A Flickering Light

A Flickering Light

by Jane Kirkpatrick
A Flickering Light

A Flickering Light

by Jane Kirkpatrick

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Overview

Returning to her Midwest roots, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick draws a page from her grandmother's photo album to capture the interplay between shadow and light, temptation and faith that marks a woman's pursuit of her dreams.

She took exquisite photographs,
but her heart was the true image exposed.

Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele loves nothing more than capturing a gorgeous Minnesota landscape when the sunlight casts its most mesmerizing shadows. So when F.J. Bauer hires her in 1907 to assist in his studio and darkroom, her dreams for a career in photography appear to find root in reality.

With the infamous hazards of the explosive powder used for lighting and the toxic darkroom chemicals, photography is considered a man' s profession. Yet Jessie shows remarkable talent in both the artistry and business of running a studio. She proves less skillful, however, at managing her growing attraction to the very married Mr. Bauer.

This luminous coming-of-age tale deftly exposes the intricate shadows that play across every dream worth pursuing–and the irresistible light that beckons the dreamer on.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307459299
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/29/2009
Series: Portraits of the Heart , #1
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 585,190
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Jane Kirkpatrick is a best-selling, award-winning author whose previous historical novels include All Together in One Place and Christy Award finalist A Tendering in the Storm. An international keynote speaker, she has earned regional and national recognition for her stories based on the lives of actual people, including the prestigious Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Hall of Fame. Jane is a Wisconsin native who since 1974 has lived in Eastern Oregon, where she and her husband, Jerry, ranch 160 rugged acres.

Read an Excerpt

AGAINST THE MORNING DARKNESS, Jessie Ann Gaebele quietly litthe stubby candle. Its feeble light flickered at the mirror while she dressed. She pulled her stockings on, donned her chemise, debated about a corset, decided against it. She’d make too much noise getting it hooked. No one was likely to see her this morning anyway, and she’d be back before her mother even knew she’d left the house without it. She could move faster without a “Grecian Bend,” as ladies magazines called the posture forced by the stays and bustle. She guessed some thought it an attractive look for a girl in 1907, emphasizing a small waist and a rounded derrière. Jessie claimed both but had little time for either that morning, and timing mattered if she was to succeed. If Jessie didn’t catch the moment, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.


She spilled the dark linen skirt over her petticoat, letting it settle at her slender frame. She inhaled the lavender her sister Selma insisted be added when they made their own soap, something they did more often now since they’d moved to Winona, Minnesota. Selma was prone to sensuous scents; sensuous music too, her husky voice holding people hostage when she sang.


Jessie looked at her sleeping sisters. The candlelight cast shadows on the tousled hair of Selma, her younger sister, and on the nightcap that Lilly, her older sister, always wore. (“It will keep you from catching vapors in the night,” Lilly claimed). Jessie pulled on the white shirtwaist. Even in sleep they reflected who they were when awake: Selma, dreamy and romantic; Lilly, organized and right. Always right. Jessie slept somewhere between them, literally. In life she guessed she had a bit of both of those girls’ practices in her. Selma would approve of Jessie’s morning goal for its dreamy adventure; Lilly wouldn’t. But Jessie’d organized it as Lilly would, leaving little to chance. She’d walked the route, knew the obstacles. She anticipated what she’d find when she got there. If she could make it on time.


Luckily there were only five buttons down the back of her blouse, close to the high neck. She considered waking Selma to help her button them but decided against it. Selma would want the details and wake up Lilly, who would question her judgment. Jessie would not lie. Lilly would point out how ridiculous she was being, rising early and setting out for such foolishness when she had an important appointment in the day ahead. “That should be your emphasis,” Lilly would say. She spoke as though she were Jessie’s mother. Oh, she meant well; older sisters did. That’s what her mother told her. But still, Jessie was tired of having every person in the family older than she considered wiser and worldlier too.


So Jessie reached back and buttoned the blouse herself, then centered a beaded-buckle belt on her tiny fifteen-year-old waist. Hat or no hat? Going out in public without her hat would be too casual. Someone just might question what she was doing or, worse, remember and tell her mother. She could get by without the corset, but she’d best wear the hat.


She tossed a shawl around her shoulders, grabbed her shoes, then dropped one by mistake. She held her breath, hoping no one would wake. She blew out the candle and waited.

“Jessie?”
“Go back to sleep, Selma.”
“What are you up to?”
Jessie moved to her sister’s side of the bed and whispered,
“Don’t wake Lilly, all right? It’s a secret. Can you keep a secret?”Her sister nodded. “I’m going on an adventure.”
“Can I come too?”
“Not this time. But I’ll tell you all about it after you get home from school. Just don’t tell, please? If Mama asks, just say you don’t know. Because you don’t.”
“Is it about a beau?”
“You read too many of those stories in Woman’s Home Companion.
No boys. Nothing like that.”
“I better tell Mama.” She pushed the quilt back onto the empty space where Jessie had slept. “She won’t like you going off by yourself in the night.”
“No!” Jessie looked at Lilly to see if her loud whisper had awakened her.
“It’s nothing. I’ll be back before breakfast.”
“All right. But you’ll tell me everything?”
“Everything necessary,” Jessie said.


Her sister settled back under the quilt, and Jessie picked up her shoe. She’d nearly crippled her adventure before it even started! Shetiptoed past Roy’s room with special quietness, careful of the oak floor that creaked at a certain place near the head of the stairs. Roy had hearing like their mother’s. That woman could tell when any of them squabbled in the bedroom over a hair piece even when she was outside in the yard, hanging up clothes on the far side of the house while the wind blew! Sadness bordered Jessie’s thoughts of her little brother like a photographic frame. Jessie slipped past his room, past her parents’ door, out onto the porch with the swing, and sighed relief.


Outside, Jessie inhaled the morning. Late March and the promise of an early spring. Not long before flowers would poke their heads up through the crusty Minnesota ground. She heard a steamship whistle bawling its presence at Winona’s docks along the Mississippi. The shawl would be enough to ward off the cold once she started walking, and the promised sun would warm her up when she stood still.Within an hour, dawn would offer up its gift but would wait for only a few seconds for Jessie to receive it. After that, the shapes she wanted to capture would change, and soon the snow would be gone, the city would stop the burning, and she’d have to wait another year. She had little time to spare. She couldn’t be late today.


On the porch steps, she pulled on her high-button shoes, then grabbed the heavy leather bag from behind the porch latticework, where she’d placed it the night before. Her uncle August Schoepp had given her the bag and its precious cargo just last year, she supposed in memory of their time at the St. Louis World’s Fair. It was her treasure. She drew the strap over her shoulder, centered the weight on her right hip, then set off, holding the bag out to prevent the bruises it often left behind. The corset might have been a help to support her back against the bag, but it was too late to think of that now.


She set a fast pace on Broadway, liking the feel of the new concrete solidness pounding up through her slender legs. She crossed the street, kept walking. Pigeons flew from the rooftop of the Winona Hotel. Pancakes of dirty snow exposed themselves in the shaded window wells. The clank of railroad cars connecting and departing at the repair yards broke the morning calm. Against the gas streetlights, fingers of elm and maple branches rose before her. There’d be buds on them before long, and the maple sap would drip like dark honey down the trunks, making a rich contrast of brown on black.


She turned the corner, walked several more blocks, then at the lamplight flickering in the bicycle shop’s window, Jessie grinned. Mr. Steffes had remembered. He was not a founder of the city, but he’d been around to see many of its changes while running his cycle livery and dealership and doing repair work on the side.


A bicycle leaned against the framed wall. Maybe he meant for her to just take it. It would certainly save time. But he might have left it for someone else. She’d better go in and check.


Jessie stepped inside, the small bell above the door announcing her arrival. She scanned the room. “Mr. Steffes? I’m here. Is the bicycle outside the one you meant for me to take?” The silence felt heavy. The shop smelled of sawdust, the kind brushed onto the wooden floors to soak up grease and oil. It was awfully cluttered. And still. “Mr. Steffes?” Jessie swallowed. “Remember? I left you a nickel for the use of the bicycle this morning. I said I’d come early.”


She stumbled over a bucket filled with rags. Maybe she could earn the five cents back by offering to clean up this place. That thought made her cringe. Her mother would not be pleased to know she’d spent a nickel of her own hard-earned dollars from the book bindery on something frivolous like a bicycle rental, especially because she’d recently been released from the bindery. There was little money to spare with her father’s illness, which the doctors couldn’t name or fix. He had so much pain that they’d had to leave their Wisconsin dairy farm near Cream and move across the Mississippi into Winona, where the girls could find employment and they could be closer to the doctors. Her father eventually worked in the dray business and drove a team to make deliveries, but they all worried over him, her mother and brother and sisters, fearing he might have one of his episodes and suffer excruciating stomachaches that couldn’t be stopped without laudanum and rest.


Prickles of uncertainty clustered at her temples.This morning’s ride was important too, important for Jessie. If somehow her mother found out she’d spent the money, she’d just have to convince her that it was for a worthy cause—though how she’d do that she wasn’t sure. When she tried to explain this recent pull on her, this desire that came over her, the words came out as flat as a knife and not nearly as sharp.


She’d deal with that later. Jessie pushed her spectacles up on her nose, set her shoulders, and took a forward step, moving past the shadow ghosts of bicycles and what appeared to be one of those new ringer washers in need of repair. Her skirt caught on a bicycle seat. When she straightened, she saw a sliver of light, a thin string that marked the bottom of a back room door. Had it just come on?


“Mr. Steffes, I don’t mean to bother you, but it’s Jessie Gaebele and I was hoping I could just—”


She heard a groan, then what sounded like scuffling followed by a thump.


She readied herself for someone to come charging through the door.When that didn’t happen, she listened to her throbbing heart, swallowed, then pushed the door open to face this complication of her day.

Reading Group Guide

At prearranged times, the author makes herself available by speakerphone to answer questions and participate in book group gatherings. She’s done this from the Netherlands to Nebraska, from Florida to the Pacific Northwest. Arrangements can be made through her Web site at www.jkbooks.com. The use of this guide is not a prerequisite for such phone gatherings.

1. In the author’s own notes prior to writing this story, she described her attitude toward A Flickering Light this way: “This is a story about integrity, wholeness, the blend of soul and role in order to fulfill God’s promise in our lives.” Did she accomplish that goal? Why or why not?

2. What did Jessie Ann Gaebele think she wanted? What got in her way of achieving that? Or did she achieve her goal?
What role did her being a woman in a man’s profession play in the arc of her story?

3. What does Emily Dickinson’s poetic line “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” have to say about this novel? How do the lines “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind—” apply?

4. How did a sense of unworthiness affect Jessie’s decision making? What role did grief play? How did her sense of self affect the outcome of this story?

5. Who in this story deceived themselves the most: FJ? Mrs. Bauer? Jessie? What truths did they have to tell themselves in order to change the paths they were on? Did they? Why or why not?

6. Do you know gifted people who appear to sabotage or squander their talents? What kinds of actions by others can bring them back, or must one make such a journey alone?

7. Have you ever acted in ways that were contrary to your own self-interest? What might have motivated you? What lessons did you learn from that experience?

8. People engaged in clandestine activities often justify their thinking. A common thread of thought is, No one else is being injured by my actions. In this story, who was adversely affected? Is there anything these people could have done to change their own destinies?

9. How can we offer compassion to people we love who make poor choices, without preventing them from discovering their own truths? Has there been a time in your life when someone spoke the truth with less dazzle so you could see it?

10. What role did artistry play in the lives of these characters? For whom did a particular art form (such as music, textile creation, and photography) provide direction? How?

11. What do you think of the definitions of faith, hope, and love offered by Edward Everett Hale at the beginning of this novel? Did the characters portrayed act in ways that demonstrated those “three eternities”?

12. While most of the story was told in third person, through the eyes of Jessie, FJ, and Mrs. Bauer, what role did the first person accounts and photographs play in your experience of this story? Did their presence distract, or did you look forward to what the next photograph would reveal about Jessie’s life?

13. A Flickering Light is based on the story of the author’s own grandmother. Does that knowledge in any way shape your reading of the book differently than a novel that is formed of fully imagined characters? Were you aware of this prior to reading A Flickering Light? Does the timing of that awareness change your perspective on this story?

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