I wanted the historical Fairhope to be a character in the
novel, an inescapable paradise setting--where real people struggled with
everyday problems, surrounded by the elders of the town, all of whom had moved
to Fairhope to live out their personal dreams to improve the world. I wanted
the novel to focus on those who were starting out in life, observed some of the
flaws in the utopian dream, and learned from the reality of Fairhope. A couple
would fall in love and ultimately let go of that particular magic as they left
Fairhope to establish their lives in the real world. People would talk
international affairs and politics while they took their families to bathe in
the nude in Mobile Bay and frolic in the local nudist colony for what was known
in the day as “air baths.” Children would climb in the trees, play marbles in
the streets, explore the gullies, and, most of all, enjoy their days in the
School of Organic Education.
I began the book in Hoboken, where my leading character was
born. I would take young Amelia through a privileged childhood with a nanny
from hell, a repressed woman with so many hangups that little Amelia’s only
refuge was in a game that involved torturing her teddy bear in order to save
him. A beloved aunt rescues Amelia and raises her with her own four children in
a happy, loving family in Philadelphia, where she is sent to a progressive
Quaker school and decides to become a schoolteacher herself.
In Philadephia she hears a talk by a radical education
reformer, the visionary Marietta Johnson, who inspires Amelia as much as she
did so many young schoolteacher of the day.
Amelia soon packs up for Fairhope, where she will encounter
the settlement’s avant garde. They are iconoclasts and idealists who believe
their utopia is showing the way for the rest of the world. She meets the stalwarts of the town, including not only Mrs. Johnson but also E.B. Gaston, librarian Marie Howland, and other notables who populate the town. The Fairhope of 1921
has also attracted a number of strays—the outsider fringe, some of whom are
amusing, some harboring menace. Amelia is, for the most part, enchanted. She has
an affair, works diligently at the new educational theory, until ultimately she
moves on and leaves Fairhope to start her own school.
It remains to be seen whether That Was Tomorrow will catch
on in Fairhope, or outside it, for that matter. Now available as an e-book
only, if my novel develops a buzz in Fairhope I’ll publish it in traditional
format and give book talks and signings, promoting it to the hilt. If you’re
curious to learn more, visit my website and download the book. As an ebook it's available on amazon, and a few reviews have already appeared there.
