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Quiet Dell: A Novel
by Jayne Anne Phillips

Published: 2013-10-15
Hardcover : 464 pages
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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 ...
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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

Elissa Schappell reviews QUIET DELL

(Schappell is the author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls and Use Me.)

Jayne Anne Phillips is a dangerous writer. Fearless in her writing and fearless in the territory she stakes out, a vast shadowland populated by people young and old in the grips of obsession, seeking comfort, love, salvation.

In her mesmerizing new novel, Quiet Dell, Phillips returns to the scene of a real crime that occurred in the 1931, in a West Virginia town not far from where Phillips grew up. A crime that Phillipsâ?? mother, herself haunted by memories of watching townspeople flocking to the scene, had told her about when she was a girl.

At the time the newspapers were full of sensational stories about Asta Eicher, a lonely young widow, and her three children, imprisoned and murdered by Harry Powers, a charming serial killer who seduced scores of women through lonely hearts columns all around the country with the promise of making them his wife.

Many are comparing Quiet Dell to Truman Capoteâ??s In Cold Blood, and they do have much in common. Both are born out of a true crime, both contain photographs--Phillips also includes evidence such as court transcripts, the letters Asta and Harry Powers exchanged, as well as the lonely hearts club ad Powers posted in newspapers to lure his victims. And both books to differing degrees contain elements of fiction, although Capote might dispute that.

Quiet Dell is a fully realized work of fiction. Phillips deeply inhabits the characters of Asta, full of yearning, who carries on her correspondence with Powers in secret, and her children: daughter Grethe, son Hart, and the youngest and most intriguing, mysterious Annabel. The descriptions of Annabelâ??s mystical visions, suggesting as they do a life beyond the veil, possess the surreal poeticism that has become a Phillipsâ?? trademark.

It is her creation of Emily Thornhill, an ambitious young reporter at the Chicago Tribune, whose obsession with the familyâ??s disappearance and in particular Annabel, that fills out the novel.  Emilyâ??s ambition, and her eagerness to make a name for herself in a manâ??s world, provides a powerful counterpoint to the society that was quick to shame Anna Eicher, and by extension all middle-aged women foolish and reckless enough to imagine they could find true love through the newspaper, or at all.

Though set in the 30s, this novel of alienation and the search for connection resonates with the digital age. Astaâ??s story is that of a lonely woman in the midst of an economic depression watching promise turn to dust, seeking connection and the possibility of love, turning to strangers who can write a pretty letter. The difference between then and now is we communicate not via the post but Internet. And sadly, the grisly horrors that are visited on this doomed woman and her children appear with sick-making frequency on our nightly news.

A reader, or this reader anyway, has to wonder what influence such a story had on Phillips as a girl growing up so close to where the Eichers died. Such terrible knowledge, so close to home, darkens the lens through which a person sees the world. It might inspire a fledgling writer to bunker down in her room with a pencil in the hopes of figuring it out. Who knows.

What I am sure of is this: Quiet Dell  is a gorgeous, masterful melding of fiction and non-fiction. A completely engaging read that rescues the Eicher familyâ??s lives from the tabloids so that they live, really live, in our memories.

--Elissa Schappell

 

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. ... view entire excerpt...

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

Notes From the Author to the Bookclub

anity Fair - Elissa Schappell

“In Quiet Dell, Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it.”

Vogue

“Jayne Anne Phillips’s unsettling latest, Quiet Dell, spins out from a true crime story involving a 1930s-era-seducer—think Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter—who preys on a widow and her children.”

Portland Oregonian - Jeff Baker

“Jayne Anne Phillips is one of the finest pure stylists in contemporary literature, and she’s found a story that sounds like a perfect match for her talents.”

Booklist - Brad Hooper

“The truth of all of Phillips’ characterizations is what lies behind this careful novel’s compelling momentum.”

The Great Gray Bridge - Philip Turner

“A mesmerizing novel drawn from the annals of infamous true crime…Meticulous, engrossing and spellbinding.”

The Wall Street Journal - Sam Sacks

“[Quiet Dell’s] success is due to a bold decision: Ms. Phillips has written a serial killer novel in which the serial killer hardly appears….Unabashed…There is a glowing beauty to the book’s brave, generous version of history.”

Tampa Bay Times - Colette Bancroft

“Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer.”

Boston Globe - Leah Hager Cohen

“Phillips’s effort to do justice — aesthetic and moral — to the victims feels bold and honorable...moving, even transporting…Phillips allows her own ample gifts to soar.”

Associated Press Staff

“An extraordinary achievement, a mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction that borrows from the historical record, including trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, but is cloaked in the shimmering language of a poet.”

Miami Herald - Amy Driscoll

“Phillips’ extensive reporting—she quotes from newspaper stories, letters between Eicher and her ‘suitor’ and the trial transcript—gives the book its considerable heft. And her creation of a Chicago reporter named Emily Thornhill helps to frame the story of the eight-decade-old event in a fresh way. Quiet Dell is a smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together with Phillips’ seamlessly elegant writing….As the book proceeds to its dark conclusion, Emily offers readers a glimpse of light.”

Chicago Tribune - Celia McGee

“Phillips, an acclaimed writer of largely contemporary fiction, this time draws on history: a criminal case from the early '30s.…But if the factual underpinnings of this latest novel are unusual for Phillips, her ability to transform them into a fictionalized narrative place her at the top of her form. Phillips has carefully inserted imagined private moments and just a few fictional characters to create a story both splendid and irreparably sad… As Phillips has proved throughout her decades of fiction writing, there is evil in the world, but there are some who will stand in its way.”

O, the Oprah Magazine - Arianna Davis

“Hauntingly imagines the victims’ hopes, dreams, and terror…Phillips blends fact and fiction in a darkly poetic way: The result is an absorbing novel that leaves us rooting for the heroine Emily becomes—and mourning the lives the Eichers never got to enjoy.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Mark Athitakis

“Gripping…Chilling…The novel’s heartbeat is Emily, a Chicago Tribune reporter covering Powers’ arrest and trial…Quiet Dell does what Emily can’t, thoughtfully grafting a 21st-century sensibility onto 20th-century ghastliness. Emily resists the fetters placed on her as a journalist and a woman, while Eric, a gay photographer who accompanies her, is a keen observer of closeted life in the South. Phillips exposes the era’s prejudices less to render judgment than to show how cannily people like Emily and Eric worked around them.”

The Philadelphia Review of Books - Erin McKnight

“A novel of compelling impressions…Triumphant…[Jayne Anne Phillips is] perceptive enough to hear, and respond to, the smallest of humanity’s sounds.”

Colm Tóibín

“Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange, hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis and dramatizes the lives of a number of characters who are fascinating and memorable.”

Stephen King

“In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It’s the story of a serial killer’s crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.”

Colm Tóibín

“Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange, hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis and dramatizes the lives of a number of characters who are fascinating and memorable.”

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