The Dangerous Neighbors Sequel: Writing William's Story

When I started writing the book that became Dangerous Neighbors, I gave the story over to three interlocking, first-person voices—that of Katherine, the privileged nineteen-year old who has lost her twin sister in Philadelphia's Centennial year, that of the fire that threatened to bring the Centennial grounds to a charred halt, and that of William, from the city's poorer side, who becomes Katherine's companion and, ultimately, friend during one terrifying day.

Over the course of reworking and transforming the book, the story remade itself (or, I should say, I remade it) into a single third-person, present tense voice.  The fire became a scene instead of a personality, and William became an important but secondary character.  One hundred full pages of William's tale never made it into the slender book that became Dangerous Neighbors (Laura Geringer Books/Egmont USA).

But I always missed William and his story, always wished that the narrative structure and the themes I'd finally settled on could have made more room for him, and in fact many dear readers wondered out loud (either to me or in their reviews) why we didn't see more of this young man. I wrote, often, of wanting to write the sequel. This summer I am doing just that—returning to William, writing into and through his story, and committing to the sequel I had always planned to write.

Publishing is changing. Opportunities to share stories are changing with it. Dangerous Neighbors was kindly received by so many of you and now has a life as a Scholastic selection.  I have spoken with my agent, and on this I'm very clear: One way or the other, William's story will get told.

Thanks to all of you whose words, one way or the other, finally brought me to this.

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Talking the Centennial, Operti's Tropical Garden, and the Birthing of Fiction in Nonfiction

When St. John's Presbyterian Church invited me to speak for a Valentine's Day luncheon, we all envisioned a group of a dozen or so kind souls, gathered in a circle in the Carriage House.  Our dozen has grown to nearly 80, I'm told, and I want to be sure that I deliver.  And so, in found pockets of time this past week, I've been returning to my Dangerous Neighbors research files and assembling a 20-image Centennial Philadelphia talk that melds the known with the unknown and in that way reveals my own fiction-making process.

Those of you who have read Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA) know that key moments unfold within and outside of Operti's Tropical Garden, which stood on the margins of the Centennial grounds.  Contemporary reporters described Operti's as "one of the handsomest places of amusement in Philadelphia.  It was light and airy, and was handsomely decorated with frescoes and other paintings.  Long lines of colored globes, each containing a gas jet, stretched across the interior beneath the ceiling, and shed a brilliant light upon the scene below.  At the back a large waterfall dashed over the painted rocks, forming a beautiful cascade, and giving to the air on the hot nights of the summer a delicious coolness."

More than sixty performers led by a certain Signor Giuseppe Operti filled the place with music each night—the cascade being dimmed long enough for the music to soar, and then "spr(inging) into life again." Years later, working with those lines of description and this image, I was inspired to imagine a bird set free and all the nuanced consequences.  From Dangerous Neighbors:

Operti’s is an aromatic cove of high skies and blooms. Gas lanterns float like kites overhead. Potted trees shadow the paths. There are the bright flags of celosia and astilbe,  the yellow sleeves of forsythia forced well past their season, begonias the color of dandelions and fire, and in the midst of it all, the orchestra stage. On every wall,  frescoes , and in the very back someone has painted a rock cliff of schist and granite, then turned some sort of spigot on, so that water, real water, cascades down. The sound of Operti’s is gush and violins, the squeak of a chair, the leak of gas in a jet above, a stifled sneeze in the vicinity of the gardenias, and above that the silence of every single place that has ever lain in wait for an evening audience. By the time that Katherine has taken it all in, the girl, the mysterious mistress of the bird, has disappeared.

Katherine breathes. Miraculously, she is not asked to leave. This much beauty, she decides, is a painful thing. Paris in Philadelphia wasn’t right, and Operti’s isn’t either.

Now from behind, from above comes a swish-wash of sound, and when Katherine turns, she sees the creature’s wings—white as a magnolia bud in spring. The bird has been set free. It flies high, arcs wide past the suspended color globes, toward the cliff of painted rocks, the waterfalls. It swoops low and to the right, extending its wings and holding, ascending again and holding. It is the freest bird Katherine has ever seen.  It leans, swoops down, and descends over the room of empty chairs and flowers and palmy heads.  It drifts toward the orchestra stand where—on the very edge, between pots of calla lily and candytuft—the child sits with the empty gold cage .

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The Academy of Music, 1876

Over the last few days I've been assembling images for a talk I'll be giving this coming Valentine's Day—a small event that has turned quite not so small, thanks to the very fine people of St. John's Presbyterian Church.  In any case, I've had reason to return to that Centennial year in Philadelphia.  To revisit old research files.  To imagine, again, the cacophony of horses and flame-throwing lamps, music in the winter chill.  This is the Academy of Music in 1876, as an artist drew it that year.  That building still stands, still gathers unto itself anticipation and performance.

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Pulling back the curtains on my city

City Hall, the mayor's home, as viewed from the 22nd floor of the former PSFS Building, now the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

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Photo Shoot

I wrote, a while ago, about all the babble that goes through my brain when a camera is pointed in my direction.  I am not, within, what I am without.  Do any of us achieve that perfect correspondence?

But for the recent Pennsylvania Gazette story about the life I've lived through books, I was invited to a enter the cinematic world of Chris Crisman, another Penn grad who has made it his business to appease and to ease and (somehow in the midst of it all) to make art.  You would never know it, by looking at this shot, but the lens was so close to my face when this picture was made that I suspected Chris of doing a study on the tangle of my eyelashes.  (Lancome, next time, I was thinking to myself.  And also:  I wish I'd gone to bed last night.)

Clearly, though, Chris knows what he is doing, and I share this outtake from the shoot today because Chris made Memorial Hall, a Centennial-era building, the true and deserving subject of his shot.  It's a beautiful place, newly and justly restored, and can't you just picture it back in 1876—the crowds massing in the high heat of summer, eager for the art within?

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Dangerous Neighbors: The Book Trailer

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Dangerous Neighbors: the first review

Every time I post this cover image I sigh, happily.  This evening I am sighing doubly happily, for I have read what is in fact the first review of Dangerous Neighbors, a five-star YABooksCentral review, and it touches my heart deeply.  For now I share these words, which do such an outstanding job of capturing a story that, in my five years of working on it, I struggled to adequately sum up.

Originally I was just going to tell you exactly what the author, Beth Kephart, tells you about Dangerous Neighbors: “It is 1876, the height of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Katherine has lost her twin sister, Anna, and though it was an accident, Katherine remains convinced that Anna’s death was her fault. One wickedly hot September day, Katherine sets out for the exhibition grounds to cut short the life she is no longer willing to live. This is the story of what happens.” But that would leave out a lot because Dangerous Neighbors is about more than feeling the loss of a sister. It is about sisters, especially twin sisters, and how they are a part of each other. It is about the inevitable maturing and ultimate growing apart of siblings. It is about the world in 1876 and one parent’s fight for equality. It is about having someone to care for and how that spark of caring can change everything.

Thank you so much, reviewer Ed Goldberg.

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Dangerous Neighbors, my historical novel, has found its right home

Several years ago, Laura Geringer wrote a most extraordinary note, inviting me to consider writing for young adults. Despite years spent teaching children and a stint as the chair of the 2001 National Book Awards Young People's Literature jury, this was not something that I felt I knew how to do. Nonetheless, I loved Laura's mind from the first, I loved our conversations, and we kept talking. We talked for almost a year until we finally met in person—Laura asking me questions on a rainy Sunday morning to which some combination of my personal history and imagination responded. Undercover emerged under Laura's great care. House of Dance was next. Nothing but Ghosts and a short story for the just-released HarperTeen anthology No Such Thing as the Real World were subsequent. Finally, Laura bought the early pages of The Heart of Not a Size, the Juarez novel due out from HarperTeen next March (and carried so ably forward by the delightful Jill Santopolo).

Laura left HarperTeen in August of last year, but our friendship continued. Today I am so utterly happy to announce that I'll be working with Laura again on an historical novel that is currently titled Dangerous Neighbors. It's a book that I conceived of several years ago, when writing Flow, my autobiography of the Schuylkill River. It's a book that Amy Rennert, my agent, wholly believed in. It's a book that went through several iterations and will, no doubt, again, for Laura asks exquisite questions, she pushes authors far, she sees, and—more than anything—she believes in literature and complex stories, in fiction that pushes boundaries.

I have the chance to work with Laura again because she has formed an alliance with a genuinely interesting publishing house called Egmont USA, an outgrowth of a publishing house with a long European pedigree. In making her announcement about Laura today, Egmont USA publisher Elizabeth Law noted that "her excellent taste, creative ideas and deep relationships in the field will be a perfect complement to our fast growing children's list."

Yes. Yes. And Yes.

A brief description of Dangerous Neighbors:

It is the Centennial year in Philadelphia, and Katherine has lost her twin sister to an inconceivable accident. One wickedly hot September day at the height of exhibition madness, Katherine sets out to cut short the lonesome life she is no longer willing to live. This is the story of what happens.

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