Yes, it really happened. The people of Hickory built, outfitted and staffed a polio hospital in fifty-four hours. Ultimately consisting of thirteen wards, the hospital evaluated six hundred and sixty-three patients over its nine months in existence. The hospital is long gone now, only existing in our imaginations.
I heard about Hickory and its polio hospital when I moved to North Carolina twelve years ago and I’m glad I had this opportunity to write about it. Although the hospital itself did exist, the patients and their situations described in The Stolen Marriage are purely products of my imagination. As is always the case when writing about an actual event, I needed to come up with a way to fictionalize the real-life story. That’s when Tess and her devastating personal situation came into existence. Like many of us, Tess begins her story with a crisis and self-doubt and grows stronger through adversity. I wish that for all of us!
As you can imagine, The Stolen Marriage was a research-heavy book. I began my research with a visit to the Catawba County Museum of History, where I spent a day reading old copies of the Hickory Daily Record. After eight hours immersed in 1944, it was a strange experience to walk outside and discover it was still 2016! On that initial research trip, I realized that, while Hickory is a charming town to visit, I was seeing it through a modern-day lens and had no idea what it had been like during the war years. To complicate matters, the town is impossible to navigate by map, having street names like “44th Avenue Court NE.” To make matters even worse, as I tried to learn what the town was like in 1944, I discovered that the street names were different back then. The joke is that the town government changed the names during the war in case of invasion—the enemies would never be able to find their way around. The reality is that the street names were changed in the fifties, apparently because they were even more confusing prior to that time. Whatever the reason, I knew as I drove around that I was going to need some help in discovering Hickory during the war years.
I found that help in Peggy Mainess. Peggy is the genealogy assistant at the Hickory Public Library and an enthusiastic expert on the history of the area. For several hours, she and I drove around Hickory as she helped me see it through 1944 eyes. I’m grateful to Peggy for taking the time out of her schedule and for sharing her wealth of knowledge with me.
There is a good deal of information online about Hickory and the polio hospital. One of the problems I had as I sorted through site after site was the discovery of contradictory information. When exactly did the ward for the African American patients open? Was there a meeting in the high school or wasn’t there? I did my best with the information I had. I altered a few of the dates and events slightly to mesh better with my story, but for the most part, I stuck to the facts as I discovered them.
My “bible” as I researched the story was Alice Sink’s book The Grit Behind the Miracle. Ms. Sink has written an extraordinary account of the hospital, informed by her interviews and exchanges with former patients.
Joyce Moyer, the author of the award-winning children’s novel, Blue, shared some of her research with me early on. She whetted my appetite to learn more, and I’m grateful for her generosity.
Not only did I need to research the polio hospital and life in Hickory during the war, I also needed to educate myself to North Carolina laws regarding marriage in the forties. Interracial marriage was prohibited and punishable by up to ten years in prison, and getting out of a marriage was close to impossible, as Tess discovers.
While I’m not much of a believer in the supernatural, Tess’s encounters with Reverend Sam are based on a similar experience I had personally, an experience I’ve never been able to satisfactorily explain to myself or anyone else. In a way, an explanation isn’t necessary. What matters is what I took away from that experience—and what Tess takes away from hers. Reverend Reed Brown, formerly of the Arlington Metaphysical Chapel in Arlington, Virginia, has no idea he helped in the writing of this novel, but he did. Although I met with him only briefly years ago, his influence on me remains strong and positive and I’m grateful for that connection.
Thank you to my amazing research assistant, Kathy Williamson, for her ability to track down whatever information I need, even when the task seems impossible. She can find the most obscure resources for me in a heartbeat. She’s also a Jill-of-all-trades as she updates my website, sends out my newsletter and takes care of sundry other business-related tasks so I’m free to write.
To all the folks at St. Martin’s Press, a big thank you for everything you do. Special thanks to my editor, Jen Enderlin. It’s rewarding, exciting and sometimes scary working with Jen, because I can never predict her reaction to the book I turn in. She sees things in my work that I’m too close to see, and her perspective and suggestions are always right on.
My publicist at St. Martin’s, Katie Bassel, deserves her own shout out. Katie not only sets up my events and keeps everything running smoothly, she does so with a calm professionalism I hugely admire.
I’m also grateful to the rest of the folks at St. Martin’s who get my books into the hands of my readers. Thank you Sally Richardson, Brant Janeway, Erica Martirano, Jeff Dodes, Lisa Senz, Kim Ludlam, Malati Chavali, Jonathan Hollingsworth, Anne Marie Tallberg, Tracey Guest, Olga Grlic, Lisa Davis, and all those hard workers in the Broadway and Fifth Avenue sales department.
I was so happy to finally meet the folks at my UK publisher Pan MacMillan this past year so I could thank all of them in person. I’m especially grateful to my charming UK editor, Wayne Brooks; my UK agent, Angharad Kowal; and Pan Macmillan publicist, Francesca Pearce, who saw to it that I had the chance to meet with many of my readers while I was in London. What a treat that was!
Thank you to my agent, Susan Ginsburg, who simply rocks as an agent, friend, and human being. It was my lucky day when she took me on as a client. Thanks, too, to everyone else at Writers House who works hard to get my books published in various formats around the world.
As always, I’m grateful to my writing friends, the Weymouth 7. I don’t think I could complete a book without the brainstorming lunches, emails, and retreats I share with these women. Thank you Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff, and Brenda Witchger. I look forward to many more years of our friendship.
My significant other, John Pagliuca, has been his usual supportive self during the writing of The Stolen Marriage and as always was my first reader. He’s insightful, knowledgeable, and sharp as a tack, and I’m always grateful for his input, even when it means serious rewriting. John is also an awesome dog-walker, grocery shopper, vacuum operator, and all-around helpmate. I’m lucky to have him.
For those who would like to read more about Hickory’s Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital, here are some of the research materials I used:
Eller, Richard | The Miracle of Hickory | TEDxHickory
TEDxTalks -
Elliott, Marvin L. “Miracle of Hickory: Mass Media and the ‘Miracle’.” (2007), North Dakota State University.
Hickory Daily Record: Various articles in the 1944 editions.
Hostetter, Joyce Moyer. Blue. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press, Inc., 2006.
Hughes, C. “The Miracle of Hickory.” Coronet, February, 1945, pp. 3–7.
“Infantile paralysis: Child victims fill beds of an emergency hospital as epidemic hits rural counties of North Carolina.” Life, July 31, 1944, pp. 25–28.
Sink, Alice E. The Grit Behind the Miracle. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998.