Guide for the
Incurably Curious

This is the place where I share tidbits from my research, answering the kinds of questions I usually get about Faye’s adventures. People always want to know how much of the story is historically true, so I’ll begin with arsenic and chaulmoogra oil. They were both used to treat leprosy in the 1800s, but no effective treatment was available until well into the twentieth century, so Elias’ slow decline would have been the likely outcome of contracting the disease when he did.

According to the Center for Disease Control, Hansen’s disease (the more modern term for the disease long known as leprosy) is a long-lasting infection caused by bacteria. Though once feared as a devastating contagious disease, it is now rare and treatable. With early diagnosis and treatment, patients can avoid its disabling effects. In Elias’ time, patients were isolated in leprosariums. Faced with losing his freedom in this way, it is not inconceivable that he would have grabbed the chance to live out his life in isolation on Joyeuse Island, sparing his family from the stigma attached to the word “leper.”

As I considered a plot that would ask Cally to endanger herself to help a man preserve his dignity and freedom, I asked myself, “Would she take that risk?” Cally has been in residence inside my head for nearly fifteen years now, so I have a very clear image of her, and I decided that she would. As a former slave, she would have recoiled from the thought of a man entering a leprosarium, never to emerge into freedom again.

Another quality that I imagine a former slave would have is a certain disdain for the law and for social conventions, a quality that Faye sometimes shares. Cally lived for seventy years after she was emancipated, but she would not have been lulled into believing that her society could be trusted to treat her justly. She would have been past eighty before women were allowed to vote, and she did not live to see the end of Jim Crow. I think she would have felt a certain pride in helping a man keep his freedom. I also think that it is quite reasonable that Faye idolizes her.

This is the third Faye Longchamp mystery, after Artifacts and Findings, in which Faye learns important things about her family’s past by reading Cally’s reminiscences. The Works Progress Administration, commonly known as the WPA, really did sponsor a Federal Writers’ Project that sent writers out to interview former slaves. Those transcribed interviews still exist today, preserving a part of American history that would otherwise have been lost.

I don’t know whether Faye will need to dip into Cally’s memoirs again in future books, but I did enjoy revisiting them for Isolation. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that one of the passages from Artifacts appears again here, tying the two stories together by repeating the story about the Yankee captain who could have left Cally and all the people of Joyeuse Island without food, but didn’t. In Isolation, we see that he was rewarded for his kindness.