Putting good memories into fiction

Palmer House loobby

In the fall of 2016, my four adult children and I went to Chicago. It was a pilgrimage for me—I wanted them to see where I grew up. We stayed at the Drake Hotel, epitome of luxury when I was a Chicago kid, we toured my Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood, they gawked at my childhood home (a sort of red-brick brownstone built in 1893—I had always stressed the modest means of my family, and I guess they thought I grew up in a shack), and we ate at fantastic restaurants, mostly on the near North Side. It was a trip that made memories I will treasure forever.

One highlight though, for me, was lunch and a tour of the famed Palmer House Hotel, now a Hilton property. I had researched the hotel for my “big” Chicago novel, The Gilded Cage, which is fiction loosely based on the life of Bertha Honoré (Cissy) Palmer, one of the first women to combine wealth with philanthropy. Cissy’s husband, entrepreneur and robber baron Potter Palmer, built the hotel as a wedding present for his bride in 1871. Within weeks, the city of Chicago burned, taking with it the hotel. Potter Palmer rebuilt, and for a few years the Palmers and their two sons lived on the top floor.

In the 1920, the original structure was rebuilt into a 25-floor hotel. For well over a century, the Palmer House has provided luxurious splendor in its public areas, oversized private rooms, and sumptuous meals. It has hosted the rich and famous – Mark Twain spoke at a reception for General Ulysses S. Grant (related by marriage to the Palmers) and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland were among the entertainers who performed in the Grand Ballroom.

museum

The Palmer House is the only hotel I know of with a museum and an on-staff historian who gives daily tours. Historian Ken Price presides over a tiny, glass-walled museum tucked away in the mezzanine and overflowing with memorabilia—menus, hotel bills, signed celebrity photos, newspaper clippings, portraits, books, even ashtrays and a teapot. On his daily tour of the hotel’s public spaces, Price takes visitors to the Grand Ballroom, the Red Lacquer Room, and, of course, the lobby where he is quick to point out the Tiffany chandeliers. Afterward, there is an informal discussion in the museum.

I loved every minute of it, and this week I’ve been able to weave that experience into my work-in-progress, a culinary mystery set in Chicago. The Palmer House fit into my plot as though I had planned it all along, and I’ve had fun mentally replaying that tour, sitting again in awe in the lobby, ogling like a teenager just off the farm.

Is it a stretch to put the hotel in the mystery? I hope not, but you’ll have to tell me when Saving Irene is released, probably in September or October. Meantime I have memories to savor.

Red Lacquer Room