What Strange Creatures (39 page)

Authors: Emily Arsenault

BOOK: What Strange Creatures

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I wanted Theresa to have an eccentric subject, since she’s somewhat eccentric herself. I first encountered Margery Kempe in a survey class on early English literature years ago. I had, since then, wanted to learn more about her, and this book seemed like a good excuse to do so.

My main research was reading
The Book of Margery Kempe
a few times. Margery gets self-righteously repetitive at times, but it’s still a fascinating glimpse into the life of a medieval woman who conducted herself in such unconventional ways.

Two other sources I used for research were
Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe,
by Louise Collis, and
Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe,
by Clarissa W. Atkinson.

Can you explain the book’s title?

The title comes from a quote from Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
: “What strange creatures brothers are!”

This is how I felt about my brothers growing up, and I imagine this is a common sentiment between siblings of both genders and all ages.

“What strange creatures” can probably be applied to nearly all the characters in the book, actually. Love and tragedy make them do strange things. Of course, it makes us
all
do strange things. A lot of characters in this book really don’t understand their own behavior—past or present—try as they might. I also liked the phrase because it connected to Margery Kempe’s—and occasionally Theresa’s—habit of referring to herself as a “creature.”

This is your first book with some political and legal elements. Any particular reason?

Years ago, while researching for another book (a book that never really came to fruition), I started to become interested in some of the Satanic Panic criminal cases in the 1980s and early 1990s. The case of the West Memphis Three is the most famous of these, perhaps, but there are many more. I became particularly interested when I saw that one disturbing case (in which the convicted party was set free over a decade later) actually involved a politician whom I had voted for. I’d been oblivious to her past, because it wasn’t discussed much in the press. It always seems strange to me that we don’t talk more about that odd era in American justice. I made this part of the backdrop of the story, rather than a central question, because I’m not a legal expert and I didn’t want to get preachy about it. But it’s a question that perplexes me a great deal, since so many of those cases were such big news when I was growing up. And now, for the most part, it’s as if they never happened.

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MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE

Author Gretchen Waters made a name for herself with her bestseller
Tammyland
—a memoir about her divorce and her admiration for country-music icons Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton that was praised as a “honkytonk
Eat, Pray, Love.
” But her writing career is cut abruptly short when she dies from a fall down a set of stone library steps. It is a tragic accident, and no one suspects foul play, certainly not Gretchen’s best friend from college, Jamie, who’s been named the late author’s literary executor.

But there’s an unfinished manuscript Gretchen left behind that is much darker than
Tammyland
: a book ostensibly about male country musicians yet centered on a murder in Gretchen’s family that haunted her childhood. In its pages, Gretchen seems to be speaking to Jamie from beyond the grave—suggesting her death was no accident . . . and that Jamie must piece together the story someone would kill to keep untold.

IN SEARCH OF THE ROSE NOTES

Eleven-year-olds Nora and Charlotte were best friends. When their teenage babysitter, Rose, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the girls decided to “investigate.” But their search—aided by paranormal theories and techniques gleaned from old Time-Life books—went nowhere.

Years later, Nora, now in her late twenties, is drawn back to her old neighborhood—and to her estranged friend—when Rose’s remains are finally discovered. Upset over their earlier failure to solve the possible murder, Charlotte is adamant that they join forces to try again. But Nora was the last known person to see Rose alive, and she’s not ready to revisit her troubled adolescence and the events surrounding the disappearance—or face the disturbing secrets that are already beginning to emerge.

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Acknowledgments

M
any thanks to: Ross Grant, Laura Langlie, Carrie Feron, Nicole Fischer, Joanne Minutillo, Lisa Walker, Nicole Moore, Danny Arsenault, Jennifer Purrenhage, Jennifer Breuer, Jessica Grant Bundschuh, and Cari Strand.

For modern-English excerpts of
The Book of Margery Kempe,
I used the Barry Windeatt translation.

For additional information about Margery Kempe, I relied on the following works:
Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe,
by Louise Collis;
Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe,
by Clarissa W. Atkinson; and the Norton Critical Editions
The Book of Margery Kempe,
translated and edited by Lynn Staley.

Also by Emily Arsenault

Miss Me When I’m Gone

In Search of the Rose Notes

The Broken Teaglass

Credits

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Cover photograph © by Glenn Ferguson/Arcangel Images

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

WHAT STRANGE CREATURES
. Copyright © 2014 by Emily Arsenault. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN 9780062283245

ISBN 978-0-06-228323-8

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OV/RRD
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