The Purchase (44 page)

My beloved friend Connie Rooke did not live to see the book
finished, but her comments during the early stages of writing came with a sure understanding of what I was trying to convey long before I had any idea of that myself. Her love and enthusiasm are lost treasures. I particularly appreciate her recommendation of John Ehle’s remarkable novels.

Michael Redhill, Dionne Brand, Molly Rothenberg, and Martha Sharpe read early versions of this story and provided insights into character and structure that were invaluable. I thank each of them for care and patience and wisdom. My daughters, Kristin Sanders and Esta Spalding, are both sensitive readers who know my weak spots and help me see past them. Daughters, my appreciation for your skill and truth-seeking is boundless, along with my love.

Susie Schlesinger, thank you for creating a workspace for me at your ranch, making it possible for me to meander with horses and commune with Annie, the oldest sheep in the world. And thank you, Eve Jones, for saving Miss Patch.

Dr. Janet Yorsten, true healer, thank you for essential medical advice.

A few books were indispensable. I found
Pioneer Life in Southwestern Missouri
by Wiley Britton, published in 1929, in my mother’s library. What a feast of information. “The children all went barefooted in the spring and summer time, and often contracted stone bruises on the bottoms of their feet which made it difficult for them to walk and those having stone bruises were excused from helping to hunt and bring in the cows or other stock.” Thomas Jefferson’s
Notes on the State of Virginia
is an exhaustive account that includes every bird or bush native to the state as well as a study of population, laws, rivers, mountains, and public revenues.
A Reverence for Wood
by Erick Sloan was a lucky discovery with lovely renderings of mauls and augers and yokes and such. There are a number of vivid slave narratives in print. Among the best and most beautifully articulate is
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Written by Herself
by Harriet A. Jacobs.
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich proved the rigours of healing in an age before birth was much attended by doctors.
Birthing a Slave
by Marie Jenkins Schwartz brought graphic reality to the practice of breeding that was fairly common on plantations. Suzanne Lebsock’s
The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860
describes the complex relationships of free and enslaved African Americans with white neighbours and masters. Perhaps most useful of all were copies of
The Foxfire Book
, which contain chapters on butter churns, snake lore, moonshining, “and other affairs of plain living.”

Immeasurable is my debt to my brother, who brought me to my first Quaker Meeting when I was sixteen and thereby changed my life. Skip was a questioner. His provoking curiosity is another lost treasure. This book would not exist without it.