The Point of Vanishing, Maryka Biaggio [top inspirational books TXT] 📗

has written in his article, the area in which this skeleton was found had “great personal significance” to Barbara: She and Nick had camped in the area on several occasions. So, I have chosen to end this fictional account of Barbara’s life in accordance with my speculation and Daniel Mills’ research. Barbara likely died as she lived—shrouded in tragedy and enigma.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND RESOURCES

This novel is based on the lives of Barbara Newhall Follett and her parents, Helen and Wilson Follett. Although this is a work of fiction, I’ve tried to remain true to the events shaping Barbara’s life. Of course, the choice and rendering of content reflects my own intuitions about and interpretations of these peoples’ personalities and actions.

Barbara was a superb writer from a very young age, and I wanted to convey this in the novel. So I’ve sprinkled the narrative with words and short phrases from her works and letters. In instances in which passages from Barbara’s writings are quoted at any length, attribution is noted in the text, including the following:

Excerpts from The House without Windows (pp. 152-3) in the chapters “New Haven, March 1923” and “New Haven, August 1926.”

An excerpt from The Voyage of the Norman D (pp. 70-73) in the chapter “New Haven, April 1928.”

I would like to thank some of the many people who assisted and supported me on this project: Stefan Cooke, Barbara’s grandnephew, who keeps Barbara’s memory alive at his Farksolia.org website; Paul Collins, author of the 2011 Lapham’s Quarterly article that sparked my interest in Barbara; Allison Botelho, Reference Librarian, New Haven Free Public Library; Deborah and Cory Zita, my trusty research assistants; Carol Ivory, Danee Hazama, and Denise and Robert Koenig for information about matters Polynesian; Laurie Alberts and Diane Marshall for their inspiring guidance; early readers Mary and Del Fehrs; and Jean Shirkoff, a most excellent analyst of family dynamics. I’m grateful to Helen Follett for her foresight in donating correspondence, published and unpublished documents, and miscellaneous materials about Barbara’s life to Columbia University, thus ensuring the survival of these traces of Barbara’s life.

KEY RESOURCES

Astral Aviary. “The Barbara Newhall Follett Archive.” Retrieved June 12, 2012, from http://www.dreamshore.net/bluejay/barbara.html.

Collins, Paul. “Vanishing Act,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter, 2011.

Cooke, Stefan. “About Barbara Follett.” Farksolia: Barbara Newhall Follett’s Home on the Web. Retrieved February 6, 2012, from http://www.farksolia.org/about-barbara-follett/.

Dodd, Lee Wilson. “The House Without Windows.” The Saturday Review of Literature, February 27, 1927.

Follett, Barbara. “Barbados.” Helen Thomas Follett Papers, 1919-1969, Box 1. University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

Follett, Barbara. The House Without Windows. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.

Follett, Barbara. “In Defense of Butterflies,” The Horn Book Magazine, February, 1933.

Follett, Barbara. c. 1932-34. Lost Island, unpublished novel.

Follett, Barbara Newhall. Papers, 1919-1952, Boxes 1, 2, 5, 6 & 7. University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

Follett, Barbara. c. 1934. “Mothballs in the Moon,” unpublished story.

Follett, Barbara. c. 1932. “Travels Without a Donkey,” unpublished story.

Follett, Barbara. The Voyage of the Norman D. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.

Follett, Helen. “Education Via the Typewriter,” Parent’s Magazine, September, 1932.

Follett, Helen. c. 1934. “Kitchen Journal,” unpublished essay. Follett, Helen Thomas. Papers, 1919-1969, Box 7. University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

Follett, Helen. Magic Portholes. New York: Macmillan, 1932.

Follett, Helen Thomas. Papers, 1919-1969, Boxes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7. University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

Follett, Helen. Stars To Steer By. New York: Macmillan, 1934.

Follett, Helen. Third-Class Ticket to Heaven: A Black Forest Adventure. Chicago: John C. Winston Company, 1938.

Follett, Helen, & Follett, Wilson. “Contemporary Novelists: William Dean Howells,” The Atlantic Magazine, March, 1917.

Follett, Helen, & Follett, Wilson. Some Modern Novelists: Appreciations and Estimates. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918.

Follett, Wilson. The Modern Novel, A Study of the Purpose and the Meaning of Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

Follett, Wilson. “Schooling Without the School.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Volume CXXXIX, No. 833-89, 1919.

Follett, Wilson (as Anonymous). “To a Daughter, One Year Lost,” The Atlantic, May, 1941.

McCurdy, Harold G., in collaboration with Helen Follett. Barbara: The Unconscious Autobiography of a Child Genius. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.

Mills, Daniel. “A Place of Vanishing: Barbara Newhall Follett and the Woman in the Woods. Los Angeles Review of Books, April 5, 2019.

Moore, Anne Carroll. “Eepersip’s Escape,” New York Herald Tribune, March 27, 1927.

Moore, Anne Carroll. “When Children Become Authors,” New York Herald Tribune, March 27, 1927.

Parry, Roger. Au-delà du Mythe Tahitien. Pirae, Tahiti, French Polynesia: Au Vent Des Iles, 1932.

Stuart, Henry Longan. “A Mirror of the Child Mind,” The New York Times, February 6, 1927.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maryka Biaggio, Ph.D., is a psychology professor turned novelist who specializes in historical fiction based on real people. She enjoys the challenge of starting with actual historical figures and dramatizing their lives—figuring out what motivated them to behave as they did, studying how the cultural and historical context may have influenced them, and recreating some sense of their emotional world through dialogue and action. Daisy Goodwin has described her novel Parlor Games as “a wildly entertaining and constantly surprising ride.” Eden Waits was awarded an Upper Peninsula of Michigan Notable Books award and an Editor’s Choice selection by the Historical Novel Society. Her fiction has won Willamette Writers, Oregon Writers Colony, and La Belle Lettre awards. She’s an avid opera fan and enjoys gardening, art films, and, of course, great fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon, that edgy green gem of the Pacific Northwest. You can visit her web page and sign up for her newsletter at

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NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or