A Flickering Light

Praise for
A Flickering Light

“Jane Kirkpatrick has done it again.
A Flickering Light
is as engaging, well researched, and finely written as her other best-selling historical novels. Her characters are real people with real temptations, and at the end of the novel, this reader wants to know what happens next.”

—L
AURAINE
S
NELLING
, author of
One Perfect Day
and the Blessing books

“Jane Kirkpatrick’s brilliance as a storyteller and her elegant artistry with the written word shine like a beacon in
A Flickering Light
. A master at weaving historical accounts with threads of story, Jane has that rare ability to take her reader on a journey through time. You nearly feel the ground move beneath your feet.”

—S
USAN
M
EISSNER
, author of
The Shape of Mercy

“Jane Kirkpatrick handles some very difficult issues and situations in
A Flickering Light
. Her attention to historical detail is greatly appreciated and defines her mark on this story. As the series continues, I will watch with great anticipation to see where this journey takes us.”

—T
RACIE
P
ETERSON
, best-selling author of the Alaskan
Quest and Brides of Gallatin County series

“One of the marvels of this novel is Kirkpatrick’s uncanny ability to enter into the minds and hearts of many characters and inhabit them with authority, generosity of spirit, and wisdom. You’ll want to read slowly so you can savor each paragraph, each scene, each chapter.”

—K. L.
COOK,
author of
The Girl from Charnelle
,
winner of the 2007 WILLA Award for Contemporary
Fiction, and
Last Call
, winner of the Prairie Schooner
Book Prize in Fiction.

“The dilemma of being an independent, artistic woman in a conservative, strict society is brought to light with great empathy by Ms. Kirkpatrick’s compassionate recreation of Jessie Ann’s life as one of the first female photographers. What Ms. Kirkpatrick accomplishes with absolute grace through memorable imagery is recognizing and honoring the eternal plight of all soul-seeking women in the story of one young girl who was determined to follow her creative passion.”

—L
AURIE
W
ANGER
B
UYER,
author of
Spring’s
Edge: A Ranch Wife’s Chronicles

To the descendants of Jessie Ann
.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

*
Characters identified with asterisks are created from the author’s imagination. The female photographers identified in the text are actual historical figures.

Faith, hope and love are the three eternities.
To look up and not down, that is Faith;
to look forward and not back, that is Hope;
and then to look out and not in, that is Love.

—R
EVEREND
E
DWARD
E
VERETT
H
ALE
,
Woman’s Home Companion
, July 1907

The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

—E
MILY
D
ICKINSON
,
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”

Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.

—J
OHN
8:32,
NIV

Love…consists in…that two solitudes
protect and border and salute each other.

—R
AINER
M
ARIA
R
ILKE
,
Letters to a Young Poet

Subjects

I
n my favorite portrait of myself, I am wearing an opaque eyelet dress, layered, with the scalloped edges of the hemline barely whispering across the studio floor. The dress could have been worn for a christening, though its lavish detail would have stolen something from an event where the child ought to be the focus. The child, wearing a long, flowing white dress that could be handed down to brother and sister for each successive important day, that’s what matters at a christening. The child is what people should gaze upon at such an event, not a mother or aunt or friend wearing a too-elegant eyelet dress
.

It could be a wedding dress, but of course, it wasn’t
.

I find so few photographs of myself that I wish to share with others, but in this one I appear taller than my five feet two inches, as I’ve chosen a hat with ostrich plumes swept up in the back and high over my head. The plumes shade my eyes with dried berries that flow out onto the hat’s white brim in a cornucopia of fruit. My hair, the color of oiled leather, is coiled up beneath the brim. (My little brother, Roy, says I have hair the color of the cow pies dotting the pasture on our grandparents’ farm, but that’s the nature of little brothers born in the new century, or at least was Roy’s creative nature before the…event.) The milliner did splendid work, and the white of the felted hat brim brings the eye to the dress, which is what I wanted. The beauty of the dress is the real subject of the photograph
.

My mother called it my “kept-woman dress.” It was no such thing, and it pained me to hear her say it. In time I came to know full well that I’d received favor, undeserved and accepted unwisely. But there are always misunderstandings in families, always sacrifices worthy of making too, no matter how strained they may seem at the time
.

I’d seen the dress in Choate’s window as I walked bundled up against Minnesota’s blistering river winds. The dress spoke of spring and newness, something I longed for. I vowed to buy it. And so I did, saving twenty-five cents a week for six months before bringing it home one fine summer day. Of course, I’d asked the clerk to set it aside for me and put fifty cents down so they knew I was serious, that I’d keep my commitment
.

In this photograph, I posed myself at the edge of a bench made to look like marble. Its molding can’t be identified as something specific but suggests lush relief and gives interest to the eye, though not enough to take away from the true subject. Morning light radiates through the studio windows
.

I’d painted a board white and set it just beyond the arc of the exposure so that the morning rays reflected against it and poured soft beams back onto the dress, keeping the area to my right in shadow. It seemed fitting with so much of my life a chase of shadow and light. Behind me I used the scenic drop of dark woods reflecting against a full moon shining. My face seems almost backlit by that sphere, a feature I hadn’t anticipated. It fascinates me that I can set up a subject, think I have everything perfectly arranged, and then only afterward see things I had not noticed, little things, like spots of light that highlight the tips of my size-three black high-button boots or a moon giving unexpected brightness. It seems I turn reflective after the fact, surprised by what was always there that I failed to see
.

I had wanted the soft natural light to raise the detail of the eyelet dress and the overskirt and emphasize the hours of work that must have gone into making it, to shade gently on my shoulders and maybe, just maybe, to bring into focus
—
something one might notice after prolonged viewing
—
the rings I’m wearing, or the necklace
.

I leaned slightly forward, no easy task given the whalebone corset that fit as close to me as soap to skin. I clasped my hands at my knees. At the last minute, I also decided not to look at the camera but to gaze away, toward something I couldn’t quite name but knew I wanted
.
I did not smile. There are times to smile and times to cry and times to be serene. I see sadness in my eyes
.

Voe opened the shutter, exposed the film, then closed it, using my 3A Graflex. I developed the photograph myself
.

I never intended to show the image to him
.

But he saw it there among the other exposures of funeral flowers and family portraits made on New Year’s Day. A child had jiggled on her father’s lap, so that photograph was wasted, but I hated throwing the picture out because I did appreciate the family composition. The prints lay on the table outside the developing room, some of the edges beginning to curl because I’d wanted to save costs and didn’t use the more expensive paper
.

He wasn’t supposed to be there, recovering from his illnesses and everything else
.

His mustache twitched as his long fingers moved the photographs aside, then stalled at the one of me. He lifted it, adjusted his glasses, then lowered the print to catch my eyes. I couldn’t tell if his smile was wistful or contained a certain sense of pride…for his part in my having produced such a precious photograph or my part in being willing to have myself as the subject. I didn’t ask. Instead I pulled the picture from his fingers, careful not to touch him, and directed his attention elsewhere
.

I could do that and discovered nearly too late that I often had to
.