This began my musing about these women, one who loved Mark Twain and one who hated him. Neither of them ever had children, and I can’t imagine they ever would have dreamed that descendants of their immediate family would marry.
So, I wrote a novel about them. Here’s a draft of the novel blurb. What do you think?
Mark Twain wrote of his fellow passengers that they “stared at people and made them feel small… and bore down on them with America’s greatness until we crushed them.” His words ruin Nina’s reputation and break Emma’s heart. Nina chooses to become an actress, but crushing reviews and familial disapproval require her to craft a private life she can take pride in. Emma marries a famous artist, raising his children and developing her own painting until her husband’s eccentricities thrust her into the spotlight she abhors. Based on Nina’s autobiography and Emma’s letters to Samuel Clemens, Innocents at Home explores how these women inspire each other to overcome devastation and discover the courage to live life on their own terms.
By the way, discovering Emma’s letters from Mark Twain online gave a wonderful peek into their relationship. I only wish hers to him had survived! I also traveled to Portland, Oregon, to view a copy of “An Account of My Life’s Journey so Far: Its Prosperity, Its Sunshine, and Its Clouds,” which is Nina Larrowe’s autobiography. Armed with such wonderful first-person sources, my novel was born.
Watch for more about Novel #7, Innocents at Home, leading up to its publication in September, 2024.
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