This episode of Big Blend Radio's 2nd Wednesday "Books & Authors" Show with Books Forward features debut author Ann Lowry who discusses her novel, "The Blue Trunk."
When Ann Lowry inherited an ancestor's blue travel trunk, she had no idea that this artifact was about to take her on a three-year journey of discovery. She was told that the trunk’s previous owner, a great-great aunt, had been institutionalized for insanity. Despite meticulous genealogy research, she was unable to uncover any facts about her and concluded that she must have spent her entire adult life in an asylum.
Lowry was inspired to write "The Blue Trunk" (Sept. 10, 2024, Koehler Books) to help reclaim her ancestor’s voice and shed light on these all-too-common institutionalizations. Seamlessly weaving historical fiction with contemporary life, Lowry’s tale explores identity, strength, and connection across decades. Visit: https://www.annlowry.com/
Welcome to Big Blend Radio where we celebrate variety and how it adds spice to quality of life. Welcome everybody today on our Books Forward show. We do this every second Wednesday. We chat with books and authors and we've been working with Books Forward for I'm going to say 20 years or something and we're all getting younger here. But today we're going to be chatting with author Anne Lowry and she's going to talk about her novel called The Blue Trunk. And I encourage you to go to our website AnneLowry.com. No ease in that Anne or Lowry. So AnneLowry.com. Her book came out yesterday September 10th and we're excited because this is a story that came from your family history and then became fictionalized and we want to talk about why. But welcome. How are you Anne? I'm great. Thank you Lisa. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about my book. Oh I am too. I am too because this could have been a memoir but it's interesting because you're doing two different eras right at the same time and how to have bring some fiction in there. And so let's talk about those choices but before do you want to give everyone just a little bit of an overview of the story without spoilers because it's out. People can get it. And there's some spoilers in there so be careful. The book starts with a woman named Rachel who's married to a politician and her life pretty much revolves around being a political wife and she's a little frustrated with that and at the beginning of the book she finds a scarf in his briefcase bed and of course assumes that he's having an affair and but it's you know it's an election cycle time so she can't raise a fuss about that so she needs a distraction. Her mother gives her a trunk, a blue trunk, a family heirloom and so she sort of delves into the contents of it and starts doing research on this great great aunt that her mother told her was insane because she wants to find out what happened to her so that's the Rachel side of the story. As Rachel begins to explore what happened to a great great aunt and all the things she went through Rachel begins to address some of the issues in her own life which go beyond just finding the scarf. She's got a lot of other issues going on too so there's Rachel's story and then there's Marit's story and Marit immigrated in the early 1900s and so we follow Marit as she progresses through her life and and then you know ends up in the end well I won't tell you the end of the story but we follow we follow her life too and so it goes back and forth between the two that two time periods you know roughly a century apart but both stories are interesting and then they're interwoven as they go so. That's it I love that you're doing it doing it that way but the actual trunk is that's the story from your actual family right? That's right I have the trunk and I actually my mother had it and when my daughter was born I said oh I want to name my daughter Marit because I like that name even though I didn't know anything about this great great aunt and my mother said oh no you can't do that she was insane and so I didn't name my daughter Marit and I named her Breanne but for years I was kind of fascinated by you know what happened to Marit and it kind of in a way almost haunted me a little bit every time I'd see that trunk I'm like where did she end up so a few years ago I started doing some genealogy research and signed up for all the genealogy websites and interestingly enough I couldn't find anything about her I found that she was born in Norway I knew that and I knew that she'd come to this country because I also had an autograph book that she'd signed in 18 I think it was 1889 in Blair Trump below Wisconsin and so I knew she was here and she'd written this lovely poem an autograph book which I later tracked down to a poet a British poet but you know she seemed if she was writing an autograph book clearly she was here so I lost track for I found a lot of information about my great great grandmother who immigrated with her her sister you know death certificate married certificate census records so and and it's very hard to find information on people who were in asylum so that's what I went to next and what I found was that often people who were in asylum they might have counted the number of people in an asylum in a census but they didn't do individual names and often these people weren't even considered basically human beings and then much to my surprise as I was doing this research I found a cemetery in my hometown Eau Claire Wisconsin that was called the old orchard cemetery but it was next to the oldest asylum site and it was you know figuratively called cemetery the unknown and so I went and visited it and all the graves were marked most of them there were a couple that had names on them were marked unknown and that's where the asylum patients were buried and so long story short I realized that she probably ended up in the asylum and then probably died and perhaps is in one of those unknown graves in Eau Claire Wisconsin so they're not even treated as human no they weren't not even as livestock even you know in a way you know think about how we've treated and I wonder about this I've seen some documentaries and I've seen you know been through you know we travel and we go find out like here's an asylum and in it's freaky there's like so many ghost stories too of you know because I think they were tortured honestly from what I've seen I think there was a time like I actually you know have a family that they're both passed away by now a family friend basically family and his wife lost her short-term memory so she would you know she was a smoker and she would leave cigarettes burning around the house and things you know but she had a heart issue smoking but she would they wanted to institutionalize her because of her memory not because of her art and her husband stood up and said that's it we're actually moved and became expats in in Mexico and part of it was he wanted to take care of his wife until she passed away and that's what he did and he's like you know just because she has short-term memory doesn't mean we just you know lock her away it was weird because it wasn't that long ago we're talking maybe the 80s even yeah yeah well and it was interesting because the Immigration Act in the late 1870s didn't allow people who had mental illness to to come to the to America so when Mark came here she was likely saying but women were frequently called if they were disruptive in any way hysterical and the the identity or the diagnosis of hysteria didn't actually leave the the psychological profile or a diagnosis until 1952 so women were still being called hysterical up until 1952 and if you look at the list of characteristics or symptoms of hysteria like being angry or being unable to do all your chores in a day I mean it was we would all pre-classified as hysterical would be really easy and look at what women were wearing back then you know to appease the man you know it's like you know well-boned corsets and like who wants to wear all that stuff what we had to and women were walking across the country with oxwagons and they didn't get to ride in the oxwagons right but it was really easy to institutionalize a woman and so really quite quite a few you know not that long ago a few centuries or a few decades ago it's weird because we were also in some of those time frames also performing eugenics right and sterilizing women depending on where who what and where so and if you had a child that you weren't supposed to have they were nameless and they would take them and it's the kind of similar parallel lines of all of this happening you know in in England when we lived in there I remember we're going to do like a castle or something and even in history they were teaching this like how women were called nags if you said to your husband hey do this or whatever if you nagged him you'd be called a nag and they had dunking things they would dunk their women in cold water for nagging them I mean come on like it we've done some horrific things and then the institutions I think a lot of women got hurt and I wonder about men who were going through their midlife crisis if you will and wanted a younger wife and if the wife was going through her change of life and said that's it I'm putting you in an institution I bet they had the upper hand right right and in I detail some of that in the book I try not to get into some of the horrific things I read about in terms of the tortures that women went through but you know you mentioned hysterectomies and there was this belief that the uterine was on fire and so if they did hysterectomies for women and institutions that would cure them or they thought that would cure them you mentioned dunking tanks and that was a that was a technique they would put women who they thought again had hysteria in a little almost like it you know a washed herb you know and then they would pour water freezing cold water over their heads because they thought that their brains were on fire and so if they cooled off their brains they would be less hysterical or shock them the shock therapy right electroshock care therapy came about a little bit later but they had all these other techniques they used sleep therapy was another therapy where they would give them barbiturates and just have them sleep for days on end and yep you know we we've seen pictures of that of you know people in institutions in the early part of the 20th century where they're just examples you know that's that's interesting because when I think about you know all the women who were addicted to loglim I think they were kind of you it's like the value of the dolls yeah we're just gonna numb you and right just need to be a numb person so you don't see what's going on and we're just do what we want right yeah yeah wow wow so there's no equality effect then and we're still fighting it right right this is fun this is a fun conversation well I'm excited to say that I this is a little bit of a spoiler alert that's okay um art does get out of the institution and does take her power back yeah because you can't stay there yeah because I think that's the thing we want we want some empowerment but I think what's really great is that you have written this and brought it to light because there are still things going on in our world that you know can repeat very quickly as we can see right now we're really still having this upward battle obviously and so I think this is a very important topic to talk about you know where I'm recording this right now I'm in Asheville, North Carolina and around the corner was an institution where Zelda Fitzgerald was acquainted quite a bit and she actually put herself in the last time and she well she drank a lot the two of them drank quite a bit and had you know quite a relationship but he had already passed away and it was you know at the end of her life she died there in a fire and you know because she ran up the fire escape she went that's when they were doing the you know the shock therapy but there was a fire in the kitchen and she was in the room next to it the holding room and she thought okay I'm gonna you know escape she ran up the fire escape and the fire escape the steps were wooden mm-hmm yeah so she passed away and they say you can uh certain evening smell burnt hair really wow yeah that's a kind of a story if you go through on one of the you know ghost trolleys yeah part of my um part of my book is based in Saint Paul the scene is in Saint Paul and Zelda Fitzgerald was one of the inspirations for one of my characters and oh cool yeah so and some of her friends who are quite she had very interesting friends in real life so yeah that's cool and because that's the thing you're not supposed you're supposed to be seen and not heard right mm-hmm yeah wow so I didn't realize that there were nameless like even in the records yeah I mean I haven't been able to and then there's some you know privacy laws that prevent you from finding out names but um but I mean we have a family plot that or you know my family had a plot that had everyone buried in it and she wasn't there so I expect that's probably where she ended up in the 70s unknown so you've been writing for a while too as a writer but what was it like writing a novel for you like just getting this one it was different and balancing it how did you balance all of this reality and fiction um probably not very well at times I was probably in the world of fiction too many times my family might tell you but um I had never I was an academic and a consultant so I had done a lot of writing but it was mostly non-fiction and so when I decided to write this novel I was like well you know what am I thinking but um I took a novel writing intensive class at the law of literary center in Minneapolis and had um a fabulous teacher and wonderful cohort of talented talented writers that gave me feedback and I learned a lot from that so you know but I mean it helped a lot to have the inspiration I mean it was just you know that trunk was there and is still there every day I see it it's in my house you know and that was great inspiration and and I did you know I ended up probably doing I know I did 13 drafts of the book so you know I learned how to write as I went which but um yeah that you know the balancing between the two I just spend some time being in the character of each person you know like well what would Rachel say about this what would Marad say about that because part of the issue with writing two different characters between two like you know a century is that you have to get the right tone so that when writers go from one chapter to another even if you've labeled it what it is you know like this is Rachel's chapter they have to be able to feel that they're in a different time zone now so um I worked on that quite a bit uh but and also like I said had some great help and feedback from people that's a good you know good thing to you know because even going from nonfiction I think nonfiction is really hard to write too because you need to get people's attention you know what I mean so you've got that to did that help you with writing this is you know nonfiction you have to also get to the point you know right yeah I probably have more trouble I probably had more trouble I probably would have more trouble going in the opposite direction when I think about it going from fiction to writing nonfiction because my my nonfiction my reports my academic stuff I always was tempted to put in a little bit of an editorial comment and I wrote some op-eds when I was younger I mean I was such a dork in junior high I you know we'd go out with my friends and you know we go to a dance or something then I'd come home and I'd sit at the dining room table and take out pen and paper and start writing like an op-ed about something I was having angst about so you know I've loved her writing his eyes something I wanted to do but this was you know this was a project of love in my main goal was to bring Margaret's life you know reclaim her life even if I had to do that in fiction I wanted to do that yeah because she was voiceless right and it was basically right you know yeah and now she's got her name in a book so yeah yeah and it gets people to understand history and in the important things of women's rights right yeah there's quite a bit of that the book book has some political slant to it but you know it's not totally about that it's more it's more about two really strong women who are resilient and come to grips with the life that they've been given and what they what they can do to empower themselves and really make changes in their own lives it's a really good point because you know no matter what's going on in the world which is oh the world is tumultuous right it's not as crazy as it was then and think about it it's still not perfect it's not idealistic as we want but there is some progression being made and you know it's you've got to somehow go okay what do I have that you know and we take things for granted in such a fast society that to just sit back and realize you know what oh I can afford food well then you're doing okay you've got you know are you seeing the sunrise in the morning that's okay you know can you actually walk you know we've got to take some of these real things that we have and build off of that to keep that spirit up and I think sometimes you know as women with all the different issues and gosh I mean let's pick any every single person has something that isn't in justice to them in some way right right oh I could give a group that isn't but anyway I won't go there I'll be here but there's a whole group and you all know what I'm talking about so anyway but we do have to find out where does where can we get even more empowered and resilient through whatever it is we have to tap into that and not give up on things not you know like Willie Nelson said this life turned around the day he started counting his blessings and I kind of feel that and and in writing when you're dealing with such difficult things it's important to have that empowerment and have hope in there right that's got to be a yeah so are you gonna do book clubs with this because I think it'd be such a good conversation for people I am yes and I also I'm gonna put book club questions on my website so that book clubs can read it and answer those questions and address those questions so are you gonna tour with the book or you do it as a new class maybe I'm gonna I'm not sure yet I'm trying to decide I know that everybody says you should have a big book launch and not quite there yet so I'm not sure how I'm gonna do it but you know it's getting some attention which is fabulous and yeah yeah so we'll kind of see how this plays out like this is a new for me this whole process so I kind of thought that once you got a publisher you just sort of passed it off and then you were done sorry it's not like that no it I think you put more work into the marketing sometimes and you do writing it you know it's like this whole other thing and that's the hard part of it but it's that's one of those yeah all those things have to be done sorry yeah yeah I'm sorry and there you know there are a lot of different a lot of different themes in there that I think people could use like in a book club there's certainly the women the theme around women but there's also a theme around gender identity which is an important story to tell and you know I had to be really careful when I was writing it because I'm not a trans person and I didn't want to be co-opting a story that is someone else's so I you know I know some trans people and I talk to some and I talk to a married couple and tried really hard and then I you know sort of had an ethical dilemma to put this in there or not but I think that that story too is so important and it's such an important thing to be talking about and sort of be told especially given you know sort of the political climate right now around taking away rights and yep people need to understand that that you know that we're talking about human beings here you know human beings well people would be institutionalized for that too oh absolutely well I mean we're still trying to you know change people's gender now like hey I want you to be this and what you're doing is not anyway yeah it's um it's the conversation is only beginning it feels like yeah you know yeah yeah people have been you know fighting the good fight for years but it's like it's like it's like as it's really starting to gain momentum in the good positive way it's like here we are we're gonna take you down and like no no yeah so I think when you read when you read a book I always say how it's such a personal experience to read a book and no one can tell you right or wrong about your beliefs when you're reading a book it's not like you go to a movie with someone I think the movies are powerful and you know discussions and but there's a personal thing about a book that gives you time to chew on it for a while and you know and sometimes you read read it you know and it stays in your head the characters stay with you right and you start thinking from their perspectives which can make positive change but also help if you're going through something from the same same nature right right yeah I mean you know it's it's impossible for I think it's impossible for anybody writing even on fiction to not have your stamp in it but the same is true about a reader every single reader the book is different for every single reader because you relate to different things you see different you know the characters differently you might see the plot differently so it's an individual experience for everyone and that's a great part about you know reading books is that this is my private experience and nobody else is going to have the same one that I have so yeah and then the book clubs is cool because everybody read it now we're all on the same page and we can discuss things and maybe you know have some shared some light on things maybe make positive changes too or just like wow can you believe it I mean it is good gossip that is writing is good gossip isn't it especially when you go in history yeah I mean it's all about gossip you know so I think this is very cool do you think you'd write another one I am I'm planning to write another one if I ever get time to write another one so the next one probably will be based very loosely on my aunt who was a loss but women's Air Corps and during World War II so I wanted to kind of bring out that story a little bit more there are some books out there about that but not enough and you know I'm sure you're familiar with the women from Kristin Hannah writing about the women nurses in Vietnam same kind of idea to bring out although I had the idea a long time ago same sort of thing to bring out but you know what I try to do and what I tried to do in this book and I want to do in any future books I write is that you know there's we all go through trauma we all have drama we all have challenges we have to deal with and I hope that what the book portrays in my characters is that they they're they're they're difficulties cause them to grow and become you know come out better on the other end of it and so that's you know so the book the the blue trunk is it's a hopeful book I mean it ends it's a happy book I didn't want to have a book that ended to add so it's a happy ending and both of the characters grow from the experiences they go through and Mark goes through some pretty harrowing experiences in the book but I talked to a friend last night who was reading it for me and she said does it get better and I said yes it gets better so hang in there if you're reading it and feeling frustrated with it. Life is like that you know you have to have the downer parts to have the uppers you know right you have to and you go through things and I think that's where we have to have that connection of you know it's not just me on my own that's when people get really depressed and don't move forward as much as if they feel so isolated right you know and I think like when you go back to the institutions I mean that's got to be isolating in a way unless you're connecting with the others and if they're giving you drugs if they're you know torturing you all those things that's pretty isolating and you have strength from being alone but it could go the other way you know right so and books that's why I say that's that powerment you know so now exciting it's out now yeah you've had your book your publishing day isn't this airs it'll be in a different city but it'll be out so it's very exciting everyone if you go to nlaurie.com and that's n with no e and laurie with no e you can get it now from all your favorite places and ask your bookshop to carry it too yes and then that way you can support your local bookstore and so it's good to have you on the show I'm glad we could make this work yeah thank you so much Lisa I appreciate it all right well congratulations everyone again nlaurie.com the blue trunk is the book go get it thank you for listening to big blend radio keep up with our shows at big blend radio.com
