Guide for the Incurably Curious

This is the place where I usually give a little background for readers who are interested in which parts of the history Faye is investigating are really true. Teachers, homeschoolers, and book group leaders tell me that this kind of information spurs discussion, and I find that my readers tend to be like me. We are incurably curious, so we are always happy to have a few questions answered.

For this book, however, I find myself wanting to leave the magic alone. Instead of sharing with you every last historical detail about the roots of Spiritualism and the activities of the brave ladies at Seneca Falls, I think I will do things differently this time. I will point you in the direction of a couple of books I used while writing Rituals, then I will tell you a story about my own one-and-only brush with the metaphysical.

I have owned a copy of James Randi’s Flim-Flam! Psychics, Unicorns, and Other Delusions for quite some time. I knew that I would someday want to draw from his exposé of metaphysical fraud, but I was waiting for the right story to come to me. Randi, also known as the magician “The Amazing Randi,” has been a crusader for truth, and my “Toni the Astonisher” was in part inspired by him. If you read Flim-Flam!, you will learn about real-life fakers far more brazen than my fictional Dara and Willow.

In constructing my imaginary Rosebower, I visited a Florida town built by 19th-century Spiritualists called Cassadaga, where I attended a church service, experienced the laying on of hands, and received a psychic reading. I also did my usual writerly exploration of the town itself, just walking around and stopping into local businesses and checking out the public buildings. Even my imaginary places need to be rooted in the real world. This is why I like to travel to the sites of my books or, when those sites are imaginary, I like to travel to someplace nearby. If you’re curious about Spiritualist towns in general, or about Cassadaga in particular, I recommend Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community by John J. Guthrie Jr., Phillip Charles Lucas, and Gary Monroe.

I did not, however, go to western New York, and I did not go to the real-life town known as the home of Spiritualism, Lily Dale. Rosebower is only modeled on Lily Dale in the sense that they both have lovely floral names. I made the decision not to go to Lily Dale rather late in the process of preparing to write Rituals, and here’s why. Although some of the residents of my Rosebower are wonderful people, honest and devoted to their faith, some of them are not. I felt that it would be disrespectful to the faith of real-life Spiritualists to taint their town with fakery and murder, so I wanted there to be no suggestion that I was accusing real people of such things. Instead, I created Rosebower, where I could let my fictional crooks come out to play. Now that the book is finished, I want very much to visit Lily Dale and Seneca Falls, and I expect I will do so soon.

And now I’ll share my personal story of mysterious metaphysics. Like Faye, I was educated in the sciences, so it would take unassailable evidence for me to believe in anything that cannot be rationally explained. I know that there are things in this universe that we don’t understand, so I leave the door open for miracles, but I set a very high bar when it comes to proof. Nevertheless, I have visited psychics from time to time, out of sheer curiosity.

In 2002, I attended a wonderful party. As part of the entertainment, the hostess had hired a psychic, and all attendees could sign up for a brief session with her. I found her to be pleasant, but her advice was fairly generic. She said nothing that would have required her to have arcane powers…until the very end of the session. Out of the blue, she said, “I hear three names. Barbara, Robert, and Sam. They will be important people for you.”

Those of you who are familiar with my publishing house know that Robert Rosenwald is the publisher and Barbara Peters is the editor-in-chief. When this woman pulled their names out of the air, my first novel, Artifacts, had been submitted to them for possible publication. No one else at that party (or probably in the world, except for my agent and the people at Poisoned Pen Press) knew this. Shortly after that psychic reading, Poisoned Pen Press bought Artifacts. Or, in other words, when that woman pulled those two names out the air, two people named Robert and Barbara were poised to change my life.

Is this proof? Not really. Barbara and Robert are not the two rarest names in the world. Still, I do think that the odds are heavily stacked against that psychic being lucky enough to guess two names that were, right that minute, much on my mind.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking me: “So what about Sam?” Well, the third name she called out wasn’t really Sam. I’m keeping his name to myself, and I’m watchfully waiting. If somebody named “Sam” comes along and changes my life again, then this engineer might be forced to believe in magic.