In October, I traveled to Kansas City to sit in the aura of the ethereal Kate Morton, authoress of The House at Riverton, The Lake House, The Distant Hours, and others. (my goodreads) Her most recent book, The Clockmaker’s Daughter release drew me to the city.
I admire her from afar and secretly analyze structures of the books, character thoughts, and the surprising plot lines of the weighty tomes. Issues such as family relationships, sibling birth order and its power hierarchy, secret love, even forbidden love are all in book clothes. Morton weaves booksellers, authors, reporters, readers of family letters, and keepers of ancestral homes and their writings of all of our lives on her pages.
You can probably say that I am in awe of her mystical ability to weave a thread into a storyline. It flickers there, reflecting but subtle, until it becomes the one brilliant thing that ties all in an elegant streaming bow.
Rainy Day Books hosted at the Unity Temple downtown on The Plaza. It’s architecture seemed hollow as evidenced by its breathy acoustics, musty sconces, and an aisle, when traversed by anyone, caused the sanctuary to tremble. Eerie, but somehow worthy lauds for the guest. I wonder if she noticed.
The readers who arrived early retrieved their copy of The Clockmaker’s Daughter, and most immediately opened the silken (Elvish) covers and commenced the reading. Populating Kate Morton’s book signing, the readers gathered there were similar, yet distinctive. Silence and whispers dominated the eager gathering. Most of us arrived in small groups of two or three, all women. I looked around and noticed that I may have been (at 54) among the mid age range reader. Hmmm.
Some People’s Kids
And then the anomaly: A man. On a cell phone. Taking sales calls in his clearly enunciated outside voice. What was he thinking? Well, we all knew because he transmitted it clearly into the air and the acoustic demons reverberated it down among the lesser angels.
We, as a group who considered pulling a Shirley Jackson by proxy, did forgive him. Later we learned he was there for his daughter. What. A. Guy.
While I was busy mopping up the water bottle, which had emptied into my purse, that the sales clerks at Brighton had given me, more people arrived. We all tucked in and marked our spaces with our stuff. Bags, books, pens, paper, scarves, sweaters. It was lovely, and I was among friends (about 200). I noticed a peppering of males, but not more than five, and that’s a generous guess. Conversations alighted all around with anticipatory glee, and we became friendly as we shared out love of all things Morton, and openly checked our watches. [After all, clock makers’ daughters ought to be timely…]
Morton was finally introduced and she glided on, impossibly delicate and just as lovely as her jacket pictures. Temple acoustic spirits settled everyone, and a collective silent and contented breath calmed the room.
Kate Morton Recounts Writing Influences
Memories of reading in tucked away, hidden spaces produced feelings that seduced her tendencies and fueled a passion for all things bookish. Other inspirations were the recurrence of strange, but kind, men behind counters, the haunting of the present by the past, and seemingly random events that are the sparkling thread knitting together the edges of mystery. When Morton drafts a tale, short first person vignettes write themselves, and then the connections of those threads create the tapestry of the books.
Rhapsody on KC Night on the Plaza
And perhaps, most telling: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” by T. S. Elliot: The poem in which the lamppost whispers about the night cast it illuminates in between the patches of blackness. The whispers, the creatures, the murky images haunt the traveler in the stanzas. Memory is a piercing, painful companion.
“The Last Twist of the Knife.”
That memory would influence an unnamed timekeeper who marked the passage of the night hours is no surprise to a Kate Morton aficionado.
Morton recounted the case in point of Mary Shelley. A Swiss Lake house, peopled with the English Romantic poets Byron and Shelley during a storm, dared one another to devise the scariest tale. Young Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which presented a horrifying look on beauty, companionship, and the darkness of hearts. The gathering of minds in unusual settings reveals, for Morton readers, the place of literary discovery.
Old manors that still are historical tours, host a descendant of one who used to inhabit it. Children thought to be murdered, had been secreted away by their own parents, yet hints were left along the way for discovery: a striking photograph, a memory, a recipe, or even a children’s tale that was published to reveal a secret that only one person could possibly imagine.
And very often, liquid images of the sea, a river, or a winding brook, winnow their own perspective in. And a river continually cuts new layers as it marks its calendars of the accounts of characters. Not unlike Samuel Clemmons, she communicates that time is marked on a river.
Kate Morton’s Characters Include the Setting
And always there is a house: The ultimate witness of all life. Markings on sills, walls, etchings in glass, papers inside wall paper, letters benignly passed on inside a hatbox with other trinkets that have further tales to tell nudge into the atmosphere of relationships. Kate Morton said that “Houses and landscapes have longer lives than humans.” I dare say that the houses want to be known and heard. Creaking bones of the frame or cornerstones that have messages scratched into them lie in wait for the inhabitants.
As enraptured as her audience remained, the beloved time did end, and it was lovely. Kate Morton has that old fashioned grace and charm that I was able to experience. As she signed my book, she looked into my eyes and blessed me with that enormous smile and genteel nod of the head. In the event you can’t tell, star struck will not do, awe will not do, but simple old fashioned admiration wrapped around me and gave the entire experience its very own hallowed place in my memory.
Return soon, (PS I haven’t finished The ClockMaker’s Daughter yet!)
The Counter Help at the Emporium