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The great reward in reading historical fiction is that black and white events are brought back into full color. In straight historical texts, one reads of a tragedy that happened long ago and sees the facts, tallies the figures. But
the full scope of the event, "the intimacies disturbed, the individual lives
altered," does not register. On Memorial Day, 1889, the South Fork dam in the
Allegheny Mountains near Pittsburgh burst and claimed 2,209 lives in
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In her novel, Kathleen Cambor re-imagines the event,
the people involved, and the ways in which it forever altered their lives.
Cambor creates a great tapestry of characters, following the thread of each
of their personal tales until they together weave a whole that is the South
Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Her technique of jumping back and forth
between storylines that unfold over many years can sometimes be confusing,
but we become invested in the characters as we get to know them ---
especially as we are armed with the knowledge of the coming flood.
The South Fork dam created a lake for a private hunting and fishing club
whose members included Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie.
We become voyeurs into the private lives of these men, how they came to be
who they were, what their motivations were. Perhaps the novel's most poignant
tale is that of Andrew Mellon and his terminally ill fiancee, Laura. It is in
describing their fragile, doomed relationship that Cambor's poetic voice is
at its finest. When Laura asks Andrew to sing for her at her deathbed, he
complies; and we are told, "Of all the things he would miss about her he knew
he would miss this most 'her ability to surprise him. To call forth from him
capacities he never knew he had.'" Mellon's closest friend is the cold and
reserved Henry Frick, and by describing them in their youth, Cambor provides
insight into how these very different men could have remained lifelong friends.
But the stories told here are not only those of the famous club members.
Cambor goes into great detail describing the various people who lived in
Johnstown, the town ultimately destroyed by the flood. We learn of Dr.
Strayer, who fled from Chicago to Johnstown after losing his license to
practice medicine, and his daughter Julia, whose mettle is only truly tested
when she loses two of her own children to illness. Then there is the
librarian, Grace, with a hidden past and a hidden love. In subtle ways,
Cambor shows us how unique everyone is, how every life lost is an entire
world blacked out.
Central to the novel is Nora, a young girl when her family joins South Fork,
who grows into a young woman by the time of the dam break. It is Nora who
connects the town with the club, through her slow and secret relationship
with Daniel, the son of a Johnstown workingman and a political activist. When
the dam --- "an essentially needless structure built for the vanity of the
wealthy club members" --- breaks, Nora is forced to see herself through
Daniel's eyes as deserving of blame simply because she is a club member. Nora
is a fascinating character. As a young girl she is constantly defying her
status-conscious mother, and each summer at South Fork her passion for nature
and inquisitive mind grow stronger. One wishes that the stories of Nora and
other well-drawn characters could be expanded upon.
IN SUNLIGHT, IN A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN brings immediacy to the Johnstown flood by
vividly creating a host of characters as they might have experienced it.
Ultimately, one puts down the novel with a sense of how much of a historical
event is usually lost in the missing details.
--- Reviewed by Sara Leopold
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