E.C. Native Explores a Family Mystery in Debut Novel, ‘The Blue Trunk’
true history of ancestor confined to asylum inspires fictional work
While many baby boomers are using Storyworth to share their family history and anecdotes with generations to come, Eau Claire native Ann Lowry has taken this concept to a whole new level with the writing of The Blue Trunk, a historical fiction novel based on her family’s ancestors who immigrated from Norway to Wisconsin in the late 1800s.
When Ann was growing up in a ranch home as a teenager on Sherman Street in Eau Claire, in the basement rec room she noticed an antique trunk hand-painted cerulean blue with the name “Marit Sletmo” written in beautiful calligraphy.
Later in life, married and upon the birth of her daughter, Ann mentioned to her mother, Joanne, that she wanted to name her daughter Marit. To which her mother responded: “Absolutely not. No you cannot do that. She was insane.”
Through time, Ann’s curiosity grew. She was fascinated about Marit because her mother said she had never met her, and they weren’t allowed to ask about her.
During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Ann started doing genealogy research about her mother’s side of the family, as her mother had already done so for her father’s side, prior to her passing in 2018. And, except for Marit’s birth in Norway, Ann couldn’t find any official documentation.
“It was odd. Marit immigrated here with her sister Ingre, who ultimately became my great-great grandmother,” Lowry shared in a phone interview. “I found Ingre’s marriage certificate, death certificate, and census data. For Marit, nothing. However, I knew that Marit did indeed get to Wisconsin as she signed an autograph book in 1889 in Blair, Wisconsin, which I found as I was going through some of my mother’s things after her death.
“That led me to start researching insane asylums,” she continued. “I found that people admitted became ‘wards of the state’ and frequently were not counted in the census. The asylums were, but not individual people.”
This led Lowry back to Eau Claire from her home in St. Paul, where she then worked as a communications professor at the University of Minnesota, to walk the Eau Claire County Old Orchard Cemetery. Located in the midst of a residential neighborhood east of the water tower on the west side of Eau Claire, the cemetery is the final resting place for residents of the former Eau Claire County Asylum, County Home, and County Poor Farm.
“It is an old asylum cemetery, and many of the graves are marked ‘unknown,’ ” she said. “I sadly concluded that she likely spent most of her life there and is probably buried in a grave marked ‘unknown.’ It was then that I knew I had to write a book to reclaim Marit’s life.”
And boy, oh boy, oh boy, did Lowry give her ancestor Marit an extraordinary life – one might even say a roller coaster life with ups and downs, twists and turns, and periods of calm and chaos – based on both historical facts for context and Lowry’s own imagination.
Lowry juxtaposed Marit’s life with that of a woman named Rachel, who like Lowry, is curious about her ancestor – although Rachel is a figment of Lowry’s imagination and is not based on the author’s own life.
The book’s prologue opens in the living room of a row house in Washington, D.C., where Rachel, married to a successful politician, has the blue travel trunk belonging to her ancestor Marit. It’s filled with various items (dare we say clues) belonging to Marit that throughout the book help Rachel piece together Marit’s life. On top of that is her husband’s worn brown leather computer bag in which she finds a women’s silk scarf that is not hers. The prologue ends ominously: “This is the tale of two women. This is my story, and her story, and I will share both with you.”
The 381-page novel has 52 short chapters that move quickly between Rachel’s current-day life and Marit’s early 20th century life. The descriptions are vivid, and the dialogue fast-paced. The twain do meet – again, and again, and again – in unique ways, and not only in Eau Claire and Aspoya, Norway, but also various cities in Arizona and in St. Paul, northern Wisconsin, Chicago, and Paris.
In August 2020, Lowry signed up for a novel writing class at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. To her surprise and delight, her writing teacher was award-winning author Peter Geye, who had also researched Norwegian immigrants for his novels. “Peter helped me a lot with coaching on how to write a novel that extends between two time periods and with overall editing and guidance on what to include and what to delete,” she said. “I’ll be forever grateful to him.”
The book took three years to write. “The first draft took about a year, and then two years of edits and rewrites,” she said. “I’ve had about 13 drafts, and I had to let go of a few characters and subplots and change a few things around.
“I love the writing process, and I need to make it a habit and routine each and every day,” she shared.
Lowry wrote typically from 7 to 11am while living in Minnesota and then wintering in Palm Springs, California. Not a fan of cloudy days and cold weather, she now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she revealed she always wakes up to sun except for a day or two, and that suits her just fine. Now in full-retirement mode, her mornings are spent swimming and doing yoga, and when she starts on her next book, she predicts she will write on a different schedule from 11 am to 3 pm.
To keep track of the plots and both of her main characters, Rachel and Marit – as well as their lives and the other characters – she used sticky notes, 3x5 cards, boxes on paper, and timelines.
“There was a method to the madness,” she exclaimed. “ It was hard to know how to put together the two stories so I played around with different chapter organizations. I knew I wanted to start and end with Rachel, so that gave me a bit of a frame. And then I didn’t want to interrupt important storylines so that is why there might be three Marit chapters and then one Rachel chapter.”
The Blue Trunk by Ann E. Lowry, published by köehlerbooksTM, is available at The Local Store in Eau Claire, and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Options are hard cover, soft cover, and kindle. An audio version will be coming in early 2025. For more info, please visit her website annlowry.com or her Facebook page, “Ann Lowry, Author.”
