Kate is born in 1928 to flamboyant parents, Parke and Ginger, who raise her in a small town in Iowa to be strong and willful. Together they weather the depression, the country at war, and challenges of poverty, depression, ego, addiction, and personal growth. The special relationship between Kate and her father is a focal point, as well as her difficult relationship with her mother and sister. Parke’s desire for wealth leads him on a quest to the jungles of Honduras, leaving Kate with a business opportunity to explore after his death. Kate’s intimate fraternal bond and personal growth guide this story eventually to Florida during its 1950s development boom. There Kate loses her husband to another man, must come to terms with her father’s death, and has her mother committed to an asylum. This is a story about the changing landscape of society in mid-Century America, and navigating that world as a woman. The narrative, filled with colorful characters, touches on racism, homosexuality, sibling rivalry, social classes, and transcending society’s expectations for women.
Kate is born in 1928 to flamboyant parents, Parke and Ginger, who raise her in a small town in Iowa to be strong and willful. Together they weather the depression, the country at war, and challenges of poverty, depression, ego, addiction, and personal growth. The special relationship between Kate and her father is a focal point, as well as her difficult relationship with her mother and sister. Parke’s desire for wealth leads him on a quest to the jungles of Honduras, leaving Kate with a business opportunity to explore after his death. Kate’s intimate fraternal bond and personal growth guide this story eventually to Florida during its 1950s development boom. There Kate loses her husband to another man, must come to terms with her father’s death, and has her mother committed to an asylum. This is a story about the changing landscape of society in mid-Century America, and navigating that world as a woman. The narrative, filled with colorful characters, touches on racism, homosexuality, sibling rivalry, social classes, and transcending society’s expectations for women.
January in Davenport, Iowa, can be brutal. When Ginger Lusk felt her first contraction, she tried to call her husband, Parke, but the lines were down. In 1928, blizzards brought traffic to a standstill. Road clearing equipment was almost nonexistent. So, Ginger tried to prepare herself to deliver this baby into the world without the safety and comfort of a hospital. She bathed, scrubbed the floor in front of the fireplace, and gathered towels and blankets, just in case. By the time Parke came home from the office, her water had broken and her pains were five minutes apart.
Parke had put chains on the car tires to get home and hoped he could make it to the hospital. Two blocks before they reached the entrance, the Model A Ford became hopelessly stuck in a snowdrift and he had to mostly carry his wife the rest of the way. She delivered one half hour later just as Parke fainted against the light switch. Chaos ensued, during which a nurse accidentally groped the doctor, instruments crashed to the floor, an ether bottle was broken, and the anesthesiologist fell over the prone father while reaching for the light switch. Exhaustion, as well as shock at witnessing the gore of childbirth, may well have been the reason for his fainting. After this amazing incident, St. Luke’s Hospital banned fathers from the delivery room for the next thirty-seven years.
It was their firstborn and Ginger had wanted everything to be dreamily perfect. She had made herself pale pink, blue, and beige gowns and bed jackets, with hair ribbons to match, to wear during the traditional ten-day stay in the hospital.
Those first few years of their marriage were like an idyllic dream; their days were filled with sweet naiveté, optimism, and blissful happiness. There was a small painting hanging on the living room wall, a sort of castle in billowing rosy clouds against a blue-black sky. The oak-framed watercolor was a wedding present from an avant-garde artist friend. It was clearly a phallic symbol. Ginger said it depicted love. Maybe, in the beginning of love and marriage, sex is all that really matters but then it slips into the background as more formidable aspects take over the business of life.
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During the period before the Great Depression, the H.C. Lusk & Sons food brokerage business in Davenport flourished. Parke’s father, “Handsome Harry,” as he was known when he was younger, made deals with the potato farmers in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois to buy their entire crops. In turn, he sold the potatoes to the grocers for an outrageous profit. The enterprise was successful and he became known in the Midwest trade as the “Potato King.”
Harry’s introversion began in 1929 when the stock market crashed and he lost his money and his confidence. He was no longer the self-important man of the photograph of the H.C. Lusk & Sons staff taken years earlier. The old black and white print showed Harry at the center of fifteen assorted relatives, including distant cousins, posing jauntily in their shirtsleeves and suspenders. The gold chain across his paunch depicted the spirit of a profitable era.
The young Harry had been brought up in Albany, Illinois, where his grandfather had settled because it was rumored that a large railroad center was slated to emerge there. Harry was born in 1858, one of eight children. His father, Charles, was a successful dry goods merchant who built a handsome big frame house for the family with an adjacent brick building. He also founded a bank in the town and though the railroad never materialized, the town flourished well enough as a Mississippi river boat landing and small provincial village.
In 1866, a fire broke out in Charles’ storage building down by the dock. A horseback rider, passing through town on his way West to dig for gold, spotted the smoke. By the time he arrived at the scene, flames were reaching for help. The rider whirled about looking for anyone to report the burning sight when someone yelled to him, “Get Lusk, his place—FIRE!” as he pointed up the hill to the house. The adventurer dug in his heels, racing toward the Lusk home. He was nearly to the front door when someone flung it open. The horse was flying with such momentum that he charged right through the entrance, clattering up the stairs to the second floor and back again, before finally halting with a screech in the front hall.
The storage building fire was too hot for a bucket brigade to make any difference regardless of it being at the dock. Fortunately, Charles had the resources to rebuild. It was, after all, only storage, not their beautiful home. Harry witnessed this through the eyes of an eight-year-old and he kept it with him. By the time he was married and settled in Davenport, the tale was told with ever-increasing drama to his three children to ensure its place in family lore.
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Parke was an old family name going back to Martha Washington’s side of the family. They said she was his great, great, great aunt. George was Martha’s second husband, so he was not exactly kin but, nonetheless, Parke believed he was of aristocratic breeding and, despite his sweet nature, could be a bit of a snob. Parke had the slim, tall, graceful physique that suited him for sports such as tennis, golf, and horsemanship. His gray-green eyes had the Irish droopy canthus lids, which gave him a sympathetic expression. His sable-colored hair tended to curl but he slicked it straight back with water, parting it in the middle, which was the fashion of the day.
At twelve years old, he began taking riding and golfing lessons at the country club, where he made many friends. The club was like a second home to the family who all spent much time there. Parke loved the horses and enjoyed getting to know their personality quirks. He rode them both in the ring and on the trails on a rotating basis to make sure they would remember him. He spent time with the groomsmen learning skills of animal husbandry and, sometimes, would simply hang out with the horses while he read a book.
In 1892, a Chicago industrialist built the Davenport residence now owned by the H.C. Lusk family. It had a black marble fireplace mantle and an eight-foot-tall beveled glass front door. Hand carved banisters on the sweeping front stairway led up to four bedrooms. The attic was for servant quarters. Harry bought the property in 1902 when Parke was seven years old. The house defined their family and shaped their opinion of themselves. Harry’s wife, Miranda, or Mimi for short, was the most gracious host, throwing elaborate parties. Parke’s mother also liked to shock people with her disregard for protocol by doing things like kicking off her buttonhook, high-heeled shoes and sitting on the couch with her feet curled up under her skirts no matter who was visiting.
Parke’s best friend was Billy Velie, the son of a prominent manufacturing family, who, among other things, had built the Velie automobile. The two boys would often roam the rambling hills of the Velie estate, located only a few miles north and across the river in Moline, half-heartedly hunting but mostly exploring. One day, when they were fifteen, as they shuffled single-file through a golden Indian summer woods with their guns carelessly slung over their shoulders, Parke, in the lead, tripped over a log, causing his gun to fire. The bullet shot through Billy’s heart. He died there, on a bed of colorful maple leaves with a ray of sunshine sifting through the branches to warm him against the autumn chill.
Despite this devastating event, Parke’s winning personality propelled him as he grew into a man. Parke never doubted he was the most charismatic person at any gathering. Everyone looked his way when he entered a room, laughing, confident, in his linen suit, which hung loosely on his lanky frame. He loved to be the center of attention, the life of the party. He sang bawdy little ditties at the piano or recited bits of poetry.
I want free life and I want fresh air;
and I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
the cracks of the whips like shots in a battle.
If he could bring tears to your eyes, he was delighted.
Lasca was dead!
I gouged out a grave a few feet deep,
and there in earth’s arms I laid her to sleep;
and the little gray hawk hangs aloft in the sky.
And the black snake glides and glitters and slides into a rift in a cottonwood tree;
and the buzzard sails on,
and comes and is gone.
He carefully calculated his intonations to evoke emotion.
When he was seventeen, he had a brilliant revelation, which made him want to be on stage forever. An audition for a part in the senior class play called for him to do a monologue and he was the first on stage. As he walked across to a chair set at the center, a spotlight came upon him so he could not see the audience. There he was, alone in a circle of light, becoming his character.
“My God!” he exclaimed later to a confidant. “It was as if that circle of light held me safely in its arms. I could be anybody. The audience was mine.”
Ever since then, any success in business or love felt diminished in comparison. There was a missing element; that need for inner fulfillment through adventure or creativity was always elusive and just beyond his grasp.
After high school, Harry sent Parke first to Cornell, where he studied pre-law, and then on to law school at Yale. His grades were far from perfect and Harry admonished him often for not taking life seriously. He greatly enjoyed beating his classmates at chess and golf, and flirting with girls in town. He graduated at the end of winter term 1918, and left for boot camp as the country joined the European allies. Because of his education and relative maturity compared to the eighteen-year-old recruits, the Army assigned him as Captain in a cavalry unit. He was stationed in France where his expert handling of horses won him the care of an enormous Friesian war horse, an unusual find in that place. In another time, this magnificent beast would have remained whole to propagate the breed but, instead, it had recently been castrated for use in the war effort. Those less suitable became sustenance for the troops. Parke bonded quickly with the horse and, though troops were discouraged from naming their steeds, Parke called his mount Ares, after the Greek god of war.
While on mission with a British squadron, a bullet hit Ares in an ambush. As the rest of the men rode after the assailants, Ares slowed and sunk to his knees. Parke was unable to extract his foot from the stirrup before Ares rolled on his side, breaking and pinning Parke’s leg. Unable to reach his rifle, which was also under the horse, there was no way to release Ares from his pain. Parke lay there for thirty minutes, speaking softly into Ares ear of bravery, strength, service, and honor. He told Ares that he would be free soon to soar with the gods on golden wings. When the men returned to rescue Parke and get him to safety, they shot the animal while Parke tried to hide his tears.
Leaving that amazing animal in that terrible war-torn place had a profound effect on him. At first glance, onlookers might think that Parke had the bird of Paradise by the tail but, deep down, he was a discontented man. Ghosts from the past haunted him.
Last night… Ah, yesternight,
betwixt her lips and mine,
there fell thy shadow.
Cynarae.
He muttered Dowson’s curious poem in his cups. Cynarae meant an ideal, a dream of perfection, always floating beyond the reaching fingertips. Parke yearned for recognition as a performer. Unwittingly, his own family had instilled this in him when he was a child. At family gatherings, everyone was encouraged to recite a poem, enact a story, play the piano, or sing. Ever since that moment in the spotlight, Parke longed for more meaning, understanding, and perhaps glorification, too. It was difficult to be complacent having known he could do more. Meanwhile, it was the pressures from his mother and father to conform to the banalities of their world—including the expectation to marry and settle down—that plagued him most.
When the war was over, Parke and three other wild young rakes piled into a topless touring car and took off for California, a trip highly punctuated with flat tires and stuck-in-the-mud stories. He worked in Hollywood briefly finding odd jobs, sometimes on movie sets as a background player where he met and mingled with some of the stars of the early 1920s.Whenever horses were in a scene, Parke gravitated there to lend a hand. His earnings were meager and his living quarters were embarrassing. His parents were not impressed and felt he was chasing an impractical acting dream. They needed his help in the family business and thought it was time for him to settle down. In 1923, he traveled by train back to his family in Davenport.
His sister Dorothy, who was nicknamed Dottie, was two years younger than Parke and had been married with children for seven years. Parke’s younger brother, Allen, had been too young to serve in the war. When Allen graduated from high school, Harry sent him to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to study business and economics. Allen was shorter than Parke and dark haired. He carried a more serious and somber disposition than his brother and Harry hoped he would become a great asset to the company. After four years at Wharton studying with the best and brightest professors, Allen became the financial manager of the family business at twenty-three years old. He was a steady talent in the office, helping to expand their product line into many different types of dry goods. Parke, with his good looks and charming personality, was well suited for sales. The company bought him a car and challenged him to expand their reach. For three years, he drove in ever-expanding circles on horrible roads to sell their wares to retailers in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.
Now at the age of thirty-one, this charming lover-man was struggling to keep body and soul together, occasionally slipping into a bottle to hide from the world. His sensitivity and creative nature kept him on the edge of being satisfied with his lot. His affluent parents paved the way for him to rejoin the country club under his own name when he returned to Davenport. That is where eligible girls sought him out for dinner dates and long horseback rides on the miles of trails beyond the stables. Sadly, he never could find the one who would hold his interest for any length of time.
Until he met Ginger. Five-foot-two, eyes-of-blue, Ginger, with chestnut-brown hair, Betty Grable legs, and a contagious laugh. The first time he saw her she was dancing to a dizzying, tinny recording of the old jazz standard, “Tiger Rag” atop a table, raising hell at a party. Ginger Morgan was a first-year student at Augustana College across the River in Rock Island, engaged to a young doctor, and she was about to lose her footing as the table toppled. Parke caught her as she fell, saving her from what might have been numerous contusions. It was love at first flight.
Well, that was the story Parke told while holding court at parties, much to the delight of his audiences. Real life is never quite that simple. Parke had a habit of testing his acting skills to see if he was convincing before telling the truth. This fanciful boy-meets-girl story was a complete fabrication told sheerly for entertainment purposes.
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Parke’s farthest account on his sales routes was in the tiny town of Hardenville, Missouri, on the Arkansas border. Richard Morgan and his wife, Myrtle, who everyone called Baba—a childhood nickname that endured time—owned the general store there. Parke found them entirely by accident when he lost his way on the backroads and heavy rain was starting to make passage through the mud impossible. Parke ducked into their store and Richard greeted him warmly. He advised that Parke should stay the night with them in the spare room at their house across the street. The Morgan’s were having problems with their supply chain and were eager to discuss an account with Lusk & Sons brokerage over dinner. While Parke cleaned himself up for dinner, he could smell the most delicious aromas of savory spiced roasting meat and potatoes coming from the kitchen. When he entered their dining room to take his place at the table, he discovered the Morgan’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Ginger. She was breathtaking in a simple, southern, country sort of way.
He managed to visit the Morgan’s once a month for six months, while many of his other clients only saw him quarterly. Parke told hilarious stories in front of the fire and Ginger and her parents always looked forward to his visits. When it was time to say goodbye, Ginger often feigned a continuing conversation as an excuse to walk him to his car, where she flirtatiously stood on the side rail to prevent him from getting into the driver’s seat. Afraid he might scare her off and ruin his chances, he waited until several visits before asking for a parting kiss. She blushed a deep scarlet and stared at the ground, gathering her nerve. She had become quite smitten with him and wanted this first kiss to be special and perfect. Finally, she lifted her chin just enough to see him through her eyelashes. He gently took her chin in his fingers and lifted her lips to his. They both knew it was true love.
On his next visit, as they sat around the dinner table, Baba told Parke that Ginger had cooked the meal, a sumptuous roast pork, watercress salad, and sweet potatoes. Ginger piped up and said, “Not only can I cook but I can sew, drive a car, and dance the Charleston.” She flashed Parke an enormous smile.
Baba said, “Now Gin, don’t go braggin’ about yourself.”
“I don’t mind,” said Parke. “Learning about all the talents of Ginger is my pleasure.” He matched her smile while they locked eyes for several moments.
Back at home, Parke spoke to his parents about his courtship of Ginger. His father was reticent. “Tell us about her, again, Parke,” Harry demanded. “Is she educated? Is she going to be able to navigate the social circles of the country club?”
“Oh, stop!” said his mother. “If you love each other that is all that matters.”
After a brief courtship, Parke asked Richard for his daughter’s hand and their blessing. That night, the two of them sat before the fire while Ginger dramatically tossed, one after another, all her love letters from past suitors into the flames. They then settled down to discuss the logistics of a wedding. Parke’s parents were Christian Scientists and would not be offended by a secular marriage. Parke himself was a confirmed agnostic and only wanted to make sure the Morgan’s Baptist beliefs were properly honored. The Morgan’s thought a marriage illegitimate without the blessing of a minister. They also could not afford to leave their store to come to Davenport for a wedding. Ginger just wanted to get married to the love of her life as quickly as possible.
The next afternoon, the local Baptist minister joined them in marriage in the Morgan’s living room. The bride wore a green crepe dress with a hole in the sleeve. The wedding band was a narrow silver token purchased in the next town over. Parke drove off with his bride after Ginger’s tearful goodbye to her parents. They took two days to get home to Davenport, stopping for ice cream, a view of a lake, or a chance to just sit together and talk about the future. They stayed at roadside motels and made passionate love until they were exhausted. Together, they found true happiness and belonging.
After arriving at the family home on Brady Street, Ginger thoroughly charmed Parke’s family. Mimi was disappointed at first to learn that the marriage was consummated without the benefit of a lavish wedding or their attendance but it was unlike her to hold a grudge. Harry secretly enjoyed Parke making a decision that saved him money. They sent a photo and announcement to the Quad-City Times, a local newspaper, and invited friends and family to a reception at the country club the following Saturday. Ginger was a bit shy about what people would think of her deep, Southern accent. But the country club set accepted her with open arms and congratulations on “catching” Captain Parke Lusk.
The newlyweds found an apartment on Brady Street only blocks from Harry and Mimi’s stately home. The apartment had a living room and kitchen-dining room on the first floor, with two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. Both the living room and master bedroom had large windows looking out onto the tree-lined street. Though the apartment was perfectly suitable for the young couple, Parke missed his parents’ sophisticated home and visited often. The big house made him feel safely embedded in the upper-class society and spoke to the image he wanted to portray. Comfortable rockers and porch swings on the wide, covered front porch were an ideal place to “be seen” by passersby.
Parke and Ginger did entertain at their apartment occasionally, inviting country club friends for drinks and dinner. In nice weather, the couples would sometimes walk to the public park rather than sit in the small backyard they shared with the family in the adjoining apartment. Both Parke and Ginger preferred socializing at the club where bartenders and waiters knew them by name and could deliver the perfect drinks to their table before they had barely sat down. It gave them a warm feeling of belonging. As Prohibition was still in force, the club could not sell alcohol, of course, but staff politely turned the other way as members discretely reached for their flasks to “fix” their cold beverage once delivered to the table. Alcohol was not difficult to come by and there was a vibrant underground industry to supply the need.
The country club was an extravagance that Parke considered basic livability. He loved golf, being part of the in-crowd, and especially the horses. He wanted that lifestyle for his family as well. Ginger was adept at making friends and she enjoyed the social life of the club, including playing cards, having drinks and dinner, and looking out over the well-maintained greens. Golf and horsemanship, however, were not her thing. Parke bought her numerous golf lessons but just one riding lesson scared the hell out of her. Both attempts ended with her feeling humiliated in Parke’s eyes.
“My lovely Ginger,” he assured her. “I will be your knight in shining armor and rescue you on horseback as needed. All you need to do is be your perfect self.”
With that, he would kiss her passionately on her red lips, making her swoon. Though she worried a bit that he might find formidable sporting women a distraction to their love, she tried hard not to show it. It was all clearly something very important to him, tied to his upbringing, and ingrained in his self-worth. She would support him in that. She hoped to impress him in other ways, such as with her Southern cooking filled with love, her quick wit and sense of humor, and her flare for adventure and fun. She prayed it would be enough.
For Parke, being part of the country club was about being accepting as a part of something bigger. It was a community built on shared appreciation of the finer things: membership by invitation only after voting by all the members. Admission meant you measured up to the higher standards of society. It spoke to Parke of his heritage, his right to belong, and his wish to receive honor.
Ginger had two deeply intertwined secrets. A baby boy had been born to Ginger when she was fifteen, resulting from a brief affair with a barnstormer who dazzled her with his daredevilry. Walter Gibbs was dashing in his helmet, goggles, and white scarf fluttering in the wind. He flew over her small hometown and, quite literally, swept her off her feet. This happened in Durant, Mississippi, where her parents supplied everyone in town with dry goods from their first store. Their entire social life revolved around the Baptist church. When Ginger’s stomach started to look as though she had swallowed a watermelon, her parents banished her in shame to a home for unwed mothers in Jacksonville. The child’s adoption to eligible parents would follow.
Sadly, the baby boy did not survive his first hours of life outside the womb. It was a difficult birth and the child began to bleed from his umbilical cord. He suffered with a mysterious hereditary bleeding disorder. Baba spoke of the “weakness” only in muted whispers and vague references. There were stories about the time Myrtle’s older brother, Tom, was stabbed and robbed by a desperate youth. And once there was an accident at the ammunition plant where he worked during the war. His grip slipped on a chisel driving it deep into the palm of his hand. His wife, mother, and sister took shifts at the hospital holding pressure bandages on the wound that would not stop bleeding. He led a sheltered life to avoid accidents. The affliction ran in the blood of the women of the family but only effected the boys.
After the death of Ginger’s child born out of wedlock, the church turned their back on the Morgan family, asserting that they were introducing evil into the congregation. Well, they only knew the half of it. What Ginger, the attending doctor, and his nurse knew was that the baby had been as Black as Walter. Even though the community would never know this choice piece of damning gossip, her parents could not repair their family’s reputation and they moved shortly thereafter to Hardenville, Missouri to begin again.
When Ginger first realized she was pregnant with Parke’s child two years into their marriage, she told him about all this. Well, most of it. She spared him the color of the child. Together, they suffered through the gestation, hoping for a girl. If they did have a boy, they prayed he would somehow escape the hemophilia curse. She deeply regretted her forbidden affair with Walter. Parke was clearly the love of her life and her destiny. Parke and Ginger would snuggle in front of the evening fire, as he whispered sweet wishes to their unborn child. The birth of a healthy baby girl was a great relief to them. For decades, Parke continued to embellish the self-deprecating scene in the delivery room to everyone’s delight.
Now, Parke and Ginger were entering the world of parenthood on their own after the leisurely recuperation in the hospital where Ginger enjoyed pampering with flowers, visitors, and many baby gifts, including a monogrammed silver cup and spoon from Mimi and Harry. It took Parke two trips in the Model A to get it all moved into their apartment. They named the new addition to the family Katherine, and shortened it to Kate within days.
Ginger started a baby book, lovingly kept in her first glow of motherhood. She wrote,
My darling baby girl smiled and even laughed today. She’s pretty when she smiles, which is seldom.
Another entry read,
Today, she took her first step at the age of nine months. Imagine that. So early. I think she’s very smart for her age.
Though Parke made a decent income, Ginger was accustomed to being thrifty. She also needed projects to keep her mind and hands busy. She made little dresses from Parke’s old shirts. The embroidery, tiny tucks, and smocking required hours at the ironing board. Parke worried when Kate did not eat. He would sit by her chair, trying to force spoons of mashed carrots and potatoes into her mouth, which came back out. Ginger did not worry.
“She’ll eat if she’s hungry. Leave her alone. She’s just being stubborn. You’re making her nervous,” Ginger told Parke, but he persisted.
Little Kate was somber and assertive, not merry or smiley. She had very little hair, only a thin fringe at the nape of her neck. As she grew into a toddler, she would just as soon sit quietly turning the pages of picture books, rather than endure cuddling. Her favorite book was one of haiku poetry with magnificently delicate illustrations: the moon, a pair of graceful cranes, people walking in wooden, high sandals, and broad straw hats like umbrellas. Ginger would watch her staring at the foreign pictures and wonder what she was thinking. Her favorite toy was a Black doll given to her by a woman named Millie who took care of her at times. Millie’s natural warmth and easy, relaxed affection were a soothing balm compared to Ginger’s high-strung vibrations and Parke’s over-indulgence.
Ginger referred to Millie as Katie’s “mammy,” a customary Southern term of the day for nanny. She pulled Kate and the precious doll in a red wagon the block-and-a-half to Vander Veer Park to play on the lawns and see the new, fluffy-yellow cygnets gliding in a shaded inlet of the lagoon. When she was one, some mysterious disease caused an angry rash and blinded her temporarily. Parke carried her around on a pillow so as not to irritate her inflamed skin.
“I haven’t seen anything like this,” the doctor told Parke. “There is so much we don’t know. Pray for her and keep her as comfortable as you can. I will check back in a few days.”
It took two weeks for her to recover. One of Parke’s friends had a Kodak and posed Ginger and Kate for a photo just before she got sick. Kate sat on the porch railing at Mimi’s house next to a large, potted primrose, with Ginger holding her from behind, wearing a cloche with a feather. Kate’s booted foot soles pointed straight at the camera. Because of this photo, they decided Kate had “primrose rash.”
Though the stock market crashed in 1929, its devastating effect had not quite made an impact on the Midwest. No one believed the economic indicators and the spirit of the Roaring Twenties prevailed. The new parents could afford some hired help, the club, socializing, and entertaining. They simply refused to listen. Oh, well, the elders were worried but not the young, married couples. They were still enjoying the exuberance of the Prohibition days, speakeasies, the age of flappers, jazz, the Charleston, bathtub gin, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and unconventional art. Before long, the impact did come.
By summer of 1930, prices were dropping and the brokerage business was suffering. Parke was becoming more worried every day at the news of growing unemployment, bank closures, and bread lines. The apartment in town was now too expensive for them.
Ginger said she wanted to move to the country “where we can live off the land, raise chickens, and have a garden.” She grew up in a rural setting and felt comfortable with the whole idea. Her mother, raised on a farm, still kept a Jersey cow, chickens, and a large garden even after her marriage to a dry goods merchant. Parke knew nothing about farm life and was uneasy but Ginger’s enthusiasm gave him confidence. She was wild about the idea so they took long drives in the country looking for a new home.
There was a little farmhouse and ten acres for sale in Pleasant Valley on a bluff above the Mississippi River. It even had a barn. They found the property occupied by an old German widow, Mrs. Zantow. All her life she had toiled, from Germany emigrating to America and on to ranching in North Dakota living in a “soddy” while wheat fields waved around her. Life in Iowa had been easier but then her husband died of typhoid. Now, she was tired. Her two grown sons left her alone in 1918 when Iowa Governor William L. Harding issued the Babel Proclamation forbidding people in the state from speaking any other language but English. Though her English was proficient, they had always spoken German at home and her accent was thick. The proclamation was an insult to their American patriotism. They begged their mother to give up on Iowa but she would not leave the place where she had buried her husband. The boys went to Kansas City to avoid the animosity.
Parke and Ginger, with little Kate in tow, made many negotiating trips to the farm. The widow would insist that they have some summer sausage or homemade bread and she gave them crocks of churned, salted butter and eggs to take home. All this farm-plenty helped to put visions of being a gentleman farmer into Parke’s head.
After some agonizing indecision and numerous persuasive arguments from Ginger, their declining income was the deciding factor. Finally, they made a deal to pay $30.00 a month toward the purchase of the small farm, which felt like heaven to Parke and Ginger. Parke found a little house in Bettendorf for Mrs. Zantow and on a golden, leaf-crunching day in September, they started a new life.
The four-room house had no running water or heat that first year. They carried water from an outside hand pump at the well and warmed the house with a smelly kerosene space heater and the kitchen wood stove. The move was undoubtedly the best thing they ever did.
Beneath a Barren Sky follows the life of Parke Lusk and later his daughter Kate. Documenting several decades of historical milestones, including the Great Depression and both World Wars, this story is rich in the fictional family's history. As Kate grows and reaches maturity, Parke tries to navigate business ownership and financing in a fluctuating economy. He travels further and further from home in search of financial stability for his family and tries to follow in his tycoon father's footsteps. While never achieving the same level of financial success as his father, Parke provides a loving and encouraging environment for his children that his father could not. Later, the story shifts to Kate's life, including her education, marriage, and the raising of her children. Her steely resolve in the face of life changes and struggles points to the strength instilled in her by her relationship with her father. As she experiences her own share of hardships, including marriage troubles and trying to keep the family business and indeed the family afloat, she faces these things gracefully with just the right amount of stern assertiveness needed to handle the situation.
The characters are immensely likable. The most lovable character is Ginger, Parke's wife and Kate's mother. Plucked from a small town at a relatively young age, Ginger tries to be the wife she believes Parke deserves. Her early attempts to fit into his family's high-society environment are endearing and wholly unnecessary. Parke is smitten with her and loves her completely. The plot, while following the seemingly mundane details of a normal American family, moves along nicely and provides a feel-good story. Despite several editorial and formatting errors, including a few accidental spoiler alerts, this book is a must-read for anyone looking for a few hours of wholesome escapism and a bit of nostalgia.