Two women. Lives they didn't choose. A friendship that dares them to want more.
Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.
A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years burying the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.
A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship begins. But in a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.
For readers of Lisa Wingate, Fiona Davis, and Marie Benedict.
Two women. Lives they didn't choose. A friendship that dares them to want more.
Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.
A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years burying the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.
A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship begins. But in a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.
For readers of Lisa Wingate, Fiona Davis, and Marie Benedict.
Mary’s bare feet paced softly across the yellow pine of the living room floor as she cradled her daughter, Janie, in her arms. A week ago, she and her husband, Edward, had celebrated Janie’s first birthday. Paper streamers still clung to the painted walls. But now, Mary stared at her wristwatch and counted each of her daughter’s breaths.
“Sixty-nine. Seventy. Seventy-one.” The second hand completed its circle. Janie’s breathing rate shouldn’t be more than thirty-five.
Mary pulled her daughter close and kissed her forehead. Salt mixed with heat; Janie’s fever was getting worse.
Dawn streamed bright sunshine through the casement windows at the front of the house. Light spread across the living room floor, onto the floral sofa, the golden oak rocking chair Edward had made after Janie was born, and the standing lamp that had been on since midnight, when her daughter’s raspy cough had jolted Mary awake.
She sang softly. The same song her mother had sung to her when she was little. The one song that had always brought Mary peace. Finally, Janie’s breathing slowed.
Mary looked at her watch and counted once more. The minute seemed to last a lifetime. Fifty-nine breaths. It still wasn’t normal. It was never normal anymore. But fifty-nine was a lot better than seventy-one. The soft rattle of Janie’s lungs merged with the empty static from the radio speakers. At midnight, Mary had needed the noise to stay calm.
Janie’s head flopped to the side.
Slowly, Mary lowered her sleeping daughter into her white wicker bassinet. When she was pregnant, Mary had saved her pennies so she could buy it brand new. But Janie wasn’t supposed to fit in the bassinet anymore. She was supposed to be growing bigger and stronger. Mary slid an extra pillow underneath her daughter’s head to keep it elevated, like Dr. Brown had instructed.
In the early morning light, Mary pulled out her pink scrapbook from the shelf of the china cabinet. She’d hoped to fill the pages with family pictures and happy memories. Instead, the pages were covered in charts and tables detailing Janie’s breathing rates, the temperatures of her latest fevers, and any other observations Mary could think to document about her daughter’s many illnesses.
Cut-out articles from newspapers dotted the pages, advertisements for various medicines and elixirs claiming to eliminate the wheezing and coughing that overwhelmed Janie every time she had a drippy nose or a slight sniffle. Severe asthma. That was what Dr. Brown had diagnosed her with a few months earlier. At the time, it hadn’t seemed so scary. Mary had asthma too. It was the reason her mother had moved the family to Florida from the cold of Peoria, Illinois, after her father had died. But even Florida’s beautiful weather wasn’t enough to help Janie.
Mary wrote down her daughter’s latest numbers in today’s table: March 23; 6:23 a.m.; 71/min; 101.3°; harsh/wheeze; restless; refused milk.
The last four days. 43, 50, 55, 71. It was climbing faster.
In January, the last time Janie was sick, her breathing rate had only reached 62.
The sound from the radio changed, from fuzz to a melody. It was seven o’clock and programming was beginning. In a childhood dream of what her life should have been, Mary would have waltzed into the kitchen to make her husband his morning coffee. But with only two hours of sleep, she could barely trudge.
Mary plugged in the percolator, gleaming and silver. An extravagant gift from her mother, when Mary and Edward married four years earlier, back when the future was so full of possibilities.
Soon, the kitchen filled with the nutty aroma. Edward always woke when his coffee was ready.
She cleared her scrapbook off the dining room table, tucking it back into the china cabinet right as her daughter started coughing again. The cycle never seemed to let up for Janie. Sleep, cough, wake up, cry, and fall back asleep.It didn’t let up for Mary either. She picked up her daughter once more, patting her back and bouncing her up and down. Janie’s cheeks were red; her hoarse cry was barely a whisper.
Edward rolled up the sleeves of his cotton shirt as he came out of the bedroom, his thick dark hair slicked to the side. He wore his old overalls today, the ones that meant there was work to do. A dimpled grin spread across his tanned face but faded the moment his eyes met Mary’s. “How long has she been up?”
“Most of the night,” Mary said, determined not to let on how concerned she felt.
“Is her cough better?”
Mary paused. “I’m not sure.” It was worse. But she didn’t want to share those details with her husband. Janie’s sickness was something Mary was supposed to take care of. Edward had his own responsibilities. He provided for the family, kept a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Edward made his way to the large window facing east toward the emerging light. He moved the lace curtains aside. “Perfect weather today. You should get her outside.”
March in Miami was filled with ocean breezes and clear blue skies, one of the many things Mary loved about where they lived. “I’m planning on it,” she said. If only the solution to Janie’s fever was a simple stroll in the sun.
He kissed Mary’s head and breathed in deep. “It’s going to be a great day.” Which was the same thing he said every morning. His positivity contrasted well with her worry.
Janie’s tiny fists bunched. Her muscles tightened as another round of coughs began. Her breaths were coming faster again.
Mary patted her daughter’s back and bounced her faster, hoping to jar loose the mucus keeping Janie from getting some sleep.
Edward poured coffee into his ceramic mug. “She’ll be okay,” he said.
Mary hesitated. “I hope so.” But today’s numbers were too high. This was different; it wasn’t like January.
He fetched the newspaper from outside and sat down at the table. “Is breakfast ready?” He looked up at her and his face fell.
“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time.
He stood and took Janie from her. “You’re trying your best,” he said as he kissed her cheek.
But it never seemed to be good enough.
Mary opened the cabinet and pulled out the yellow box of Bisquick. Pancakes weren’t what a perfect wife should be making her husband for breakfast, but eggs and bacon were much too expensive, so pancakes were good enough.
While the pancake batter bubbled on the griddle, she whisked together water, sugar, and a teaspoon of molasses in a saucepan. The sweet liquid was a good imitation of the maple syrup they couldn’t afford.
Edward circled the living room with Janie, just like Mary had done all night. His handsome face creased with concern as he held their baby girl in his arms. Mary really should be more grateful; she needed to appreciate all she had.
Within minutes, Edward placed their now sleeping daughter back into her bassinet. He sat down at the table and leaned over the paper again.
As Mary set the plate down in front of him, he smiled. “Thank you, sweetheart, it smells delicious.”
She put two smaller pancakes on another plate and sat beside him. It was the time she looked forward to most, the calm before the busyness and uncertainty of the day.
“Lots of work planned for this morning?” she asked, glancing at his overalls. Some weeks there wouldn’t be much. Lately, there’d been days with none.
“Meeting a gentleman from Virginia,” he said. “Sounds like his fields have citrus canker.”
“Think you’ll use copper spray?” Before Janie was born, Mary had helped her husband deal with several of the diseases that impacted South Florida crops. Together, they’d documented the infections present, treated them with different chemicals, and meticulously recorded the spread of the diseases, the growth of the plants, and the health of the fruits to determine what worked best.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” he said. “Do you have our notebooks handy?”
Mary grabbed them from the china cabinet, directly under Janie’s scrapbook. Occasionally, she wished they could work together again. But it wasn’t her responsibility anymore. Now her job was taking care of their daughter.
“This should help,” he murmured as he leafed through the pages.
“I hope those Northerners keep coming down,” she said. Even before the Depression expanded across the country, the 1926 Hurricane had caused much of Miami’s agricultural business to go silent. They really needed more entrepreneurs willing to take risks again.
“Let’s pray they do—”
The ring of a bell interrupted his words. “Mary?” The sound of her name was a gravelly whisper, weak and frail.
Mary brushed crumbs from her mouth. She locked eyes with her husband. “Can you help?” She pushed back her chair to stand.
Edward jammed the remaining bits of his pancake into his mouth and did the same.
They made their way through the narrow hallway, opening the first door on the right, the bedroom where Mary’s mother now stayed. It was supposed to be Janie’s room. A week after Janie’s birth, Mary had selected the perfect pale pink to paint the walls. A wooden colonial-framed bed, matching dresser, and desk, which had all been hers as a child, took up most of the space. The top of the dresser was now adorned with wooden blocks, a teddy bear, and her old bisque doll, all for Janie to play with when she got older.
But Janie had never slept in that room. After an early delivery, Mary had refused to let her daughter out of her sight. When her mother had been diagnosed with heart failure, a few months earlier, they’d moved Mama in instead.
“I’m here,” Mary said as she reached the side of the bed.
She helped her mother out of the soaked nightgown and diaper. Mama closed her eyes and sighed as Mary cleaned her with a damp rag.
“I know you hate this,” Mary muttered as she changed her mother into fresh clothes. “But we’re doing the best we can.”
After massaging Mama’s stiff neck and shoulders, she rubbed lotion on her bloated legs and ankles.
Pulling a tape measure from the pocket of her apron, Mary measured the circumference of her mother’s ankles. Eleven inches. Not great, but it had been worse. She’d write that down in the pink scrapbook while Mama ate breakfast. The tables documenting her mother’s illnesses were on the back pages.
“Do you want to weigh her?” Even Edward was used to Mary’s charts and tables by now.
“Every day.” Numbers helped Mary stay calm when everything else threatened to overwhelm her.
Edward balanced Mama on the scale and moved the weights to the right. “One hundred and twenty,” he called out.
“Same as yesterday,” Mary said. For the last week, Mama hadn’t gained any weight. She wasn’t retaining more water.
Edward nodded. “That must be a good sign.” He helped Mama into her wooden wheelchair. Lately, her legs shook too much to walk.
Mary peeled off the wet sheets and took them, along with Mama’s cotton nightgown, into the screened porch behind the kitchen. She dumped them into the galvanized washtub there.
“How are you feeling today?” Mary rolled her mother to the dining room table. She undid Mama’s braid and gently brushed her long, graying hair.
“Tired,” Mama said quietly.
“Let me get your chicken.”
“Pancakes,” her mother said.
“They are delicious.” Edward licked the last bit of syrup from his fork and pushed his plate to the side.
Mary tried her best to suppress the irritation in her voice. Though with so little sleep, it was a challenge. “It’s too much sugar for her.” And he knew it.
“Sorry,” he mouthed.
“Pancakes,” her mother said again.
Mary placed Mama’s hands in hers and knelt beside her. “Dr. Brown said chicken is better.” Edward worked hard to afford the chicken meat her mother ate with every meal; it would be nice if she could be grateful.
When Mama didn’t respond, Mary turned and went back into the kitchen. She took a thin slice of chicken from the icebox and plopped it in the pan with a bit of butter and salt. She chopped up a small zucchini as it started sizzling. “Almost done,” she called out as she flipped it over and arranged the zucchini slices on a plate.
After dragging over a chair, she sat next to her mother with the plate in her hand. “This is good for you.” She sectioned it into small pieces.
Her mother shook her head.
“Just a little.” Mary guided the bite into Mama’s mouth. “It’s the only way to get stronger.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Please.”
Finally, a small bite of chicken, some zucchini, a little more chicken.
Her mother chewed slowly and glared at Mary, who had to look away. Mama used to be so independent. For fifteen years, she had been a cashier at the grocery store, standing all day without complaining. But then she started getting fatigued. She ignored it for a while, until her vision began to blur. When she saw Dr. Brown, he recognized the signs of diabetes, but that wasn’t the only problem. There were also indications of kidney failure and heart failure. As the diagnoses kept coming, she seemed to have given up.
After Mama had taken ten forced bites, Janie started coughing again.
When Mary picked up her daughter, Janie’s face was flushed; her skin burning hot.
Edward stood, then hesitated, his hand resting on the back of the chair. He looked at Janie, then at Mary. “I’m sorry. I can’t be late,” he said, folding up his newspaper. He checked his watch. “If she gets worse—”
“I know,” Mary said. But with the money he’d earn today, they could afford Janie’s visit to Dr. Brown, maybe also some eggs for Mama.
He kissed Mary’s cheek, then grabbed his cap and headed to the door. For a moment, he looked back.
“It’s okay,” Mary said.
He took a deep breath, stepped outside, and pulled the door closed behind him.
Mary sat down in the rocking chair and tried to nurse her daughter. Janie grasped at Mary’s chest, pulled close, latched, and started to eat. But she ran out of breath and had to push away. Mary stroked the light blonde curls covering Janie’s head. “You really need to eat more, baby girl.”
“Get her to the doctor,” her mother said, so quietly Mary barely heard her words.
“I should be taking you.” And Mary knew she couldn’t afford to take them both.
“Now.”
Mary looked at Janie, still cradled in her arms. “I need to—”
“Now,” Mama said again.
“But your chicken.” And washing her mother’s bedsheets, cleaning the dishes, sweeping the porch.
“Right now.”
Mary hesitated. “Will you be okay alone?” If she was going to be out for a while, she usually called her brother, Robert, asking him or his wife to look after Mama.
Her mother’s deep-set brown eyes once again stared right through her. “Janie’s most important.”
Mary knew her mother was right. She turned up the volume of the radio. Top O’ the Morning Club was on. “It’s your favorite. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Mama grunted as Mary ran off to get ready, with Janie still in her arms.
In the bathroom mirror, Mary caught her reflection. Dark shadows hung under her hazel eyes. Fine lines creased her forehead, many more than a twenty-three-year-old should have. Her blonde hair was still bobby-pinned into flattened curls from the previous night. It had three months’ worth of roots.
When she’d met Edward five years earlier, her hair had been a platinum blond that she’d lightened herself with peroxide and bleach. But after Janie’s birth and her mother’s heart problems, Mary didn’t have time to take care of herself anymore.
With her free hand, Mary smeared lipstick across her mouth and dabbed a bit more on her cheeks. At least it helped a little.
For a moment, she closed her eyes and stood still.
Janie gave a weary cough.
Mary’s eyes opened. She tied a silk scarf over her hair, then lowered her daughter into her tan wicker baby carriage, propping a knitted blanket under Janie’s head to help her breathe and adjusting the carriage hood to shield Janie’s eyes from the sun.
“We’ll be back soon,” Mary said to her mother as she made her way toward the door.
As she stepped outside, Mary prayed that she wouldn’t see anyone she knew—especially not Stella. Not when she felt and looked like this.
But prayers didn’t work today.
Stella’s bright smile was already visible from where she stood in front of her home across the street. Four rooms, one story, just like Mary’s, and most of the other closely built homes on their quiet block. Like many of their neighbors, Edward had bought the home from Sears, Roebuck. All the wood, screws, windows, doors, and paint had arrived by railroad. With the help of friends, he’d built the home himself.
Mary lifted her hand and squinted into the sun. “I have lots of errands to run,” she called out.
“I’ll only be a minute.” Stella pushed a black wooden baby carriage as she made her way over. Her light blonde hair, without a root in sight, was styled in perfect finger waves. Her dress was new and unfaded. Even her skin smelled like flowers. “I wanted to see how Janie was doing today.”
Mary’s grip on the carriage handle tightened. “We’re just getting some fresh air.”
“I haven’t seen you since her birthday. Donnie really misses his friend.” Lowering the hood of her carriage, Stella touched her son, Donnie, on the nose. “I think he has a bit of a crush.” She laughed, because it was a joke. But it wasn’t funny today, at least not to Mary.
Sitting up in the carriage, Donnie looked wide-eyed, healthy, and strong. His cheeks were full and rosy. Four white teeth became visible in his smile as he waved a plump fist in the air.
Mary turned away. She didn’t want to be reminded of what a one-year-old was supposed to look like. “I have a lot to take care of,” she muttered.
“Are you going to the drug store?” Stella asked. “Because that’s where I’m going, and I thought we could—”
“Not right now.” Though Mary walked faster, Stella kept her pace.
“I’m worried about you,” Stella said gently. “You haven’t been looking—”
“I’m fine.” Mary’s own breaths began to catch and wheeze.
But Stella continued. “The girls and I talk all the time about how lonely it must be for you stuck inside that house so much.”
“I don’t have time for gossip,” Mary snapped.
Stella refused to take the hint. “How’s your mother?” she continued. “With that weak heart, I’m sure she—”
“Fine.”
“And Edward?”
“Working.”
Stella peered into Mary’s carriage as Janie started to cry. “She doesn’t look well, Mary. And her breathing…”
“I know.” Mary leaned over the carriage and put the back of her hand against her daughter’s hot cheeks once again.
Stella’s face softened. “Mary, I didn’t—”
“What?”
“It’s just…”
“Yes?”
“I’ll let you go.” Stella looked both ways and crossed to the other side of the street.
Finally. A wheeze caught in each of Mary’s breaths as she walked even faster. The carriage rattled over the rough sidewalk. Dr. Brown’s office was still a mile away. Her asthma had been acting up lately. But her own health was the least of her concerns. Right now, all that mattered was Janie.
The doctor’s office looked like a home, with wooden paneling around the perimeter and large windows on all sides.
Mary tried to relax as she entered. Janie had a cold. Babies get sick and then they get better. Everything would be fine.
The nurse rushed over from behind her desk and put her hand on Janie’s chest. “How long has she been breathing like that?”
Mary sank into a chair. “Yesterday… fifty-five breaths… a minute.” It was a struggle to get the words out. “This morning…seventy-one.”
Without saying anything more, the nurse turned and went down the hallway.
Soon, Dr. Brown appeared, following the nurse toward Mary. Worry covered his wrinkled face.
He didn’t waste time with his usual greetings. Instead, he picked up Janie from the carriage and took her down the hall, into a small exam room. He laid Janie on a black leather exam table, lifting her cotton nightshirt to put a stethoscope to her chest. The room was silent as he listened to Janie’s breaths. After a few seconds, he moved the stethoscope to a second spot. Then a third.
Mary willed him to say the comforting words she needed to hear. Willed him to tell her he had the perfect medicine to help Janie feel better. Willed him to say that Mary had been overreacting. Willed him to assure her that her baby was fine.
He cleared his throat.
“She’s okay?”
“We need to get this little girl to the hospital, immediately.”
Tonya Cam tells us her historical fiction novel, Learning to Breathe Again, is the first in a planned trilogy. I can’t wait for the next. Tonya has clearly researched thoroughly, but she has also injected a personal touch, inspired by her father’s memories and writing in his honor. It is a beautiful story that offers powerful insight into the way of life in Eastern USA in the Great Depression years.
Two very different women. Two very different backgrounds. Two very different personalities. Both were touched by tragedy; both are striving to learn to breathe again, though one only figuratively. I cried reading Learning to Breathe Again. I connected strongly with the beautiful Mary. But I also felt a connection to Elena. I understood her flaws and her struggles. I saw how hard she tried. It would have been easy to condemn her, but Tonya Cam portrays her as human, fallible, but inherently good and loving. She let us into Elena’s heart and soul to see beneath the good-time girl who seemed to put appearance and pleasure ahead of love and commitment.
Tonya Cam gives us a striking contrast. Mary is goodness itself. She is strong, capable, giving, and so devoted to her husband that she willingly sacrifices everything to enable him to follow his dream. Elena makes sacrifices too, but with reluctance and resentment. Her selfishness tries Mary’s seemingly endless patience. Both are living the lives society expects them to live, in an era when women were expected to just endure in silence. Will they continue in that role, or risk all for the women they truly desire to be?
In a postscript, Tonya Cam treats us to a glimpse of the history and medical science that shaped her story. She tells us she has always been fascinated with science and with the Great Depression: two vastly different topics she has masterfully blended to create a story everyone who has struggled to find their true identity, against a world of expectations, will relate to. Tonya explains her few uses of creative license, while offering detail that enriches our understanding of a challenging period of history about which many of us know only that our forebears survived it, and that many who did will say little of the hardships they endured.
Learning to Breathe Again is an evocative and heart-warming tale, beautifully told and rich in historical detail. Just a brilliant work from a brilliant writer. Don’t pass it by.