Poor Ketta.

The character Ketta is inspired by sweet Molly, a real human who survived numerous traumas, beginning with the deaths of the siblings closest to her in childhood from now-preventable or curable illnesses.

Death records were handwritten lamentations cloaked in cold medical terminology. While it was not unusual for a Victorian family of any social stratum to lose a child to disease, the pain of a family being decimated again and again was less common. Grief was complicated by the social mores, the tacit belief that showing emotion was weakness, and the relentless, necessary, daily tasks which consumed the lives of surviving females.

Ketta’s ghosts, however, asserted themselves, and became integral to the story.

Combing through issues of the Wheeling Intelligencer from the 1970s and beyond, I discovered that the real Molly had written an endorsement of a Dr. Longdon whose ads promised cures for tuberculosis, cancer, and myriad chronic diseases. The easy availability and lack of regulation of opiates and cocaine-infused “medications,” made addiction an unspoken thread through the lives of many families of that age. Without giving away too much of Ketta’s story, the real Molly inspired Ketta’s efforts to survive deep losses.

Next: Dr. Longdon: If it walks like a duck…