Swansea author Heidi Chiavaroli’s novel explores history of a leper colony off Cape Cod
Swansea author Heidi Chiavaroli’s 10th novel was 10 years in the making.
“Hope Beyond the Waves” is a story about the transformative power of unconditional love, and the ways in which love transcends time.
Set in 1993 and 1916, the novel begins with the struggles of Emily, whose parents send her to Cape Cod to hide her pregnancy. She’s to stay with her grandmother and finish her last couple months of high school, so that her father’s political aspirations won’t be affected.
Emily is facing the prospect of not only having to give birth without the comfort of her mother’s presence — the baby’s father won’t take responsibility — but her parents have also urged her to give her baby up for adoption.
When she feels as if her whole life is over, her grandmother tells her the story of her grandmother’s older sister, Atta, who had been outcast in 1916 herself, for a far graver reason:
Atta had leprosy.
More politely known as Hansen’s disease, the stigma surrounding it forced Atta to Penikese Island off the coast of Massachusetts, where all sufferers who lived in the state were sent for treatment.
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Atta is forced to give up her entire life in Taunton: her home, her little sister Gertie (who is not safe, with an alcoholic, abusive father at home), and her fiancé. She, too, believes that her life is over, and essentially it is, but in her darkest moments she finds hope, and a new love with the doctor who is determined to save her life, Harry Mayhew.
Penikese Island's history as a 'leper colony'
Penikese Island is part of the town of Gosnold off Cape Cod, and was, in fact, a “leper colony” until 1921. Chiavaroli became fascinated by the island’s history when she read a book about it 2010: I. Thomas Buckley’s “Island of Hope.” She had thought that leprosy was a thing of Biblical stories.
Chiavaroli says her new interest in Penikese sent her into “a research frenzy.”
“I read everything I could, not only about leprosy, but about the island and the patients. A story began brewing in my mind.”
She visited Harvard University’s Countway Library of Medicine as part of her research, and even took a trip to visit the island with her then-6-year-old son.
The first version of this novel was finished in 2012. But it wasn’t its time yet.
After her manuscript won an international contest for unpublished writers in 2014, Chiavaroli secured an agent and published her debut novel, “Freedom’s Ring.”
“When I turned 40 last year, I asked myself what book I would release if I could put out only one more novel in my lifetime. I wanted that novel to be my 10th published novel,” she said.
The answer was soon clear to her: the book she had written about Penikese Island.
When she began to rework the manuscript, Chiavaroli made a bridge between her historic and contemporary narratives by looking into another era of Penikese history: from 1973 to 2011, it was home to a school for “troubled boys.”
“I couldn’t help but notice how so much of the island’s history involved the casting off of the unwanted. I longed to shine light on the story of the outcast, and also to bring hope into some of the darker parts of our local Massachusetts history,” Chiavaroli told The Herald News.
Though her central protagonists are all fictional, Chiavaroli employs realism beyond her settings in the SouthCoast and Elizabeth Islands. The other patients that Atta befriends are all mostly real, and were in fact treated on Penikese. Some died there and were buried on the island, while those who were still there in 1921 were moved to a federal treatment facility in Louisiana.
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Incorporating real-life heroes
Two of Chiavaroli’s heroes were also very real: Dr. Frank Parker and his wife, Marion. They served the patients on Penikese until its closure, at risk to themselves. Not only to their health, but to their social standing. Their charity made them outcasts on the mainland.
“At that time, Dr. Parker could not find patients (no one wished to be treated by a man who’d doctored lepers for the last 14 years) and at the age of 66, was refused a pension,” Chiavaroli said.
Today, Penikese Island is a wildlife sanctuary — they also have weeklong STEAM camps for girls — offering students the opportunity to learn about their world with nature-based environmental programming.
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“Hope Beyond the Waves” is about people facing their toughest times, seemingly insurmountable odds, and how they all find hope, even during their darkest moments.
And this book isn’t all that readers can expect from Chiavaroli this year:
She’ll be once again sharing the story of her modern-day March family, with the fifth book in her "Orchard House" series expected this fall.
“I’ve always loved all things Louisa May Alcott and 'Little Women,' so this has been fun to write!”
Herald News/Taunton Daily Gazette copy editor and digital producer Kristina Fontes can be reached at kfontes@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette today.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Heidi Chiavaroli publishes 10th novel, Hope Beyond the Waves
