Sarah St.Vincent - Ways to Hide in Winter

In my mind, I saw a woman who had been curled up on the forest floor stand up, brush the leaves from her dress, rub the decades of sleep from her eyes, button her cracked leather shoes, look around. See the road. Walk toward it.

Eventually, I found a highway that ran north and turned onto it, making my way out of the city and sailing on through the suburbs, like a leaf blown on a harsh breeze. I didn’t belong in this place; I might not belong any place. But I would keep looking. I held the wheel steadily, listening to the radio, following the road as it unwound through the trees.

As the sun climbed overhead, slowly warming the car, I remembered a day in mid-summer, many years earlier, when my brother and I had been children. We’d been playing in the woods on the state game lands, a place where people liked to dump their garbage—not the ordinary kitchen bags, but big things, sofas and metal barrels and washers and dryers. We would jump on the things, push them together to make castles and cabins, hide under them. On this day, we were chasing each other when my brother suddenly stopped, shocked, and looked down at his shoe. A nail, long and sharp and rusting, had pierced right through the sole, biting deep into his skin. Frightened, I had picked him up, my older brother, struggling to carry him on my back until we reached the small, scorched-looking yard of a neighbor we had never met. The mailbox had an American flag painted on it, and there was a fake deer on the porch that had been used for target practice. An angry-looking dog watched me through the window as I knocked on the door.

After a minute, the neighbor appeared, a large man with thick glasses and a beard. His two front teeth were missing, and I would later learn that I didn’t know him because he had spent ten years in prison, something to do with a fight that had ended badly. Too young to have any idea that I should be frightened, I stood there, looking up at him. Before I could explain, he saw the blood on my brother’s shoe and closed the door behind him. In one smooth motion, he lifted my brother from my back and arranged him in his own arms, speaking in gruff murmurs, carrying him down the driveway. By the road, I took his hand—large, rough, with black grease written into the skin—and pulled him west, toward home. Together, we set off down the quiet road, walking the long mile, our three figures casting joined shadows. I touched a scar that crossed his fingers. The sun came through the trees, as it always does, light interrupted by darkness, darkness interrupted by light.

PINE GROVE FURNACE

POW INTERROGATION CAMP

During WWII, the US War Dept. operated this secret facility a mile north along Michaux Rd., one of three such sites in the US. Military intelligence relating to topics such as weaponry development and Axis operations was gained from thousands of German and Japanese prisoners. Originally a farm serving the iron industry, 1785–1919, the site was converted to Civilian Conservation Corps Camp S-51-PA, 1933–42. After the war it became church Camp Michaux, 1946–72.

ON THIS SPOT WERE FOUND THREE BABES IN THE WOODS

Nov.-24-1934

This book is rooted in many moments, but perhaps none so much as the evening in 2004 when I sat at a table at the Philadelphia organization Women in Transition, attending one of the training sessions required to become a volunteer for the local domestic violence hotline. The trainer handed out a sheet of paper that listed many forms of intimate-partner violence—not only physical mistreatment (punching, kicking, shoving), but also psychological, sexual, and financial. When I looked at it, a number of things came into focus for me in a way they never had before. Like many and perhaps most of us, I had previously understood “domestic violence” to refer only to the things I saw on TV and the shorthand images in the newspaper: the clenched fist, the cowering woman. But that isn’t all family violence is, and my own life, at least, has benefited from that understanding.

Seven years later, I sat down one day and suddenly started writing the story of a young woman—one who had somehow been badly injured—who stood in a threadbare gray coat at the edge of a frozen lake. Eventually, I decided this would be a novel about domestic violence that contained neither clenched fists nor women who were only depicted as cowering. Whatever else it may be, I hope it’s that.

The fact that the book ever reached publication is due to the patience, insight, and wonderful championing of the manuscript by Taylor Sperry, my editor at Melville House (who also helped come up with the title), and Stacia Decker, my incredible agent, who was offering feedback years before the draft was anywhere near ready for prime time. It also owes its existence to early encouragement and feedback from freelance editor Lauren Jolie LeBlanc, Amelia Keene, Rikin Shah, Jessica Howley, Tori Roth, Emily Marr, Elinathan Ohiomoba, Merryl Lawry-White, Brooke Dunbar, Gautam Hans, and Stephen St.Vincent, although any flaws in the story are my own doing. Many of my colleagues at the AIRE Centre, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Human Rights Watch also offered warm words during the travails of the drafting and revision process, as did Eli James. My grandparents, parents, and extended family cheered me on during this project as during so many others.

The details about the prison camp are largely drawn from the work of local historians I’ve never met but for whose years of research I am extremely grateful. Some of the information they have gathered is available online at http://www.schaeffersite.com/michaux/.

Writing a novel in my spare hours while working full-time was in many ways an isolating experience, but friends such as Rachael Barza, Lauren Rogal, and Katie Ishibashi got me through it. Alison Stigora, fellow artist, nature-lover, and asker of deep questions, has also offered love and support at many critical junctures—and, many years ago, explored the woods of Pine Grove Furnace State Park with me when I briefly worked at the general store there.

Lastly, this story owes a vast amount to my women friends who are profoundly thoughtful about their faith and its meaning for their personal lives. They are forever teaching me what goodness is.

Ways to Hide in Winter

Copyright © Sarah St.Vincent, 2018

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Melville House Printing: November 2018

Melville House Publishing

46 John Street

Brooklyn, NY 11201

and

Suite 2000

16/18 Woodford Rd.

London E7 0HA

mhpbooks.com

@melvillehouse

ISBN: 9781612197203

Ebook ISBN 9781612197210

Designed by Euan Monaghan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: St. Vincent, Sarah, author.

Title: Ways to hide in winter : a novel / Sarah St.Vincent.

Description: Brooklyn : Melville House, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018037662 (print) | LCCN 2018041697 (ebook) | ISBN 9781612197210 (reflow able) | ISBN 9781612197203 (hardcover)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3619.T29 (ebook) | LCC PS3619.T29 W39 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037662

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