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08/17/2016 08:30 AMThere is a pivotal scene in Elizabeth Brundage’s All Things Cease to Appear where a man with a horrific past and an uncertain future passes through the familiar places of his youth, Connecticut towns and landmarks—Killingworth, Clinton, Westbrook’s Singing Bridge—before his final act of contrition, or control, depending on how you look at it.
In the novel, years earlier, George Clare had climbed the stairs of his sprawling old farmhouse to find his wife murdered with an ax and their three-year-old daughter home alone with her mother’s body. Set mostly in rural upstate New York with a cast of characters that readers come to love and loathe, All Things Cease to Appear is Elizabeth’s fourth (and arguably best) novel in 12 years, published in 2016 to wide critical acclaim.
“Brundage’s searing, intricate novel epitomizes the best of the literary thriller,” raves Publisher’s Weekly. Award-winning author Richard Bausch calls Brundage a brilliant novelist and her latest work “a dark, riveting, beautifully written book.”
After reading All Things Cease to Appear, horror master Stephen King tweeted, “Ghosts, murder, a terrifying psychotic who seems normal, and beautiful writing. Loved it.”
Elizabeth read from her newest book this summer to a packed room at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, which has proudly hosted such world-renowned writers as James Patterson, Anderson Cooper, and Anna Quindlen. For Elizabeth, however, the stop in Madison was as much a homecoming as a book-signing: As a child, a young woman, and now a mother, she has spent all her summers in Clinton, less than six miles down the road.
Born Storyteller
Elizabeth Brundage grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, and was spinning yarns from the start.
“I always wanted to write,” she recalls. “I was always making up stories.”
After finishing high school, she enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, known for a progressive curriculum with professors as mentors, and a heady, socially liberal atmosphere.
“Those were exciting years,” she says. “Hampshire is a terrific place for serious work, and there are a lot of very smart and creative innovators there. I was so lucky to work with teachers who really helped me to find my own particular voice. You turn up the volume at Hampshire; you begin to formulate your worldview and become less afraid to speak your mind. When I was there, there was always some global issue to be protesting.”
Like the author who created them, two major characters in All Things Cease to Appear are Hampshire alums.
After her sophomore year, Elizabeth spent her junior year in the film program at NYU.
“It was an incredible, life-changing experience,” she says. “The amazing training I received there enabled me to write a feature-length screenplay as a college senior, and it was that script that got me into the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, a terrific conservatory program. I worked in the film business for a couple years, then one day tried writing a short story, just as an experiment. I discovered that I loved writing fiction.”
That revelation led her to the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an intense, competitive program that she says gave her a deeper understanding of writing as a craft and an art and ultimately sealed her fate as a novelist. After graduating from Hampshire College, she earned her MFA and a James Michener fellowship from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing at a number of colleges and universities, including Trinity and Skidmore, where she was visiting writer-in-residence.
Elizabeth wrote her first novel out of Iowa.
“Unfortunately, it was never published,” she says, “but I don’t regret it for a minute. You have to teach yourself how to write a novel, and that can only be accomplished by actually doing it. Once you’ve done that, you then have to teach yourself how to write a good novel. That usually requires going back to page 1 over and over and over again. You have to write to find your own writing —your true and original voice.”
Clinton Connection
It was standing room only at R.J. Julia on July 7, when Elizabeth read from All Things Cease to Appear. After the last question was answered and the last title page signed, the author flipped up her glasses and invited the crowd who had assembled to join her at her family’s cottage in Clinton—“Really, I mean it”—where friends, neighbors, and admirers raised glasses, passed cake, made new acquaintances, and reminisced about their own youth on Clinton’s shores.
Some of the men and women gathered in the kitchen were meeting Elizabeth for the first time; others had known her all their lives. Her mother, Joan, took guests by the hand and showed them around, making introductions—these are Elizabeth’s children; these are her cousins. There were neighbors whose kids had grown and moved away and starred in commercials or produced books or music or developed software or raised families and had come home to make their parents proud.
Joan grew up on a tobacco farm in Ellington. When her family bought a cottage in Clinton’s Beach Park, they knew this was where they wanted to spend their summers.
“My grandparents bought our cottage in 1960,” says Elizabeth, “and I grew up on that beach. Those summers really informed the way I feel about family and community—the Beach Park community is an extended family.
“ For me as well as my kids, our cottage is the only home that has remained consistent throughout our lives, a place where I came to know my grandparents and where my children have come to know theirs. It’s a community where accomplishments, milestones, and sometimes sadness are acknowledged and considered, and where children grow into adults and later return with their own children, a cherished cycle that seems to embrace the most essential and meaningful elements of life.”
Elizabeth, who is married to a cardiac surgeon and has a son and two daughters (all young adults), has moved numerous times, coast to coast, and more recently, house to house in upstate New York. Those moves have provided much of the material for her books, from Somebody Else’s Daughter, set in the Berkshires, to A Stranger Like You, whose story shifts from Jersey to L.A. Her 2004 debut novel, The Doctor’s Wife (published by Viking, along with her second and third books), and her latest, All Things Cease to Appear (Knopf), are both set primarily upstate New York, in whose various suburbs and historic hamlets Elizabeth and her family have made their home.
Cold Case
The idea for All Things Cease to Appear started with one of those houses.
In the late ’90s, Elizabeth, her husband, and their two daughters, aged 3 and 6 at the time, pulled over to check out a white clapboard Cape with a “For Rent” sign hanging from a tree. The place was deserted, and around back was a Dutch door. Elizabeth tried the handle; it was locked.
“And then the strangest thing happened,” she says. “The bottom half of the door eased open all on its own. It felt like an invitation.”
The family crawled through the open door, and to the children’s delight, they explored the house that would become their new home.
Soon after they’d signed the lease and moved in, the girls began telling stories about three young sisters who had died in a fire.
“They knew details that seemed beyond their ability to fabricate,” she writes, “including the names of the ghosts, and historic details about an old mill down the road with tainted water. One night, my youngest was literally laughing at something that seemed to be moving around the room. She pointed at it, giggling. I couldn’t see it. But I could feel it. I just knew.”
Months later, pregnant with her son and in the midst of moving the family out, Elizabeth made a startling discovery in the dining room. There, in a built-in cupboard she’d never opened before, were three pairs of children’s shoes.
“Little brown leather boots,” she recalls, “probably stitched together in the early 1800s, that would perfectly fit those little girl ghosts, matching the ages that my daughters had described.”
A heavy influence on the book was Elizabeth’s interest in the Hudson River School painters as well as the unsolved 1982 slaying of 29-year-old Cathleen Krauseneck, whose three-year-old daughter was found in the family’s Brighton, New York, home with her mother’s corpse. An ax with a 2 ½-foot handle, wiped clean, was buried in the woman’s skull; her husband was questioned but never charged. He lawyered up and moved away. With old DNA evidence and new forensics technology, detectives now are taking a fresh look at the case.
Something about the unsolved murder of James Krauseneck’s wife gave rise to the story of George and Catherine Clare.
On the Hard Work of Writing
To say that writing a novel is a commitment is an understatement.
“I always do a lot of research on whatever subject I need to know about,” says Elizabeth. “Basically, writing is a discipline. It’s hard work. You have to go to your desk every day, and some days are better than others. You have to be into it for the long haul.”
When she’s working on a manuscript, she says, “I rarely leave my house. I spend a lot of time wandering around in my old yoga pants. I drink a lot of coffee, rarely sleep as a result, and usually have crumbs on my desk. Once, I actually had ants living in my keyboard.”
For All Things Cease to Appear, loosely based on the Krauseneck case, Elizabeth sifted through archived newspaper accounts of the murder and investigation. Times when she left the house, she pored over library volumes, sat in on lectures, and interviewed weavers, artists, and others who would help shape some of the characters in her book.
“But I have to say that I mostly rely on my instinct and intuition when I write. I’ve learned to be a very close observer of life—behavior, gesture, motivation—these are the truly important elements that go into creating believable characters. The research helps to build in authenticity, whereas my empathy and compassion help me to access the way characters think, see, and feel.”
All Things Cease to Appear is Elizabeth’s fourth novel in a dozen years, and her favorite.
Though her first work was published to glowing reviews, she says, “I’ve become a more polished writer in that time period, more controlled, and my interests as a writer have changed. I think this book shows my growth in terms of creating various characters whose difficult lives resonate with readers. I think this is the best book so far because, while it’s about a murder, it’s also about a lot of other things that people think about. I fell in love with these people, and I think that love shows in the work.”
One of the most beloved characters in the book is Cole Hale, the youngest son of a dairy farmer, for whose character she drew inspiration from her son.
Like his mother, he’ll be starting his own academic career as an NYU film student this fall.
“I think the world is tougher now than it was when I was in my early 20s,” says Elizabeth, whose time at Hampshire and NYU immediately led to opportunities in screenwriting and eventually publishing.
“The playing field is different. For example, when I got out of college, I signed up with an employment agency that sent me on interviews that eventually got me my first job. The atmosphere was gentler. Now you apply for jobs online, and you don’t necessarily deal with human beings. It’s a bit antiseptic. Back then, nobody did unpaid internships—you actually got paid for your time. It’s a shame that our kids have to spend so much money for an education that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a living wage. For a whole lot of reasons, these are difficult times. The world is ours to change, for better or worse.”
Elizabeth is at work on two new projects. Her books, including a limited number of signed copies of All Things Cease to Appear, are available at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, as well as other independent and major bookstores and online. For more information, visit www.elizabethbrundage.com.