Author’s Note
Although most of the characters in this book are fictional, I want to mention a few who are not. I took some small liberties imagining these characters’ parts in this novel.
James Hampton is one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. He was born in Elloree, South Carolina, in 1909, the son of a gospel singer, and went to Washington in 1928, later serving in the Army Air Forces in the 385th Aviation Squadron in Saipan and Guam, receiving a Bronze Star. He returned to Washington after the war and worked as a janitor for the General Services Administration until his death in 1964. During that time, in a garage on Seventh Street NW, he secretly created the masterpiece The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, a spectacular assemblage based on biblical prophesy and visions, with elements of African spiritualism. I remember well when, after his death, The Washington Post reported on the astounding discovery of The Throne, which is now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972) was an expat American and major figure in modernist poetry. While living in Italy, he became controversial, embracing Fascism and supporting Mussolini and Hitler, which eventually led to his arrest and incarceration by American forces for treason. For a few weeks, he lived in a steel cage, causing his mental breakdown, after which he resided at St. Elizabeths in Washington for twelve years and was released in 1958. Ironically, during his incarceration, he was awarded the first Bollingen Prize by the Library of Congress for his Pisan Cantos. It is said in my family that my paternal grandmother and maternal great-grandmother, both Italian immigrants, spent time in St. Elizabeths in the 1940s or 1950s, and I’ve often fantasized about their paths having crossed Pound’s there.
Lieutenant Jacob Beser (1921–1992) was from Baltimore. His family was Jewish, and he was especially committed to defeating Hitler. He worked in Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project and was a radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay and the Bockscar—the only person to have served on both 1945 atomic missions to Japan. He has said that he felt no remorse over his part in those missions: “One must consider the context of the times.” Beser was awarded the Silver Star and other medals for his service.
Camilo Cienfuegos, born in 1932 in Havana, was close to Castro and Che Guevara and, like Che, a charismatic Cuban revolutionary who was one of the top guerrilla commanders in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista. He also had studied art, played on Castro’s baseball team, Barbudos, and visited the United States twice, working in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami. After Castro’s victory in 1959, Camilo headed Cuba’s armed forces until his mysterious disappearance over the Straits of Florida. His plane was never recovered. Camilo remains popular and is memorialized all over Cuba.
I would also like to acknowledge a few books I consulted while writing this noveclass="underline" Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, The National Audubon Society, Alfred A. Knopf, 1980; Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, Island Press, 1994; Camilo: eternamente presente, Edimirta Ortega Guzman, compiler, Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 2014; and The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound, Daniel Swift, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to so many for help and reading: Claiborne, Marian, and Norma Barksdale, Beckett Howorth IV, Sam Johnston, Po Hannah, Katie Blount, Amanda Hewitt, Darrell Crawford and David McConnell, Debra Winger, Babe Howard, Anne Rapp, Kathryn Wood, Jennifer Ackerman, Bill Cusumano, B. A. Fennelly, Curtis Wilkie, Jack Pendarvis, Gary Fisketjon, Joey Lauren Adams, Lee Durkee, Elizabeth Dollarhide, Jeff Dennis, Tom Verich, Bernard Kuria, Kyle McGrevey, Kathy and Dan Woodliff, Homer Best, David Howorth, Biff Grimes, Patty Orama, and Tim Kosel at easysonglicensing.com. Thanks to my homey, Frank Rich, for a copy of the flabbergasting book Washington Confidential, and to my mom, Claire Johnston; dad, George Neumann; and brother, Rick Neumann, for childhood inspiration. Thanks to Chris Wait and Barbara Epler at New Directions; my friends Phin and Liam Percy, who provided their artistic talents; and to the P.P.P. at the Pig, and the B.D.S. at the Grocery, for keeping me laffing. As always, thanks to my husband, Richard, for advice and putting up. And tons of gratitude is due to my crafty agent, Lisa Bankoff, who gets things off the ground; to my incredibly hardworking, smart editor, Lee Boudreaux; and to everybody at Doubleday, especially the eagle-eyed Cara Reilly, copy editor Amy Edelman, designer Michael Collica, production editor Victoria Pearson, publicist Todd Doughty, and sales reps Julie Kurland and Jess Pearson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Howorth was born in Washington, DC, where her family has lived for four generations. She is a former librarian and the author of the novel Flying Shoes. She has written on art, travel, dogs, and music for the Oxford American and Garden & Gun, among other publications. Howorth lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she and her husband, Richard, cofounded Square Books in 1979.
ALSO BY LISA HOWORTH
Flying Shoes
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Howorth
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published materiaclass="underline"
Hal Leonard LLC: Lyric excerpt from “Three Cool Cats,” words and music by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, copyright © 1959 by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Lyric excerpt from “The Twelfth of Never,” words by Paul Francis Webster and music by Jerry Livingston, copyright © 1956 and renewed by Webster Music Co. and Hallmark Music Company. All rights for Hallmark Music Company controlled and administered by Spirit Two Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC. New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpt from “Canto LXXXI” from The Pisan Cantos, copyright © 1948 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.