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In an article entitled "Literary Grave Robbing in The Truth of All Things," Kieran Shields talks about the real-life mysterious events that stirred his creativity and served as inspiration for his debut novel.
"Literary Grave Robbing in The Truth of All Things"
by Kieran Shields
The past, once it slips beyond living memory, becomes a sort of graveyard. It's easy to see no more than a collection of names and dates, etched in stone, receding into obscurity. I've always relished the look and feel of graveyards: the solitude, the grim elegance, and a hint of something more. A glance across rows of headstones and the eyes land on a freestanding tomb. Then comes that morbid, gleeful little voice, a curious whispering faint among the rustling leaves: "What do you suppose is in there?"
It always seemed natural to wonder about those now silent lives. So many forgotten tales. In writing historical novels, I've come to feel that I've jumped the fence, so to speak, taking on the role of literary tomb raider. Less gruesome than actual grave robbing, sure, but the same idea. Sneaking across hallowed ground, rummaging about for earthly remains and lost treasures - even if here those amount to no more than bits and pieces of what made these vanished lives real. It's finding those bits and shining a long absent light on them that's such an enjoyable challenge for me as a writer.
That feeling, of standing crowbar in hand at the tomb door while the intrepid reader peers over one shoulder, lamp held high against the night, came to life for me in writing The Truth of All Things. In one scene, the detectives, Perceval Grey and Archie Lean, break into a tomb in the old Western Cemetery of Portland, Maine. They're looking for a murder victim's missing body. While the particular family tomb used in the book is entirely fictional, the setting is real and the idea for that chapter actually originated from a strange-but-true news story I recalled from years earlier.
A few doors down from the one in my novel is the real-life family tomb of Portland's celebrated poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wasn't buried there, but his parents and siblings were. In 1986, workers restoring the tomb's entrance discovered that the six bodies recorded as buried in the tomb were missing. Apparently, in the late 1800s, some wealthy Portland families transferred their relatives' remains from the older graveyards to newer, more picturesque cemeteries. It sounds odd to me, but probably a good idea judging by the amount of neglect and vandalism the Western Cemetery later endured. (It even served an inglorious stint as an off-leash dog park.)
Thorough records searches found no evidence that the Longfellows had ever been removed. No explanations, and none of their remains, were ever found. In all likelihood, it was the Longfellow family that long ago moved the bones. Still... what if it wasn't? The imagination begins to stir. There's that inviting voice again: "I wonder what's in the next tomb." What do you think, care to grab a lamp? I think I've got a crowbar in the trunk. Don't ask.
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