The stories behind
Clare Bills’
House of Girls
The hundred-year-old connection between World War I and the House of Girls series—a well-worn trunk that has a place in both worlds.
This is the actual travel trunk my Great Aunt Clare Louise used in France during WWI to assist the Red Cross with translations. I'm her namesake, so having this trunk is a special connection. Inside, there's a pullout shelf and a deep space for clothes—think about traveling for three months with just what fits in here.
In my novel, Stay Out of That Room, the girls discover a similar trunk in Great Aunt Polly's secret room. Although the story is fiction, the narrative is based on real people like Polly and Clare, cousins who lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression. This trunk is my link to their shared pasts.
My parents lost me in a crowd at Loring Park in Minneapolis when I was very young. Luckily for me, there was an event happening with Clarabelle the clown who was on a stage with a microphone. The person who found me handed me to Clarabelle, who hoisted me up for the crowd to see and announced that I was looking for my parents. My embarrassed mother must have decided after that to dress us alike in public so she could spot us more easily. (In her defense, she had the first five of us in less than seven years.)
Here we are on the fourth of July in 1960 in front of the giant flag outside our Great Aunt Polly’s summer home on Lake Minnetonka. I’m the awkward child third from left. Two more little girls would be added to the fold in coming years.