Volume CXXXIII, Number 8 November 2, 2001 f

Author and poet Brox speaks
JAIMYE BARTAK
STAFF WRITER

On the evening of October 24th, a small crowd gathered in Searles to hear author and poet Jane Brox read selections from her latest book Five Thousand Days Like This One: An American Family History.

In an introduction, Professor Franklin Burroughs commented that while there are many personal and natural histories of New England, Brox's "effortlessly remarkable" language delivered stories with "precision, modesty, and accuracy", setting it apart from the many others that he has read.

Five Thousand Days Like This One is a collection of essays focusing on Brox's family farm and the local history of the Merrimac Valley in Massachusetts. "Influenza, 1918", the first selection that Brox delivered, recalled the oft-forgotten 1918 flu epidemic that ravaged the world near the conclusion of World War I: "It had started as a seemingly common thing", she read, "…something that would run its course in the comfort of camphor and bed rest."

The story then contrasted the quiet routine of countryside life with the swift and decisive manner that the influenza epidemic invaded. Brox's farmhouse was a fortunate oasis of wary health amid a "city" of quarantines and sickness, and her father was compelled to assume the chores of his ill aunts, uncles, and cousins. Though the epidemic began at the end of summer, Brox's words and steadily consistent voice illustrated a town so paralyzed and frozen with fear that all details seemed to have occurred amidst two feet of snow.

The epidemic finally subsided by the end of October, however, and the "predictable quiet" of the countryside returned. The ending of the story mentioned that the ensuing winter was so cold that the dam in Lawrence iced over and "had to be dynamited". "Influenza 1918" concluded with a recollection of father as he gazed out to the overgrown horizon from their farm, and how "once in a while out of nowhere he'd mention the lights of the tent hospital as if he could still see them, strange and clear."

Brox continued on from the ending of "Influenza 1918" with excerpts from "Storm", a story written shortly after her father's death in 1995. Recounting an early- winter blizzard that shut down the Merrimac Valley one December, it centered on her family's attempt to cope with the recent death of her father and the fate of the family farm. In her father's absence, Brox assumed the role of caretaker, ensuring that a fire stayed warm for her mother and aunt, that the necessary bills were paid, and all medications were administered. But it was this new role that made the death of her father so much more acute, and an instinctual longing for the past and the old established responsibilities of mother and daughter: "Sometimes I wish she wouldn't tolerate my care", she read, "I wish she could break out of the place death's aftermath has consigned to her."

The selections Brox chose to read illustrated her family's farm as a sort of fortress surrounded by the various events of time and history. But they also played a part in a larger theme to which she alluded before reading, that of her family's farmhouse as one of the last strongholds against the epidemic of developmental sprawl that has besieged our nation's landscape. Often, she said, she is implored by people in her community to ensure that her family's homestead is preserved against development. Here, she identified a large gulf between the town that looked at her farm as an idyllic landmark of the rural countryside and everything else that went on inside the house, including the decisive realities that her family faced in maintaining it.

Following the reading, questions arose from the audience about Brox's writing methods and sources of information. Brox responded that much of the information collected for "Influenza 1918" was obtained through oral recordings and medical records held by the town of Lawrence, as well as through her father's own memories. It was a task that served as a "constant revelation", she conceded, as the Great War often eclipsed recollections and records of the influenza epidemic.

This considered, Brox's reconstruction of detail and sensation in her story is quite noteworthy. A question also arose about the future of her family's farm, which is now under the care of an overseer who leases the house and land to grow vegetables. She replied that the answer was still unclear, and while she always hopes the farm will remain productive and within her family, change is inevitable. Brox's stories, while at once preserving a place and a family history in her words, also strongly illustrate this all-too-true fact of life.