(All photos of Arpin courtesy of the Lester Public Library of Arpin.)

Where is Mill Creek?

Gittel is set in the fictional town of Mill Creek, Wisconsin, but the surrounding towns and many of the landmarks mentioned in the book are real places. Mill Creek is based on the town of Arpin, the site of the Jewish agricultural colony where my great grandfather Alvin Garber lived for five years.

To learn more about the Jewish colony in Arpin, check out the video below made by Jewish Museum Milwaukee.

Was Gittel a real person?

All of the townspeople and most of the events that take place in Mill Creek are fictional, but Gittel and some members of the Borenstein family are loosely based on members of my own family, including—and especially—my mother, Gloria, whose name was Gittel when she came to the United States from Romania at age two.

Fun fact: my grandmother changed my mom’s name to Gloria, after her favorite American movie star, Gloria Swanson.

My mother, Gloria (Bocaner) Schneider is thirteen in this photo, the same age as the title character in my novel.

Here she is in her twenties.

What about the rest of Gittel’s family?

Zayde was inspired by my great grandfather, Alvin (Itzig) Garber

Bubbe was inspired by my great grandmother, Fannie (Frima) Garber

Mama and Papa were inspired by my grandparents, Bory (Boris) and Jennie (Jenya) Bocaner

Alvin Garber, Russian Folk song, age 89 (1).mp4

Alvin Garber, immigrant story, excerpt (1).mp4

A voice from the past

In 1968 my then 19-year-old brother recorded a short oral history of Alvin Garber (1879-1972), our great grandfather. In the first clip from that interview my brother asks him to sing something and Alvin launches into an old Russian folk song! In the second Alvin talks about his early experiences in America. He was 33 when he came to the US from Ukraine and retained a thick accent. In the old country, Alvin served as a cantor in synagogues in Odessa and Kishinev. When he came to America his first job was at a box factory in New Jersey. In Wisconsin he was a peddler, a gunnysack salesman, and a dairy farmer, and eventually a cantor again. He served congregations in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and later, in San Diego, California, until his retirement. When he passed away he was buried in the beautiful tallit (prayer shawl) he’d been given by a member of the San Diego congregation.

(Pogrom photos—public domain.)

The Easter Pogrom

The Easter progrom in Kishinev was the first to have been documented by the media. Newspapers published eyewitness accounts and photographs of the injured and the dead, sparking outrage around the world. More than 59 Jewish women, men, and children lost their lives in the pogrom.

The Chautauqua movement

The big tent gatherings of the Chautaqua movement began in the early 1900s and flourished well into the 1920s. The multi-day gatherings included a wide range of musical and theatrical performances and lectures by well-known citizens of the day, including social reformer Jane Addams and Wisconsin Senator Fighting Bob La Follette as depicted in Gittel.

Promotional postcard for the Redpath-Vawter Chautauqua, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(Postcard—Collection of the author)

Six days of entertainment for $1.50!

Performers of the Redpath Chautauqua

Photos courtesy of the Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.

Chautauqua cast and crew traveled by train.

Chautauqua was for the whole family. Dancer Mabel Rilling, who was in charge of children’s activities for Redpath, was also director of women’s physical education at University of Denver from 1909 to 1964.

Who were Jane Addams and “Fighting Bob” La Follette?

Photos courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

When reformer and activist Jane Addams (1860-1935) saw recent immigrants living in crowded tenements with inadaquate food, sanitation, and education she set out to improve their lives by establishing Hull House in Chicago, the first settlement house in the United States. Hull House provided English and citizenship classes, kindergarten and day care, an art gallery, library, art and music instruction, and a gymnasium and playground. Addams also wrote and spoke all over the country and in Europe in favor of women’s suffrage and safer working and living conditions for working-class people. In 1931 she won the Nobel Peace Prize. For more on Jane Addams, visit the Nobel Prize website. (Jane Addams at her writing desk, 1912)

Robert La Follette (1855-1925) served as Governor of Wisconsin from 1901-1906 and then as US Senator from 1906-1925. He was known for his progressive values, fighting to regulate industry and root out corruption in both business and politics, and for his long and passionate speeches. He ran for president in 1924, losing to fellow Progressive Theodore Roosevelt. For a brief biography of Fighting Bob, visit the Constitutional Law Reporter. (Poster of La Follette by Underwood & Underwood, photographers, 1924)

A few of Gittel’s favorite things

This is the edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems Gittel might have owned, along with Edna Ferber’s Dawn O’Hara, a novel about a young journalist that Gittel longed to read. Born in Michigan, Jewish author Edna Ferber grew up in Wisconsin and, like Gittel, dreamed of becoming an actress and a writer. While Ferber didn’t become an actress, she did work as a journalist and later became a successful novelist. Several of her novels, including Show Boat and Giant, were made into popular movies featuring the biggest stars of the day.

Sheet music for “Shine on, Harvest Moon,” 1908

Magazines

Before radio and television, families got their news from townsfolk and travelers and, of course, newspapers and magazines. Here are a few that Gittel’s family enjoy in the story.

The front page of this April 1912 issue of the Jewish Daily Forward features coverage of the sinking of the Titanic. Jewish immigrants relied on the Forward, written in their native Yiddish, for news and for the popular advice column, “A Bintel Brief” (a bundle of letters) which Bubbe reads with relish in Gittel.

Ladies Home Journal, like this 1910 issue, would have been a great source of fashion and home decorating ideas for Mama, along with tips on needlework, cooking, and child-rearing, plus plenty of advertisements to feed Mama’s dream of an eau-de-nil gown and shoes with cuban heels.

The color swatch below is the shade of green known as eau de nil (water of the Nile) popular in the late 19th and early 20th century when people were fascinated with all-things Egypt. Clothes, wallpaper, dishes, jewelry, drapes—everything looked better in eau de nil.

Movie magazines, like the ones Gittel and her friends devour, were a relatively new phenomenon with the advent of the motion picture industry. Moviemaking in Hollywood was just getting started when Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart,” featured on this 1913 cover of Motion Picture Story, was the most popular actress of her day. Fun fact: movies in 1911 were called silent films because there was no soundtrack—no music and no dialogue, just the occasional subtitle. The Nickolodeon movie theater in Grand Rapids that Gittel talks about would probably have had live piano music to accompany their films. It wasn’t until the 1920s that moviegoers got to hear their favorite actors’ voices!

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