Thrust: A Novel

Acknowledgments

How do you thank the idea that history is alive? This book simply would not exist if I had not read other books and encountered ideas in a kind of constant flux, a little like swimming in the ocean. The statue and story in Thrust is both real and imagined, or maybe in some liminal space in between. The idea of a “carrier” came from my mentor and friend, Ursula K. Le Guin, from her 1986 essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” Of the many books and articles I used for research on the Statue of Liberty, I was most mesmerized by and I am forever in debt to the story that Elizabeth Mitchell told in Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, particularly in terms of the biographical material on Bartholdi, which inspired the character of Frédéric and served as a magical departure hub, while also helping me to conjure the details of a statue’s journey. Mitchell’s book contained many delightful (and sometimes troubling) firsthand accounts of the construction and reception of the colossus in America. Alongside her book and many others, I was drawn to an important article by Angela Serratore in the May 28, 2019, issue of Smithsonian magazine, “The Americans Who Saw Lady Liberty as a False Idol of Broken Promises,” the source of the quote from the early days of the Cleveland Gazette, as well as collected sentiments from suffragists, African Americans, and Chinese immigrants. This article prompted me to conjure the stories underneath a story. I also read a roomful of books on immigration, settler occupation, and early American labor ethnography. I am forever changed after learning to listen to the past differently from the way it was delivered to me.

Gratitude and Love to my dear friend J.M.L.B., who educated me mightily on the history, family, and social structure of the Haudenosaunee, and who gave me an incredible resource in the book Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States by Audra Simpson, as well as several articles on the Mohawk steelworker tradition (the Kahnawake Skywalkers). I was also inspired by an article by Lucie Levine posted on July 25, 2018, in 6SQFT, “Men of Steel: How Brooklyn’s Native American Ironworkers Built New York.”

While reading ethnographies, I was also deeply inspired by the book Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science by Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein, which brought me to many books and articles about the fluid nature of ethnography. The reimagined ethnographies in Thrust are my attempt to agitate the form of the novel by amplifying what M. M. Bakhtin so vividly described as heteroglossia. The closing ethnography in Thrust draws its inspiration from the direct interviews with children documented by Clara Long in her July 11, 2019, testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, transcripts of which appeared on the Human Rights Watch website. I am reminded how important it is to remember that unintentional distances exist in any human interaction that leads to bearing witness or representing the experiences of others. In particular, anyone interested in representing stories of oppression or repression — including a novelist — faces a hard and enduring challenge when liberty itself is under lock and key. It is my hope that the plurality of voice, body, and experience especially available in the form of the novel might serve to keep the tensions, contradictions, conflicts, and desires of the many rather than the one alive, noisy, unflinching.

My research on the history of sex work in 1800s America included two books that were of major influence in creating the character of Aurora: City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920 by Timothy J. Gilfoyle and City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789–1860 by Christine Stansell. The material on Helen Jewett is drawn largely from Patricia Cline Cohen’s excellent The Murder of Helen Jewett.

The story of the kidnapped child is extrapolated from the fascinating Charley Ross the Kidnapped Child: The Father’s Story, by the boy’s father, Christian K. Ross. Oceans of gratitude to Domi Shoemaker for finding and gifting me this book from 1876 (!!!).

The quoted material about Timothy McVeigh is documented in American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck. The authors spent more than forty hours interviewing McVeigh in prison, leading to the tapes that form the basis of their television special, The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist.

Books don’t just materialize from an author’s head, nor exclusively from research and creative labor. The making of books is a creative collaboration, and this book owes its very life to several radiant souls whose lives threaded through mine. I am forever grateful to Melanie Conroy-Goldman and everyone at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where I spent a magical year as the Trias Writer. Put simply, the year changed my life forever. Most of the ground of Thrust emerged between long walks around Seneca Lake and deep creative engagement with the Trias Squad. (I remember every single one of you — Allison Palmer, Madeline Herbert, Emma Honey, Max Romana, Christopher Costello, Bethany Kharrazi, Hanan Issa, Katie Kumta, Anna Flaherty, Lilly Shea, and Jackie Steinman — and I will forever.) All of us left winter term and traveled straight into the mouth of COVID; perhaps we are forever imprinted on one another from moving through our own creativity into the crucible that came next. I carry you all in my heart.

Endless gratitude to my Valkyrie agent, Rayhané Sanders, and my brilliant, patient, inspirational editor, Calvert Morgan. Without you two my imagination cannot find form or motion.

Full-throated love and thanks to my sister Brigid, who read early versions of this material, who helped me keep my passion light lit, and who reflected back to me that my ideas deserve to live.

And always to my north star, Andy Mingo, creative soulmate, love of my life. Thank you for helping me move this work from chaos to order (and for the whiteboard idea, even though I hated it at first). Thank you for believing in my stories and for keeping me on the planet in spite of myself. What a ride it’s been. I love you into the everything.