Brooklyn

 Brooklyn Bridge

There are  landscapes that stay with us, that work in our subconscious in mysterious ways. Most often, it’s our childhood landscape– the fields, streets, skies we knew growing up. Sometimes it is the landscape of our family stories–stories that we heard often enough to imagine ourselves part of. And then, there are literary landscapes. There are books that have made their landscape a part of me.A week ago I got to visit one of these landscapes, Brooklyn. Brooklyn was never my home, but it was my parents’. It was a different Brooklyn, a 1920’s and 30’s Brooklyn. I knew the stories of Prospect Park (still there) and Wallabout Market (gone). I read novels by Pete Hamill, and Betty Greene.

Brooklyn is also a more personal literary landscape. For the last nine months, I’ve walked the streets of 1919 Brooklyn with characters in my new novel, Trail of Crumbs. I felt the wind off the East River, knelt inside

Mauricio Lorence, (amazing tour guide), took us on a walking tour on a bitter Saturday afternoon. There’s nothing like walking down the same street as your characters, a street you’ve only walked in your imagination. One of the exciting things is that it all worked. Walk down Clinton Avenue and you’ll see the house where the imaginary Gossley family lived. Then imagine pigeon coops on the roof of Sacred Heart School. Listen, and you’ll hear the horse drawn carts trundling produce into Wallabout Market.