As she removed it from the box, Kristian noticed an inscription on its chrome back. He grabbed the watch from her to read it. Du bist mein Ein und Alles.
You are my everything. A tingling sensation prickled his eyes. While he had no distinct memories associated with that phrase, it felt strangely familiar.
“I used to tell you that every day, when you lived here.”
He brushed his cheek to erase a tear. Intuitively, he knew she wasn’t lying. “Where did Sylvia learn that?”
“I told her, when I was begging her to help me get you back.”
Kristian thought of Milo, whom he already missed. And the baby who’d be born without him there. He couldn’t fathom this heartache worsening with more time away from his children, and Hannah.
For over thirty years, Cora had been enduring this same intense longing for her child. For him.
He looked at her anew. She was biting her lip, visibly nervous. Her eyelids were fluttering; Kristian realized he’d inherited his long lashes from her.
For Sylvia, just like everything else he did on this island, maybe he should try to accept Cora.
But, he thought, squeezing the watch in his grasp, she killed my father. Right before my eyes.
Until he discovered a way to eradicate the pathogens from his system—and he would succeed in that endeavor—North Brother Island belonged to him.
Don’t miss the unforgettable sequel to The Vines.
Coming soon!
Author’s Note
Like far too many COVID-19 patients, I’ve spent dozens of nights hospitalized. While in the ICU on oxygen therapy, repeatedly, I feared that my lungs would fail me before daybreak. I know the terror of struggling for air. But not because of the virus; in my case, it was an acute form of leukemia that caused pooling of blood in my lungs. My feelings heightened by my past trauma, I have deep empathy for those who’ve experienced severe and/or chronic complications from COVID-19 and for those who’ve lost loved ones.
I hope and pray that through the tireless efforts of the health care heroes and essential workers, as well as the breathtaking medical innovations being achieved, we will soon emerge from this crisis. Then, we can collectively begin the healing process, which won’t be easy for many. Despite the passage of nearly a decade since my diagnosis, I still grapple with fear and anxiety.
The first symptom of my cancer was the death of our baby at twenty weeks gestation. For the over forty days I was inpatient, I lay awake each night, weeping over our loss and for our eighteen-month-old, whom I was forbidden to see because her germs could kill me. Frequently, I needed IV pain medication, which barely dented the emotional anguish. Daily, I received blood transfusions. Throughout, I experienced 105-degree fevers, dangerously high blood pressure, hemorrhaging of the eye, a full-body hive outbreak, migraines, vomiting, and severe bone pain. During this period, I spent a total of two hours with my toddler. Before I returned home, she’d stopped asking for me.
For the three years of treatment that followed my diagnosis, my writing focused on my cancer blog, highlighting the themes of disease, fear of death, isolation, loss of a child, infertility. But also survival, courage, healing, and hope. Through that therapeutic writing process, Cora—and her foil, Lily—were born. Before these two strong female characters, however, came the setting:
In 2014, during a descent to LaGuardia Airport, my husband elbowed me in the side and directed my attention to a spit of land in the East River. “You should write a book about that island.” Returning the elbow jab as I leaned across him, I gasped at the decaying buildings, visible in winter with the trees barren. Once we landed, I immediately consulted Google and was hooked.
So often people make that comment: “You should write a book about [x].” Typically, writers just smile and nod in response. But a novel set on such a fascinating, abandoned, forbidden place within plain sight of millions of New Yorkers was too tantalizing a concept to dismiss simply because I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Diving into research, I learned that North Brother’s past is rife with misery. The haunting online images of Riverside Hospital provided gut-wrenching context to the grisly historical essays.
I decided that a novel set there should incorporate Riverside’s 125+ year evolution, its actual inhabitants, and the details captured by online photographs and Christopher Payne’s stunning coffee table book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, for which I attended a standing-room-only book signing. After meticulously cataloguing every map, image, and historical detail available, including the report from research led by University of Pennsylvania preservationist Randall Mason, I took a deep breath and began structuring an epic tale that I believed I’d earned the right to tell.
To incorporate the island’s full modern history, I knew I’d have to get creative. At the time, I was still very raw and traumatized by my cancer ordeal and terrified that I was going to die. The notion of a character blessed with immortality and superior immunities appealed to me. Through telling Cora’s story, I could also tell North Brother’s.
While plotting the novel, I studied the photographs available online and in Payne’s book. Many details from these photos appear in The Vines, as a nod to all the North Brother enthusiasts out there. For example, Payne’s book includes an image of the exposed bathroom on the first floor of the staff house where Cora showers in the opening scene. Similarly, if you do a quick Internet Image search of the island, you’ll see the rusted examining table in the morgue.
Regarding the characters, Cora, the Gettlers, and Lily are all fictional. However, many of the secondary characters were real people who lived on the island. The most famous was Mary Mallon, whose permanent quarantine on North Brother Island hits too close to home for us all during this pandemic. To accurately incorporate Typhoid Mary’s history and personality, I extensively researched her, and in the process fell in
