Author INTERVIEW

Helen Klein Ross

Originally printed in Discover Salisbury 2018, October 3, 2018.

In Helen Klein Ross’ new novel, “The Latecomers,” a young Irish immigrant in dire circumstances takes a position as a maid for a wealthy family in a small Connecticut town in 1909. It’s a town not unlike her own — it’s Wellington instead of Salisbury, boys attend Trowbridge instead of Hotchkiss, and at the center of the story is an estate called Holleywood, no wait, Hollingwood.

Alexander Wilburn: So your novel opens with a big disclaimer.

Helen Klein Ross: [Laughs] Oh, yes. I thought it was necessary because it’s not about anyone, it’s fiction. The house is real but the story is made up. I assure you, nobody in town is in the book. That would be really rude of me. But also, I’m a novelist with imagination. Of course, fiction is based on things you know — like the way people speak. I’m constantly writing things down in my notebook. Turns of phrase and topics of conversation change from era to era and place to place.

AW: While many authors may draw a little from life, you had a great source to draw from —your own home, Holleywood.

HKR: I did tons of research for this book. Katherine Chilcoat, who was the Salisbury town historian for many years, was extremely generous. She had me down to the Academy Building and we pulled pictures. She lent me diaries and I learned how people spoke. A diary from 1926 had an entry about “having such a mean head” — meaning a headache. You just don’t hear that anymore. Another diary talked about a town meeting in Salisbury deciding whether to install “a silent policeman.” I’m reading this handwriting thinking, “What does that mean?” When there came to be enough cars on the road small towns got a wooden cut-out of a policeman with a board that said “go right” or “go left.” It didn’t actually work because people at night would swerve to avoid it — and potentially hit a pedestrian.

AW: What entries were especially useful?

HKR: I write about suffrage in the book. There was a diary of a young girl who writes, “I’m not sure whether I’m for or against suffrage.” Her parents took her to a suffragist meeting in Hartford. They were meant to sit on the anti side, but it was so crowded they had to sit on the pro side. After a speech a mother from school asked if she had changed her mind, and the girl said, “No, I’m more certain than ever that I’m anti-voting.” There were certain ways of thinking, like it was an insult to your father or husband if you wanted the vote, because it’s implying they are not voting in your interest. It caused havoc in a lot of homes, which is not something I’d thought about. There were also lots of invitations kept in the diaries. Mail went out twice a day, so you could send a letter out in the morning to invite someone to visit that afternoon. You would send your servant…well, Katherine did say people here in Connecticut were pretty self–sufficient. They had cooks and laundresses and maids, but it wasn’t as upstairs/downstairs as in New York City or Newport, Rhode Island. So you would mostly rely on the mailman, who you would know.

AW: Were there any other local sources you used?

HKR: [Salisbury First Selectman] Curtis Rand’s uncle, Christopher Rand wrote some really interesting essays for The New Yorker and he collected them in a book in the 1960s called “The Changing Landscape.” Beautiful essays. He writes about field and flowers and cows, a lot of the details of the area that helped me. If you live here it’s really interesting to read. I also used The Sarum Samplings [Edited by town historian Jean McMillan]. There was a detail about a local dentist who would keep old teeth, so I created a scene where twin children of a dentist take my protagonist down to the basement to see the barrel of teeth.

AW: The novel is really an immigration story. Was there anything about the present on your mind?

HKR: November 9, 2016, I woke up, and suddenly an immigrant story felt urgent. I was so happy to have a book to pour all of this into. But it was the house that inspired the birth of the story. I would sit here and look at the bookcase and think, “People were in this exact spot that I am before the Civil War.” We restored the house, we didn’t renovate it. So people back then were looking at the same medallions in the ceiling, looking at the fireplace … I would imagine all the conversations in these walls. The house, along with my interests of motherhood and immigration, swirled together to create a story.

This interview has been edited and condensed.