In the middle of the twentieth century, in a home economics program at a prominent university, orphaned babies are used to teach mothering skills to young women. These "practice babies," are handed off from one mother-in-training to the next, usually staying in a "practice house" for a few years before being sent to adoptive families. For Henry House, the first practice baby to stay on at the university, finding love and learning to trust prove to be the work of a lifetime.
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This novel begins with a photograph, and my writing it began the same way. I was trolling the Web five years ago, looking for entries to add to Women's Letters, an anthology I was editing then. Somewhat by accident, I landed on a Website created by history students at Cornell University, and I saw for the first time a thumbnail photograph, just an icon, of an irresistible baby’s face. I clicked on it, not knowing exactly why, and met an orphan who had spent the first year of his life being cared for as a "practice baby" in a home economics course. A real baby. Handed off in turns from practice mother to practice mother.
Initially, the journalist in me wanted to know what had happened to that baby. The novelist in me asked the same question. There was a brief skirmish. But when I read that the babies raised this way were returned to their orphanages and adopted like any of the other infants, the novelist in me won out. Without access to more information, I had a feeling that fiction would be if not stranger than at least longer than truth.
Still, the time frame in which the novel would be set plunged me into my first attempt at writing historical fiction, and other facts ended up being important to Henry House’s story. A few examples of fun facts I found along the way:
All of these facts landed in my private file of "who knew?" and subsequently landed in the novel as well. But the central fact remained that the baby in the picture had started his life being cared for by multiple women, and I knew that no matter what else happened in the book, that weird fact would shape the heart of my character and, I will hope, the heart of the book. --Lisa Grunwald
(Photo © Jon LaPook)
Lisa Grunwald is the author of the novels Whatever Makes You Happy, New Year’s Eve, The Theory of Everything, and Summer. Along with her husband, journalist Stephen J. Adler, she edited the bestselling anthologies Women’s Letters and Letters of the Century. Grunwald is a former contributing editor to Life and a former features editor of Esquire. She and Adler live in New York City with their two children.
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Book Description Condition: Good. Lrg. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 2648407-6