Chris Rice Cooper
Chris
Rice Cooper’s Analysis on the historical/fiction/suspense novel Finding the Raven
by
Poet Patty Dickson Pieczka
“My main
focus of writing has been poetry, but with Finding
the Raven, I've branched out into fiction using the skills I learned
studying poetic imagery. I was inspired by my grandparents' era, and most
particularly by my great uncle Charlie (uncle charlie above with Patty's grandfather John right in 1900), who was a hobo and wrote of his travels to the
St. Louis World's Fair and across the country to live with Native Americans. I
imagined what he might have seen in St. Louis and what he might have done,
though he didn't appear as a main character in the book. Researching the times
was fascinating, and at the SIU Library I found newspapers from April 1904. I
wondered what it would be like to have answered ads from the classifieds at
that time. So in my story I used actual excerpts from the old newspapers and
went in search of "what if."
--Patty Dickson Pieczka on the writing of Finding the Raven
Finding
the Raven,
published by White Stagg an imprint of Ravenswood Publishing http://ravenswoodpublishing.
com/bookpages/findingtheraven.html is
about many things – history, murder, suspense, domestic violence, love, but
more compellingly it is about authentic friendship between two women - poor Julia Dulac and wealthy Rose Hillman.
Julia
and her father are enjoying their last night working for William Piquette’s
traveling theater troupe in 1904 St. Louis.
For the first time Julia is in the audience watching her father give his
last performance, only to watch him being crushed to death by a metal weight on
stage. Photo left Starr husband and wife team in the Traveling Troupe production of Mahatman Mysteries in St. Louis.
After
his quick burial at Calvary Cemetery (right) Julia learns from her father’s attorney
that she is penniless due to her father’s so called debts. Everything must be sold – the house and all
of its contents - to go toward the so-called debt. Julia immediately goes back to their house to
pack what little she is able to take - clothes, candles, comb, brush, a few
books, her father’s four-leaf clover in wax paper, and the 4-inch ceramic pink
Buddha her father always said would bring good luck. With her last $10 she rents a room from Mrs.
McKinney’s boarding house . . .
Rose
Hillman is from a wealthy family but is not ashamed of the love she has for
poor bank-teller Eric Swenson. Despite
her parent’s disapproval she wants to marry him, especially when she discovers
she is pregnant with his child. Her father
is furious and kicks her out of the home and community of St. Paul, Minnesota
and onto a ship that is sailing for St. Louis where he accompanies his daughter
to Mrs. McKinney’s boarding house and leaves her there with only $60 and a
warning – he will return exactly one year from today and he will only take her
back if she’s married with someone of an equal or higher standing or if she is
single and childless. Above image is of the St. Louis World's Fair in Festival Hall 1904 public domain.
The
two young women become the best of friends sharing each others secrets, dreams
and fears. Rose answers a matrimonial ad
and Julie finds a job as a seamstress. Image right from an advertisement in The St. Louis Republic May 8, 1905. Public Domain.
Then
Julia’s boss makes a sexual advance that she resists. As a result she has no job and returns to her
room in the boarding house and in anger hurls the pink ceramic Buddha against the
wall. With regret she picks up the
shards and discovers a black crystal.
She takes the black crystal to a reputable and honest jeweler to have it
appraised and learns it is a very rare and highly valuable tourmaline black
crystal. The jeweler tells her it has a
rainbow of colors and is used by sorcerers and soothsayers. He recommends that she keep the black crystal
in a bank box in her own name.
That
very night Julia returns home and before she goes to bed she looks into the
black crystal and sees a black raven flying, its beak holding colorful ribbons.
Then
Julia learns from a fortune-teller that the black crystal is more than
tourmaline but a spirit called the Raven that knows all things – and slowly the
Raven reveals secrets and visions to Julia. . things that could lead to her own
happiness or her own demise.
*Raised in Evanston, Illinois as a writer's daughter, Patty
Dickson Pieczka found a strong appreciation of poetry. She graduated from the
Creative Writing Program at Southern Illinois University in 2006 and, while
there, spent two summers as an editorial intern at Crab Orchard Review.
She fell in love with the area and moved to Carbondale, where she and her
husband John own and manage a small rental business. They spend their free time
exploring the lakes, trails, and bluffs of southern Illinois, from which Patty
draws inspiration for her writing. She also enjoys music and played cello with
the SIU symphony for more than ten years.
Her first book, Lacing
Through Time, was published by Bellowing Ark Press in 2011, and her
chapbook Word Paintings
(Snark Publishing) was published in 2002. One of her poems was nominated for an
Illinois Arts Council Award, and she was the recipient of the 2010 Frances
Locke Memorial Poetry Award.
Her second book of poetry Painting the Egret’s Echo won the Library of
Poetry Book Award for 2012 from the Bitter Oleander Press, and she was the
featured poet in their Spring 2014 issue.
Her short play won first prize from the
Paradise Alley Players and she received first place in the fiction contest at
John A Logan College. Other awards
include the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in the Best Sonnet category, the ISPS
poetry contest for 2012.
Finding
the Raven,
published by White Stagg an imprint of Ravenswood Publishing http://ravenswoodpublishing.
The
two young women become the best of friends sharing each others secrets, dreams
and fears. Rose answers a matrimonial ad
and Julie finds a job as a seamstress. Image right from an advertisement in The St. Louis Republic May 8, 1905. Public Domain. 
She takes the black crystal to a reputable and honest jeweler to have it
appraised and learns it is a very rare and highly valuable tourmaline black
crystal. The jeweler tells her it has a
rainbow of colors and is used by sorcerers and soothsayers. He recommends that she keep the black crystal
in a bank box in her own name.
Her second book of poetry Painting the Egret’s Echo won the Library of
Poetry Book Award for 2012 from the Bitter Oleander Press, and she was the
featured poet in their Spring 2014 issue. 
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