Seven Stories Up (20 page)

So when I started to write this book, I didn’t think of
Seven Stories Up
as History at all. I only wanted to set a magical adventure in the awesome old hotel where my grandmother grew up. This book was personal, rooted in my own weird family saga. It was going to be fiction. It was going to be magical.

But you know what? This book took me three years to write precisely because it
is
History. My family is History as much as the Battle of the Bulge is.
Your
family is History too. Along with every black-and-white photograph or china-doll head you’ve got.

Because when you tiptoe into the past, it’s impossible to separate personal details from major world events.
History is the fabric of everything that’s ever happened, all woven together. My family and your family and President Roosevelt’s family are interconnected. From the Magna Carta to the roller skates you got for your seventh birthday. All of this is History.

Seven Stories Up
took three years to write because when I realized I was writing History, I had to check all my facts. What was the price of a candy bar?
¹
What did underpants look like?
²
Did Ferris wheels exist?
³
How about kitty litter?
⁴
These are the things I spent three years looking up. Seriously, I researched the history of kitty litter.

The thing is that the whole time I was researching the little details, I was also researching those major world events I’d found so boring as a kid. Because you can’t separate the Depression from the price of a candy bar in 1937. They’re one and the same. You can’t write a time-travel book where a kid arrives in 1937 and have her
not
notice segregation. Even if major world events are not
what the story is about, they’re inextricably linked to the city streets your main character is walking along.

And the more you focus on those streets, those personal details, the less boring History becomes. The more true you make your story, the more magical it will be.

So, just in case you’re interested, here’s some extra History, with a capital H. If you dig a little deeper and start hunting details yourself, you might be shocked at how fascinating it all is.

CHILD LABOR

Life for a ten-year-old in 1937 was in many ways the same as life today, but in other ways it was totally different. Most kids attended some kind of school, but plenty didn’t. Instead they worked long days in textile mills and coal mines. Can you imagine standing for twelve hours straight, at a big dangerous machine in a sweaty smoky room, hungry and thirsty the whole time?

It wasn’t until 1938 that a law was passed that regulated child labor in the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act. After 1938, kids under sixteen were no longer allowed to work during school hours, and kids under eighteen were not allowed to work at especially
dangerous jobs. But in 1937, when this book is set, there were no such federal laws. Molly was from a wealthy family, but Annika and Olivia might well have ended up doing such work.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Molly is in a strange position, as a lonely wealthy girl, isolated from the world outside her window. She is not aware of the massive poverty of her era, even though it is surely affecting almost everyone who passes through the Hotel Calvert.

The Depression that began with the “Black Thursday” stock market crash in 1929—when some people jumped out of windows because they were so devastated by sudden financial ruin—was slowly improving in 1937, but there were still many Americans out of work. Breadlines and soup kitchens helped to ease the suffering of many, but lines were long and hunger was rampant. Suicide rates rose, and violence increased. At the peak of the Depression, nearly 25 percent of American workers were unemployed. Many families lived in makeshift homeless encampments called Hoovervilles, and others left home in search of work. Molly hasn’t spent much time with people like this, but Nora probably has!

THE HOLOCAUST

Even though this story isn’t about the holocaust, I couldn’t write about 1937 without hinting at what was happening in Hitler’s Germany. While most Americans had no clue about the concentration camps, for European Jews, deportations and harsh restrictions were an increasingly stark reality.

Bayla’s story—that of a child sent away to America for her own safety—was not uncommon. The sad thing to remember is that Bayla, though she is an orphan, is fortunate. The rest of her family, trapped in Poland, will likely have their homes confiscated and be sent to perish in the gas chambers or labor camps.

MEDICINE

When you get sick, you probably see a doctor, who gives you medicine to help you feel better. That makes it hard to imagine how the world was before so many of these medicines were invented.

Today, Molly’s asthma would be treated with inhalers and pills, but believe it or not, in 1937, a lot of people felt that asthma was an imagined illness. A child’s wheeze was thought to be an emotional cry for her mother. In the book, Molly is being treated by a family doctor, as a
follow-up to her bout of pneumonia, but in truth, there was little that could be done for her long-term. She’d spend her life as an invalid.

Additionally, in 1937, penicillin had not yet been widely introduced, and people regularly died of minor illnesses and infections. Vaccines for deadly illnesses like polio were being discovered, but they weren’t yet available to the public. In general, medicine was a very different experience. People who went to the hospital often didn’t come home, and many people feared doctors as a result.

RADIO

In Baltimore in 1937, Molly would not have had access to a television. TVs were just being developed at that time (largely in the New York area). Radio shows were still the main form of entertainment in the home. Especially during the Depression, when people couldn’t afford to go out, the radio was at the center of many homes. A radio back then looked more like a piece of furniture, built of wood, with heavy tubes inside it. It cost around fifty dollars, which was more than a week’s pay for the average American.

Many early TV shows began in radio, from soap operas like
Guiding Light
, (which only went off the air as a TV show in 2009) to family programs like
Little Orphan
Annie
. The radio was also one way for President Franklin Roosevelt to communicate with the country, through his fireside chats. Families would gather around the radio for news, music, and laughter.

SEGREGATION

This is hard to imagine today, but until the landmark
Brown v. Board of Education
case in 1954, schools were typically segregated. In Baltimore until 1948, neighborhoods could be legally segregated to exclude Jewish and black families. Shops and restaurants were segregated, and so were theaters and trolleys.

It is only in places of work—the market and the docks—that Annie sees everyone working together and realizes what a bubble she’s been experiencing at the hotel, and in the neighborhood surrounding it. In fact, African American Baltimore was a vibrant community, with beautiful theaters, restaurants, and hotels of its own, as well as black colleges and churches. In the 1930s, it was home to important Americans like the singer Billie Holiday and Thurgood Marshall, who argued and won the historic
Brown v. Board of Education
case mentioned above. In 1937, however, because of segregation, Molly and Annie would never have crossed paths with either of them.

If you want to learn more about any of these topics, I highly encourage you to do a little digging on your own. In some ways, History is the wildest, most improbable story you’ll ever read. Truth is, as they say, “stranger than fiction.” So do yourself a favor and hunt for the details, starting with things you know you enjoy.

If you love basketball, begin there. If you like ninjas, research those. If you’re addicted to cartoons, try reading up on some old ones. Or begin with your own family, the same way I did with
Seven Stories Up
. Pull out an old family photo album, and ask questions about the people you find there.

What you’ll discover is that with any topic, the smallest bits of History will interweave with the greatest events of the age. Because everything is History. Including you! On any given day, just walking down the street or reading a book,
you’re
becoming part of History.

Pretty cool, right?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anne Conway Hamill Dietz

This book belongs to my grandmother, Anne Conway Hamill Dietz.

When I was a kid, she seemed like a magical creature to me, eccentric and full of wonder. Among other things, she was a children’s librarian who scoured the bookstores of Southern California to send me signed first editions.