A Moment of Grace

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: How many moments have you had in you life where your jaw drops, and you cannot believe what you're seeing?  

Take two minutes or so now, and listen to this wonderful tale from the past of our dear Susan Van Kirk--whose fifth mystery,  A Death At Tippett Pond, is brand new this summer!

Let Me Tell You a Story

    by Susan Van Kirk

Susan Van Kirk

I write mysteries that center around the influence of history in the Midwest where I grew up. Galesburg, Illinois, a town of 38,000 in the early 1950s, was where I discovered reading. Each week I walked to the Galesburg Public Library with my mother, an avid reader herself. It was built in 1901—a Carnegie library—and it had a massive, double-wide marble staircase you faced when you walked in the front door. Part of the floor in the second story was made of glass cubes that intrigued my seven-year-old imagination.

But the best part of “my library” was the children’s room, holding marvelous wonders, including a doll house filled with miniature furniture and people. It drew me like a magnet. The front was made of glass so I could only look. Simply peering in at the various tiny miniatures each week was magical. I was in heaven. My mother had to pry me away every visit.

In those days, my father was managing the Drive-In Theatre several miles west of town. Our family spent blissful evenings there in the summer, but one night I have never forgotten: May 9, 1958. We were near the end of the movie, and people began getting out of their cars and looking back toward the east. Eleven years old, I had no idea what was happening. But then, in the inky darkness, I saw fire lighting up the night sky.

Used with permission of the Galesburg Public Library

Immediately, we drove to town where we watched my beloved library, my cherished and second home, engulfed in flames. Hundreds of people were milling behind barricades watching the firemen struggling valiantly to save the building. The crowd was hushed, staring in disbelief. Hardly anyone spoke, tears streaming down their faces. The roof collapsed onto the second floor, and eventually the astonishing second floor—filled with books and glass squares—fell into the ground floor.

They later discovered an exhaust fan in the attic had caught fire. While 40,000 books were salvaged—many water-damaged—the city lost 200,000 books worth half a million dollars. But the most devastating losses of all were four letters signed by Abraham Lincoln and valuable items from the history of the city and the genealogy data of local families.

Used with permission of the Galesburg Register-Mail. 

Last week I stopped at the replacement library, a modern structure sitting on the same site as my old Carnegie building. On a whim, I stopped in the children’s room to see what it looked like these days. In the middle of the room sat a dollhouse. It seemed familiar. The librarian told me it was the original dollhouse, one of the few things they had saved from the fire that night sixty-one years ago. I think I may have gasped.

I checked it out, fascinated. I saw the tiny rooms just as I remembered them, with the children’s bedroom upstairs, their faithful rocking horse awaiting them. I gazed in wonder, thinking about how my eyes had peered into these same tiny rooms so long ago, decades before I grew up and had children and grandchildren of my own. I touched the glass, the same invisible wall I had touched when I was five or six, and suddenly I was back there in that library with my mom, and we were looking at the perfect reproduction of a well-loved farm home of the 1950s, and pointing out the marvelous miniatures we liked. I could almost hear my mother’s voice.

It brought back a tumbling jumble of happiness reliving those Saturday mornings when my parents were still alive, and my world was smaller and quieter.

A very special moment of grace, indeed.

And you? Have you experienced a moment of grace recently?

HANK: Such a lovely question--and such a pleasant thing to ponder! Reds and Readers?  (And Susan is giving a copy of her new book to one lucky commenter! Another moment of grace.)

 A Death at Tippitt Pond

Secrets long buried surround the murder of teenage Melanie Tippitt. The daughter of a wealthy family in a small town, her lifeless body was found floating in Tippitt Pond in the summer of 1971. Six people were there that day, and one was convicted of her murder. Case closed.

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     Now, forty-five years later, Beth Russell, a freelance researcher and genealogist, is brought to the town by a lawyer who believes Russell is the daughter of Melanie Tippitt and long-lost heir to the Tippitt fortune. Soon Beth finds herself surrounded by people who want her gone as soon as possible, people with a great deal to lose. The more they push the more determined Beth is to discover the truth. The ghostly presence of Melanie Tippitt, a stranger watching from the woods, and the discovery of secrets in Tippitt House make for a suspense-filled investigation where what Beth discovers changes everything,

Susan Van Kirk

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Susan Van Kirk lives at the center of the universe—the Midwest—and writes during the ridiculously cold, snowy, icy winters. Why leave the house and break something? Her Endurance mysteries are humorous cozies about a retired school teacher in the small town of Endurance who finds herself in the middle of murders. Her new series about Beth Russell combines history and mystery in her debut, A Death at Tippitt Pond. Van Kirk taught for 44 years in high school and college, raised three children, has low blood pressure (a miracle after all that), and is blissfully retired. You can find out about her books at www.susanvankirk.com

The color photo :Used with permission of the Galesburg Register-Mail. 
The black and white photo: Used with permission of the Galesburg Public Library