Introduction

From one of America’s most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a spectacularly riveting novel based on a real-life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows— a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades

In Chicago in 1931, Asta Eicher, mother of three, is lonely and despairing, pressed for money after the sudden death of her husband. She begins to receive seductive letters from a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, who promises to cherish and protect her, ultimately to marry her and to care for her and her children. Weeks later, all four Eichers are dead.

Emily Thornhill, one of the few women journalists in the Chicago press, becomes deeply invested in understanding what happened to this beautiful family, particularly to the youngest child, Annabel, an enchanting girl with a precocious imagination and sense of magic. Bold and intrepid, Emily allies herself with a banker who is wracked by guilt for not saving Asta. Emily goes to West Virginia to cover the murder trial and to investigate the story herself, accompanied by a charming and unconventional photographer who is equally drawn to the case.

Driven by secrets of their own, the heroic characters in this magnificent tale will stop at nothing to ensure that Powers is convicted. Mesmerizing and deeply moving, Quiet Dell is a tragedy, a love story, and a tour de force of obsession and imagination from one of America’s most celebrated writers.

Editorial Review

Excerpt

Christmas Eve

December 24, 1930

Park Ridge, Illinois

When the year turns, there are bells on the wind. All the old years fall on the ground in lights. When you walk across those lights, it sounds like walking on all the piled-up leaves of giant trees. But up high the bells are ringing for everyone alive. There are silver and gold and glass bells you can see through, and sleigh bells a hundred years old. My grandmother said there was a whisper for each one dead that year, and a feather drifting for each one waiting to be born.

My mother says that's just a story, but I always do hear the bells, even in my sleep, and everything in front of me is all white and open like a field. Then I start dreaming.

The trees in my dream sparkle. It's quiet in the dark, and I'm indoors, on a stage. The trees are behind me but they are alive, touching limbs and stirred just so. A silent spirit seems to move among them, and the light has found me. It's a large theater, rows and rows before me, and a balcony I glimpse through a gleam that dazzles me. The audience is quiet, waiting for me to speak. Perhaps they are watching a play, my play, or a play in which I perform. I can't make out faces beyond the footlights, but I see the tilt of heads and the shapes of ladies' hats, and a glow seems to float amongst them. There's a hum of admiration or excitement, and a swell of whisper like applause. Then the lights on the stage darken. I hear people weeping, so moved are they by the production.

Grandmother used to say that I might find myself upon a stage one day, as an actor ("don't say 'actress,'" she told me, "the word garners no respect"), or the author of a play. Grandmother admired the suffragettes and said they would open all fields of endeavor to women. If she were younger, she said, and not required at the bosom of her family, she would have joined their movement, to help them fight their war of argument and reason. She was required because Heinrich died. Her "beloved Heinrich" was my father, an only child. We called him Papa. He called Grethe "Miss" or "Missy," and he called me "little Nell," though my name is Annabel. I try very hard to remember him, but I don't, not really. Papa is his portrait, in the gold frame over the parlor mantel ("That is not a photograph, my dear, that is a portrait in oils"), and he is the man in the wedding picture with Mother. One day he didn't come home. I was four years old. Nothing was said that evening to alarm the children. Betty, our nursemaid, sat with us at dinner and put us to bed, for the police had summoned Mother and Grandmother.

Papa was struck by a streetcar in the Loop, just after dusk. He was walking from his club to the station.

I believe there was a crowd, jostling and shoving, distracted by the siren of a passing fire truck, or startled by sudden rain. He was a fine designer of silver in our own backyard workshop, and an actuary for Metropolitan Insurance and Casualty Company of Chicago. He advised on odds and probabilities. This was the irony, Grandmother said, for no one could ever have predicted the sudden death of a man so strong and healthy, who never smoked or drank and was well liked and much respected. He did business at his club because that was where business was done, and was an artist at evenings and weekends, a man known for his talent and easeful charm. He performed in theatricals at university and sang a fine tenor, but pursued mathematics. One job his entire working life, Grandmother says, and head of actuaries when he died, as well as Mother's adviser and manager in the art of silver design. One home from the time Grethe was born, and Grandmother sold their Chicago apartment to relocate with the family. Papa wanted fresh air for the children, and fine schools, and a garden with a barn for his workshop, and a stable for a pony, and the park nearby, where we float our boats and walk through forest paths to the meadow. The meadow is high in spring and mown in summer, and Papa helped us fly kites.

I think I do remember the kites.

Grethe was eight then, and he told her to take off her glasses and run, run straight out and follow the tug of the string; there was no one in the meadow but us and the wind was high. I was little and he held me on his shoulders, clasping my knees, while the kite went up and up. The string played out in his hand against my leg.

I felt so tall, with the grass so far below me, and the kite so far above, dipping and bounding. I was holding on to Papa's hair, which was dark and thick and combed straight back, but blowing that day, blown up like the wide collar of my dress and the ribbons on the kites. I can't see Papa's face, or his eyes near mine, but sometimes, when I'm alone and I think hard, I can feel his hair in my fingers, cold and coarse, and I clinch my fists to hold on.

I know all of Grandmother's stories about Papa, but the kites are not her story. Her stories are in the photograph box that she kept on her dressing table. It's a tall wooden box and the sides are four glass frames: the photographs slide right in. Heinrich, a baby in a blousy dress. Heinrich, ten years old, with Grandmother and Grandfather Eicher ("Like you, Annabel, he read the dictionary, and wrote out new words"). Heinrich in his graduation portrait. Heinrich in military uniform ("To have survived the Great War, and be killed by a streetcar in his prime"). The carved top of the box lifts up, and the other photos fit neatly, each thick card snug in the velvet-lined inside.

The box is mine now. Grethe never looks at photographs. The faces are too small for her to see, and she doesn't care for stories. She had measles and a high fever when she was two. They nearly lost her, Grandmother said, and the crisis affected her eyes and concentration ("Due to her limitations, it's best she's not imaginative. Grethe can learn to run a home and she will marry. Until then we must protect her"). Grethe doesn't go to school any longer; she is quite as tall as Mother and goes with her to the shops and the bank. She helps plan meals, and Mother instructs her on etiquette.

Grethe is delicate. Her hair is dark like Papa's. If she doesn't remember things, I must remember for her. She plays the princess or the pilgrim in my plays and dioramas. I say the lines and she acts them out, for she has a calm slow way of moving and can hold quite still. Hart ruins the dioramas and rouses Duty to barking and running about. My brother Hart is very quick and I must give him long speeches and grave actions. He must be the hero or the villain, and lay flowers at Mother's feet by the end.

Duty is our Boston terrier that follows Hart everywhere and sleeps on our beds by turns. Betty brought him from the pound and Mother let him stay. The pony had been sold by then, to a family on a farm. Duty was already trained, Betty said, because he'd lost his family in a tornado, and a boy needed a dog. Hart wanted to call him Topper because he has a white spot around one eye like a gentleman with a monocle. But Duty wore a collar with letters sewn on and wouldn't answer to any other name. Just as well, Mother said. A pet needs walking and feeding, and his name will serve to instruct. Duty knows to sit, and Hart taught him to fetch and dance. When Grandmother was sick, Duty lay at her door. The nurse was coming and going with trays and said that dog would trip her, he must be shut up.

Duty is in my dream. I stand upon the stage before the trees and Duty is there, sitting just at the edge of the light. His little legs are stubby and his chest is broad and his short brown coat shines like a mirror. Duty's eyes are wide apart and he can seem to gaze in two directions, but he only looks off toward the wings, to where no one can see.

Grandmother always told me that our dreams are wishes or fancies, gifts of the dream fairies that guide and care for us in our sleep. She said that poems and stories are the whisperings of angels we cannot see, beings once like you and me, who know more than we can know while we are here. "Address me in your mind when I am gone," Grandmother told me. "I will hear you always, and will send a reply in the sounds of the grass and the wind, and other little signs, for we no longer speak in words when we have slipped away."

The nurse didn't come on Thanksgiving. I think Grandmother was glad. Mr. Charles O'Boyle, our former roomer, would come for dinner, and the Verbergs from next door, who were bringing the turkey and the chestnut dressing. Mother was making the vegetables and her gelatin surprise, and Charles would bring the pies. Charles is a great one for making pies. He baked them every Sunday, the years he roomed with us, before the Dunnegan Company posted him back to Chicago. Grethe was setting table with the Haviland china and Hart was to lay fires in the dining room and parlor grates. We roast marshmallows on the long forks at Thanksgiving, and figs with chocolate. It was my turn to sit with Grandmother. I brought up tea for one.

"My dear," she said. "You gladden every heart."

I fed her with the teaspoon. She could not hold the cup.

She talked about the silken cord that binds her soul to mine. She slept and woke and slept and woke.

The cord is a real cord and I keep it under my pillow. Not all of it. Once it was very long, the last of the silk braid Mother used on the sofa pillows and parlor drapes, and Grandmother made a game of it for walking through the park. She invented games for us after Papa died, and took us everywhere, to the circus and the moving pictures, but always to the park ("So near it is like our own backyard"). Betty was seeing to Mother and Mother was settling accounts. We children went, afternoons, with Grandmother, single file, holding to the cord. She used to say there was one of her and three of us, we children must hold to the cord just so. She fashioned one large knot for each right hand, and I was first behind her. Then came Grethe, and then Hart, our gentleman protector, with Duty at his heels. We walked two blocks to the park and the arched gates, past the fountain and the pools, into the woods where the trees grow close. We held to the cord in silence, for Grandmother liked us to hear small sounds — the cricket and the mantis, and grasses moving in the meadow beyond the pines. Sound travels even in the cord we hold, Grandmother said, for the heart beats in the hand.

The cord that's left is but a curl wrapped round a knot and tied in double bows. Now if we go to the park, I tie it round Mrs. Pomeroy, who is only a rag doll, no bigger than my two hands, so the cord goes round her waist four times like a golden belt. She was a gift from Papa. We all have our beloved companions, Grandmother said. Where I found such a name she did not know, as I could barely lisp the words when I was two.

Hart says Papa brought him to the park to ride the pony on winter Sundays, and led him all around the meadow. Grethe has asthma and the air was too cold, but Papa and Hart dressed warmly, like explorers on an expedition. Their breath was white as smoke and the afternoons were blue.

I was too young to ride. I don't remember the pony, but he was dear to Grethe, to Hart, and all his friends. A Shetland, Hart says, small as a big dog, with his mane in his eyes, and long eyelashes like Mrs. Pomeroy's, though hers are sewn in thread. One could lead him about the yard with a carrot ("A farmer's son brought hay and feed, cleaned the stall, exercised the animal in bad weather. Your father would have that pony, but the expense was too much, you see, after he died"). There were fine parties at birthdays and May Day, with mimes and jugglers, pony rides and rolling hoops.

Now we have balloons and Mother makes ice cream.

There wasn't ice cream on Thanksgiving.

It was understood I would sit for the blessing. Then Charles carried my plate upstairs. Mother brought a clear broth for Grandmother, but Grandmother was asleep.

"You are not like others," Grandmother liked to tell me. "Your dreams see past us."

Once she bade me close my eyes and touch my forehead to her cool, dry mouth. She kissed me and blessed me and said, whispering, not to ponder the pictures I see, but to hear and see and feel them. Their stories are truths, she told me, for each foretells the eternal garden in which we'll all walk together.

I wonder if that garden is earth or air, if one hungers there, or feeds on nurture that renews itself, like the dew and the wind, like the bells, ringing the old year into the dark, snow swelling every sound.

I asked Grandmother, did she remember Denmark. Min lille svale, she said, and slept.

I ate my dinner. Snow fell past the windows like a picture in a book.

Duty does not really dance. Hart calls it dancing and taught him with bits of meat. Duty stands and moves forward, then back, holding his front paws up before him. Like a suitor at a soiree, Grandmother said. Not such an old dog, Mother said, if he can learn new tricks.

The trees in my dream shine like trees on a glittery valentine. The sparkle looks like snow, catching light, or drops of rain held fast. It is a wonderful effect. Living trees could stand upon a stage in pots of earth, and the limbs might move on wires, gently, as though stirred by a breath.

Grandmother woke and said, "I fear your mother has not been entirely provident."

Then she slept.

Betty has been gone some time now, as we are too old for a nurse. Mrs. Abernathy was a medical nurse, and very strict. She wore a uniform and kept me out of the room. Grandmother told everyone I was the only nurse she needed, but I was not allowed. I could hold her hand at certain times, or read aloud the speeches from my plays.

Mrs. Pomeroy is old and soft. Her arms and legs are mended. She will wear the silken cord in my Christmas play and I will voice her words. She will be Grandmother and speak as Grandmother speaks.

We took turns at Grandmother's bedside on Thanksgiving. I stayed longest, and scarcely left her side. Grandmother told me, when she was still up and sitting in her chair, that she would sleep longer and longer, and then not wake up. She said her death would be a blessed death and one she wished for me when I am very old. She told me a poem to write down, and I wrote each line exactly. I read the poem out for her two times. Then she told me to put the paper in her bedside table, and to open it again when she was gone ("Death is not sad if one has lived a long life, and been of service").

I wanted to look at the poem, but I knew the words.

What lies behind is not myself

But a shell or carapace

Cast off, an earthly taste.

I have gone on you see

To make a place for thee.

Grandmother can hear me. I do believe so. And I hear her voice in the words of her poem, and in other words that come to me.

Perhaps she has sent me the dream about the trees. I could hear a sigh in the branches, a bare whisper. No doubt there was a fan offstage, blowing a breath of motion.

Grandmother used to say, so little can move so much.

Excerpted from QUIET DELL by Jayne Anne Phillips. Copyright 2013 by Jayne Anne Phillips. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Phillips weaves original source material from 1930s news coverage and the trial into her novel. Quiet Dell is a work of fiction based on true events. How did exact quotations from newspapers of the day underscore the reality of the story? How would the novel have been different without them?

2. All of Powers’s victims (excluding the Eicher children) are middle-aged widows, spinsters, or divorcees. Though Asta speaks of “the anticipation of gentle touch,” (Pg.48) Emily Thornhill describes these women as “in midlife. . .likely already ravaged by men or by fortune; they wanted care and protection.” (p. 197-8) Considering Asta Eicher and Dorothy Lemke as examples, why are these women particularly vulnerable? What about their hope for “care and protection,” makes them easy targets for con men like Powers?

3. After her death, what is Annabel’s role in the narrative? Is she there to help Emily with the case? Emily is not actually conscious of her, but seems to respond to “visitations” of which the reader is aware. Do you think Annabel knows why she still “sees” into past and present?

4. Emily is financially independent, unmarried, childless, career-oriented, and comfortable with sexuality—a very different woman from Asta. And yet once she takes on the story, Emily’s passion for the Eichers’ tragedy is unmatched. What is it about Emily that makes her so receptive to the Eichers’ suffering? Discuss Emily’s special attachment to Annabel in particular.

5. With the help of William Malone and Sheriff Grimm, Emily gains special access to the Powers case. Discuss how the two men treat Emily. Describe the differences in how each man balances his attraction to her with his respect for her work.

6. Discuss the transformation of Emily and Eric Lindstrom’s relationship—how does it evolve from “an alliance for a common purpose” (p. 159) into the powerfully deep friendship at the end of the novel?

7. William Malone is motivated by an intense guilt, believing that he could have prevented the Eichers’ deaths. He explains his feelings to Emily: “I could have saved them. Many in the town might have saved them, and I must say so, for everyone must acknowledge it.” (p. 248-9) How does his guilt shape his involvement with the case? His relationship with Emily and his hopes for their future together? Consider specifically the section “William Malone: Open Ice” on pages 367-8.

8. Why is Charles O’Boyle willing to marry Asta Eicher? Why does he behave as he does in Mexico? How does he contrast with Eric Lindstrom, his friend and lover?

9. Quiet Dell reveals the seemingly fated way in which people find each other in the wake of a tragedy. Emily, William, Eric, and Charles, seek solace in each other and create a family around Mason Phillips. What does each of these characters offer the other?

10. All of the novel’s central characters struggle with secrets—Charles and Eric are gay at a time when that fact must stay hidden, Emily and William have their affair, Asta hides her financial ruin. In what ways do these secrets make these characters vulnerable? How do they bring strength?

11. Compare William and Emily’s vows to each other on page 455—what do their words reveal about their perspectives and concerns? How do the vows reflect back on their paths through the tragedy of the Powers case?

12. Jayne Anne Phillips reveals in her Acknowledgments that, “Only four characters in Quiet Dell are wholly invented”: Lavinia Eicher, Emily Thornhill, Mason Phillips, and Eric Lindstrom. Emily, with Eric at her side, carries the story of the investigation and trial. Why create Lavinia and Mason? What do they add to our understanding of the main characters?

13. Duty was the Eichers’ dog in real life; his photograph and a newspaper caption describing him are included in Quiet Dell. Discuss Duty’s importance in the novel.

14. Emily and Eric locate Wilko Drenth in Iowa and are told that he saved his son from drowning when the boy was twelve. They puzzle over Wilko’s exact words, translated from Dutch, during their interview: “God help me, I knew it then.” (pg.268) How does the novel present the complexities of “nature vs. nurture?” In what way did Wilko feel responsible for his son’s crimes?

15. Annabel is drawn back to Quiet Dell after Powers’ execution, and she senses others with her who “lift and swirl. . .a charged flow drawn to that place, below.” (pg.445) Powers “cannot die and so he burns” until “a clear October week” when Drenth’s blond grandson sees smoke curling from his grandfather’s window. “Instantly, the plummeting fire is taken up” and “all of them, even those who never saw this place . . . are gone . . .” (pg.446) Discuss Annabel’s seeming release and her journey throughout the arc of Quiet Dell.

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Look into today’s “matrimonial bureaus”—what are they? What are their risks? What advantages do the Harry Powers of today have that weren’t available in the 1930s? How can potential victims better protect themselves?

2. Read some of the original articles about Harry Powers online—how is Powers portrayed?

3. Research women journalists of the late 1920s and 1930s—was there a real Emily Thornhill at the Tribune or the New York Times? What kind of stories were they writing?

A Conversation with Jayne Anne Phillips 1) This novel grew out of a story your mother told you. How old were you when she told you and why do you think it stayed with you?

I’m sure my mother probably first told me when I was a bit older than Annabel. Her story was very much about her own sensory memory of the dusty road on that hot day, and the sounds of the crowd methodically taking apart the garage “for souvenirs.” I was always my mother’s confidante, and it was as though she shared her own dark initiation. My mother adored her mother (see Machine Dreams and MotherKind) and I couldn’t imagine why my grandmother would take her 6-year-old to such a place. But thousands walked past, drawn by the newspaper stories. The crime was so unusual and horrific that it seemed a “wonder of the world” and cast a spell; it was also a warning and lesson about the violence supposedly inherent in sexuality, and what could happen when women cast aside the caution and repression with which society “protects” them. That double standard is still with us.

2) You make a reference to the crimes at Quiet Dell in Machine Dreams, which was published in 1984. How long have you been thinking about writing Quiet Dell? When did you actually start writing the novel?

I began actually writing the novel in 2008, but I composed Annabel’s first paragraphs as a prose poem for the voices ascribed to an “oracle,” a towering otherworldly sculpture that was part of an early Boston First Night (New Year’s Day night) celebration, over twenty years ago. The words stayed with me. Annabel herself is a kind of oracle, and she begins speaking in that magical turning of the year, in which life and death brush past one another. Her grandmother tells her, there is no death, not as we suppose. (pg. 110) Annabel’s consciousness eventually sees beyond death, bridging great distances in the breadth of a thought (pg. 172) into a sphere that is eternal, in the sense that stars are eternal.

3) Were there any objects or facts that you unearthed in your research that were particularly powerful or inspiring?

The true facts of the names of the characters and places were inspiring and almost eerie; I could not have (believably) invented them. Years before I researched the story, a family friend who knew I’d referenced the crime in Machine Dreams gave me a small envelope he’d found in an antique dresser. It reads, across the front in pencil, “Piece of sound-proof board used in the terrible murdering, Aug, 1931.” Inside is the small black square, marked with a 3, that Emily describes in Quiet Dell. The first time I held it in my hand, the deep wrong done to the Eichers was real, and the novel inevitable, but I wasn’t ready to write it until years later.

4) Did you always know you would write the story as a novel, or did you consider writing it as a work of nonfiction?

I wanted to make the victims “real” and their lives meaningful, to capture moving, quiet moments in their experience that would make them unforgettable. I could only do this through transforming the story in my imagination as fiction. In my mind, Powers did not erase them; they are spiritually superior to him. Annabel is everywhere; she continues. Her murderer, finally, is nothing.

5) Was working with primary source material helpful as you wrote the novel? Did you find it restrictive in any way?

It was helpful in that the story and the names, the press coverage, even the images of faces, buildings, cars, and Duty (!) were there. I knew the story from the beginning, rather than having to invent it within the prose. It was difficult in that I felt an allegiance to the story and needed to stay inside it to the end. Quiet Dell shares with my other work the sense that one dimension of being exists adjacent to another.

6) You grew up near where the murders took place—were your own memories of the landscape and weather integral in creating the atmosphere in the novel? Did any of your own memories find their way into the story?

Certainly my sense of the natural world, the verdant West Virginia summers, the flowers, hills, meadows, the whirling snowstorms, inform Annabel’s senses, and the novel’s weather, but the experiences of the characters are purely their own. Literature is about a kind of deep, sensory empathy that actually allows us to enter an invented consciousness. In thoughts and dreams, we escape all boundaries. Literature is a carefully constructed dream.

7) In your acknowledgements, you explain that Emily Thornhill is “an homage to my own loving, intrepid mother.” Can you describe how Emily is like your mother?

My mother lived a dramatic life full of tragic losses, but she was undefeated. She was a protective and tireless mother and teacher. She intervened to save what she could, and she was eminently sane and direct, never manipulative. Unlike Emily, she believed wholeheartedly in convention.

8) The book is dedicated to Annabel Eicher—what about her captivated you?

The Annabel I invented is impressionable, creative, full of little-girl optimism and confidence. She’s also prescient, which seems natural to her but alarms others. I don’t know what relation she bears to the real Annabel Eicher, except that I’ve carried a small newsprint copy of the photograph of Asta and her children in my wallet for years. Annabel’s gaze in the photograph, wary, knowing, goes right through me. It’s unforgivable that the victims–of violence, war, atrocity, neglect–simply vanish. The living must remember them. I wanted readers to “remember” Annabel.

9) There is a fascinating collection of epigraphs throughout the novel—quotations from James Joyce’s The Dead, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and lyrics from pieces by David Lang. Is there any connection between the epigraphs? Some of them seemed like they could have come from books or collections Annabel or Emily would have owned.

The epigraphs comment and foretell–they’re a mix of real quotes from newspapers, from childhood books popular at the time, from literature, that hint at worlds within worlds. Quiet Dell begins with a joyful Christmas, and Dickens’ Scrooge sees into the past and the future, as does Annabel. The David Lang quotes are from songs in his Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, The Little Match Girl Passion, into which he incorporates the words of Hans Christian Andersen’s sublime story. I patterned Annabel’s relationship with her grandmother on “The Little Match Girl”–surely every girl’s most-loved fairy tale. As in the fairy tale, which Annabel certainly would have known, her beloved grandmother appears to her. David’s Match Girl was a revelation and inspiration; I listened to it in my car, driving one place to another, for years, while I was writing Quiet Dell.

10) At the end of the trial, William tells Emily, “this will take time to be over.” (p. 441). Now that the novel is written and published, is the story of Quiet Dell over for you?

I think of Quiet Dell as Annabel’s version of the story, her triumph. Once a story is alive, it’s never over. - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Quiet-Dell/Jayne-Anne-Phillips/9781439172537/reading_group_guide#sthash.JP9JiOCO.dpuf

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