Introduction

2016 Bronze IPPY AWARD WINNER “Compelling . . . engaging . . . a moving family saga” Kirkus Reviews From the author of the Book Club favorite, Pictures of the Past, comes another multi-layered novel, ripe with the twists and turns of the best historical fiction.Maxwell was a dashing, bachelor photojournalist, living life on the world’s stage. Paige was his niece, living a privileged, sheltered life. And then, she was orphaned by a random act of violence. Until her famous uncle became her guardian, Paige never knew the pain, power and passion of her heritage, and a family legacy in the headlines, beginning with the 1915 Eastland Disaster on the Chicago River. She never knew the Holocaust was part of her story. Could there be one more family member they could claim? A rich tapestry spanning three generations, Protecting Paige is a compelling saga of a young girl’s coming-of-age and a man’s search for a lost love.It is the still innocent year of 1962, and twelve-year-old Paige Noble awakens in a hospital room in Chicago. She has no memory of the random act of gang violence that has left her injured and orphaned. As she waits for her famous uncle to come for her, she develops a bond with Gladys, a comforting black nurse’s aide, unaware that her son was involved in the crime. Soon, the charismatic Maxwell Noble, a celebrated photographer, is located in Europe and rushes to her side. Although he has led a globetrotting bachelor life, he surprises Paige by embracing his new responsibility. But Maxwell struggles to hide his long-time obsession with Paige’s mother, his enchanting French sister-in-law. When Paige discovers her mother’s hidden diary, the secrets of the past begin to surface. Paige and her uncle embark on a journey to France, retracing events of WWII and the Holocaust, in an effort to find the one remaining family member they could claim. Her parents were always intent on protecting Paige, but Maxwell allows her to embrace the Jewish history and the heritage that she was denied. A beautiful and moving story about a young girl’s coming-of-age and a man’s quest for a lost love, Protecting Paige combines family drama and fascinating historical detail to create a rich, thought-provoking world.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

Sole Survivor

I went to live as a ward in my uncle’s home in the year 1962. My uncle was the celebrated photographer, Maxwell Noble. You probably will know of his work, even if you do not recognize the name. His pictures were covers of the most famous publications of the decades; his photo essays filled the pages of Look and Life magazines. Along with the great names like Margaret Bourke White and Alfred Eisenstaedt, he defined the field of photojournalism, covering all areas of the human-interest spectrum, from simple, engaging scenes of everyday life to the cruel depictions of man-made and natural disasters. Perhaps he would not have made a name for himself in the modern era, when it is necessary for journalists to be “embedded” with the troops. But even today, he would be the one to best document the aftermath of any tragedy, to give names and faces to the overwhelming numbers of any catastrophe.

Yes, my famous uncle could personalize anything on a grand scale, although he had to struggle to relate to one small girl craving his attention. You may be thinking that I blamed him for that, but only because you don’t know the story yet. It wasn’t like that at all. Actually, he was my savior. He arranged for me to be taken care of properly, even though he distanced himself from that task.

Barbara Walters would be credited with handling Uncle Maxwell’s most insightful and illuminating television interview in the 1970s, an hour-long dialogue and photo montage that actually helped establish Ms. Walters’ reputation as a prime-time host. And because she so tastefully handled the delicate details of Maxwell’s past, details that others in the press might have presented as merely salacious and scandalous, my uncle allowed himself to become more of a public figure in the future, moving from behind the camera and emerging as the subject of the lens on many more occasions.

I say the word ward so easily now, although I know that often it is a harsh, ugly, and disturbing creature in itself. Bearing the negative connotation of the “four-letter word” that it is, certainly it was correctly stated for many of the famous wards of literature that populated any Dickens novel. I was obsessed with words even at the early age of twelve, and in my desire to learn the etymology of so many, Webster’s Dictionary became a close friend. You see, prior to that year when this word ward invaded my life—along with murder, death, gun, blood, suffering, and orphan—my world was filled with a softer, more poetic palette of sounds. Twilight and fireflies and soft brushes and bubble baths and gardens and petticoats and kisses good night and hot chocolate—this was the language of my youth until that point. Later, I understood that it was truly the word innocence under whose umbrella all those other terms would fall. But you can understand that concept of innocence, especially as a child, only when that protective shade is blown from your hands by the strong winds of fate—when you no longer have that shelter from the storm.

While I was first drawn to the library of my uncle’s home because of Mr. Webster’s dictionary, it was certainly the enormous globe that held my attention. I could set the world spinning and then stop it with a point of my finger, and Uncle Maxwell would have a story to tell of his adventures in those regions: England, Spain, Finland, Brazil, Kenya, and Antarctica. Only years later, not even as a teenager, but only when I had become a mother, did I realize that half of those stories were fascinating fabrications meant to entertain and distract me. But imagine—to have even experienced the other half.

And now I will reveal my name: Paige Noble. That name may be familiar to you—if not initially, then when I remind you of the infamous murders of three members of the Noble family on Chicago’s South Side in the early 1960s. Even if you were not born then, you would have undoubtedly seen documentaries on the incident, or references back to it through the decades whenever similar tragedies occurred. In an era of innocence, even before the first Kennedy assassination, our story brought an entire nation to tears.

It was my father’s mistake, a lack of judgment, perhaps naïveté, that on the long drive from our Winnetka home on the North Shore to visit the Museum of Science and Industry, for one of our numerous family excursions, he did not stay on the main highway as we neared our destination. And we became trapped in that classic scenario—in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gradually, over the following days and months, I would learn of the gang initiations that involved young teenagers proving themselves with the shooting of random people, a part of life in the racially divided and depressed areas of major US cities. (Understand that this would be information that a twelve-year-old girl could collect or repeat but could not process until well into adulthood.) The epidemic of violence this fostered would prove more potent and long lasting than the polio scare of the 1950s, for no Dr. Salk vaccine has been invented to eliminate it even to this day. And so a trio of high schoolers, including fifteen-year-old Darren Barker, accompanied by two older members of the Street Guardians, savagely, without conscience, fired eight shots into the open windows of our Oldsmobile 98, after my dad pulled to the curb of a side street in their neighborhood. The shots instantly killed my mother and brother, mortally wounded my father, and grazed me with enough show of blood that I was left for dead.

Now I ask you to further process the fact that the mother of this Darren Barker came to my bedside at the nearby Michael Reese Hospital just one day following the tragedy. Imagine the security breach by today’s standards. But then there were no really secure checkpoints in a medical complex, no surveillance cameras. Still, her intimate attention might have unsettled me further, even made me scream, had I not been moderately sedated, had my memory been more intact, had she not been wearing a nurse’s aide uniform, had she properly identified herself as more than just a concerned caregiver. I would have screamed because now, for the second time in one week, I was being confronted by a Negro person. Yes, we said “Negro” then—we now know to say “black” or “African American.” But this woman came with no weapons, no anger, and no fury. She came with tears, with cookies, with a teddy bear. I didn’t understand it at the time. I was an injured child—a victim—but I was also a witness. In the end, it would turn out, I was the only witness—the sole survivor.

Sometimes when I would wake up, it was such a slow process that “wake” was too strong and active a verb. What was happening was a slow, slow drifting back into consciousness, and there was some memory of the reverse having occurred, a drifting slowly, slowly out of consciousness. But I didn’t know why I had that feeling, and I didn’t know where I was. I blinked my eyes open in stages, first a crack open and then a quick closing, reacting to some sort of glaring light. And then I tried again, and they opened a little wider, and there were blurry outlines of things as my eyes tried to focus. And finally, my eyes were fully open, but squinting and searching for something familiar. Where could I be? This was not my bedroom. That window was not our window. Those sheer drapes, those venetian blinds, slightly broken, slightly askew—they were not part of my mother’s orderly home. Then I saw that the light was so bright coming through the window because it was a full morning sun reflecting off the lake. This was like the view out of my friend’s window on a Sunday morning after a sleepover. Oh, how I would just die for twin canopy beds like she has in her bedroom. “Just one canopy bed, please, Maman,” I would beg whenever I had slept over. But my mother would always answer in a whisper when we spoke about the Beckman family—“very wealthy”—as if she were saying something secret or malicious. In our nice, affluent suburb, there were still levels of elitism, and Sherry Beckman “lives on the lake” (whispers again).

But I was not on the twin bed in her room, dreaming in the beautiful fluff of comforters and pillows I loved, looking out her window through meticulously pleated pink satin drapes. The floor was not the plush raspberry carpet that was a treat to my feet on a chilly winter morning. This floor was a cold-looking, yellow-spotted linoleum tile. This bed was white-sheeted with guardrails like those on a toddler’s bed. I scouted the room further, and just that slight movement of my head alerted someone sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed to stir. She leaned out of an unnaturally uncomfortable sleeping position and came at me with, “Honey, you awake now, girl? You just wait a minute. Now, where is that buzzer? Where is that buzzer? You just wait a minute—I will get you someone, honey.”

But before she could even find that buzzer she was searching for, there was a rush of people to crowd her out, and suddenly she was hidden by their white coats and carts of medical devices. It was then, when I moved my arm to direct them away, that I realized that a tube or wire was attached to my arm, and my movements or heartbeat or something about my bodily activity had sent an immediate alert to this entourage. I was not quite yet in the moment. I was distracted by this woman, this stranger, who spoke to me briefly, who I could now see was content to just stand behind this barricade of people. I had never seen her before, but I had an idea why she may be there. I wanted to ask her something, but then it was too late. My eyes closed again, involuntarily, and I was ready to slip, slip, slip back into sleep.

But then someone took my hand, slapping it more than gently, urging me back to the room. “Stay with us, Paige.” Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw a man, still slapping my hand and then pressing on my cheeks. “Paige, Paige, wake up. That’s a good girl.” My mild, slow emergence from that deep sleep, initially so peaceful with that one welcoming face, was now transformed into a consuming fear and desperation.

“Maman, Daddy, Maman, Daddy…Roger.” I thought I was screaming, but my voice was only a whimpering, hoarse whisper. And then that man stopped slapping me, grabbed a penlight from his coat pocket, and shone it directly into each of my eyes. I blinked furiously and pushed his hands away.

“Paige, I am Dr. Levinson. I want you to know you will be all right. You are in a hospital, but we are taking good care of you. You have been sleeping for a while, but you will be okay. You have some injuries, but you will be fine.”

“Maman.” Now I knew my voice was above a whisper. “I don’t understand. Where is everyone? I don’t understand what is going on. Where—where is our car?”

Our car, yes. It seemed odd I should ask that, but that was my last memory—my family in the car, driving to the museum. And that last memory, little did I know, would be one that would have to last for a lifetime.

?

My emotional distress and confusion, which had been my main focus initially, I suddenly realized had masked a newly emerging reality. I was in pain. My head was throbbing, and when I went to touch the source of that pain, my right hand to my right temple, I could feel a mound of gauze and then a moist spot. When I took my hand away and looked at my fingertips, I was horrified. They presented a shock of bright red blood. Immediately, I reached back to the source and followed the bandaging farther up my scalp. And then something else did not feel right, did not feel normal. I was touching my bare scalp above my hairline. I was thinking I could feel my brain. Finally, I looked at the man, the doctor whom I had tried to will away. I started to cry.

“What’s wrong with me? Where is my family?” I could feel my heart racing. I was so agitated that I reached to pull a tube from its stand, and while the doctor reacted to hold that hand with a firm grip, I turned to the feel of another hand, a soft hand at my opposite side, gently soothing my arm and then pushing back my hair and comforting my cheek. It was the creamy black hand of the woman I had seen, and somehow that slight motherly touch relaxed me enough that I could listen to the doctor. But then, as I turned back to him, a new woman was by his side, dressed in a normal woman’s suit, but with a gray hospital jacket.

“Paige,” Dr. Levinson said, “we have been waiting for you to wake up, and we are so glad you have. You will be fine; I can tell. Your speech is perfect. The bullet has grazed your head, just deep enough that we need you observed. I want you to meet Miss Diane Welton. She is our social worker.”

“The bullet,” I whispered. “What do you mean, the bullet? Like from a gun?” I could see the surprised expression on the doctor’s face. He leaned back so that Miss Welton could continue.

“Paige, I am Miss Welton, and I am happy to meet you and be here for you. I think we understand now that you do not remember what has happened. I want you to know first of all that you are not alone. Every one of us here just wants to help you.”

“But I want Maman. Just bring her here.”

“Paige,” she said, and I was already wising to this technique of their repeating my name to keep my attention. “You are twelve years old. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, twelve years old is not a little child, so I am hoping that you will be able to understand this—what I am going to tell you, Paige dear.” She motioned for the doctor to move a bit so that she could sit squarely on my bed and take my hand. “There has been a very sad event for you and your family.” She looked intently into my eyes to make sure I was following her words. “While you were all riding in the car, your father had to get off the highway. And on a street, a street very near this hospital, some men with guns shot into the car. Your mother, your father, and your brother, Roger—I am sorry to tell you this—they were all killed. Your mother and your brother were already deceased before the ambulance arrived. Your father was still breathing, but he did not make it through the night.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” I remember saying, although I did understand, but I wanted her to have the nerve to repeat it.

“Paige, your father has passed away, has died, as well.”

At first I was just silent. I was taking it all in. But it was too much to absorb. “No, no. Oh my God, no…. Why are you saying this? Where are they? Make them come back. Don’t say that….” This much I remember vividly, crying, almost screaming, not buying her “You are twelve years old” routine, like twelve is grown up, like you wouldn’t have the same hysterical reaction if you were twenty years old. And that is when I think they gave me something to sedate me, a shot of some sort into my arm, or maybe into the tube leading to my arm. I was floating again, back into that more blissful state of innocence. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The bond between Maxwell and Paige was incredibly strong. How could Maxwell emerge as an appropriate and even wonderful guardian for Paige, when he had often been described as a “bachelor vagabond?” Paige’s own mother “had referred to Maxwell as a child, himself.”
2. If this is a novel of an adolescent’s journey for Paige, with its accompanying theme of the “loss of innocence,” what were examples of this throughout the story?
3. The plot of Protecting Paige centers on three venues and time periods: Chicago in the 1960s and l970s; Chicago and Lake Geneva in 1915; and France, during WWII. What parallels can be drawn between people and events for these three different eras?
4. Compare and contrast Celine and Cherise in their coping and survival strategies. Was one a stronger individual than the other?
5. How would you describe Maxwell’s character? Could you forgive his betrayal, even though it tortured him?
6. Maxwell and Paige searched for one more family member they could embrace. With today’s popular websites such as ancestry.com, people are connecting more and more with past generations. What interesting, or even fascinating, connections have you uncovered?
7. Although Florie Bronstein did not emerge as a major character, why was she nevertheless an important figure?
8. With the discovery of Celine’s diary, Maxwell and Paige’s emotional journey turned into a literal one. How did this impact their lives and set the course of their futures? What else was uncovered in the chest?
9. The author has used a variety of narrative styles and moved from past tense to present tense at times throughout the novel. She felt each change worked best to enhance the story. Did you find this confusing or agree that it helped to draw you into the story and engage with the characters and plot line?
10. A title is so often an author’s key to interpreting a novel. Trace references to Protecting Paige throughout the story.

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