BookScapes #4: November 2023

Inside the Story

Georgie O’Keeffe and Maria Chabot at Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, ca. 1941-1942. Photographer: John Candelario. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives

We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then to become the storyteller.—Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

November 7 marked the big event of my book year: the release of Someone Always Nearby: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe and Maria Chabot. It had been in the works for well over a decade, and like every other writing project, has a backstory of its own. Let me tell you about it.

If you were asked to name a prominent woman painter of the twentieth century, Georgia O’Keeffe’s name would probably be at the top of your list. I enjoyed her art for many years and thought—since she was often prominently featured in magazines—that I knew something of her life in New Mexico. I read the biographies that came out before and after her death and visited her winter house in the village of Abiquiu (now a National Historic Landmark), and Ghost Ranch, where she spent summers from 1929 to 1949 and lived for the rest of her life. Bill and I had a vacation house on the other side of the mountains, so we were within easy driving distance.

O’Keeffe House, Abiquiu

It was in Abiquiu that I first heard about Maria Chabot, the young woman who managed her Ghost Ranch household during the war years and who had actually been responsible for the construction of the Abiquiu house, at a time (post-war) and place (the remote New Mexico desert) when that was a huge accomplishment—especially for a woman. I’d long had an idea for a series of novels about “hidden women,” women whose substantial achievements were carried out in someone else’s shadow. Maria was definitely hidden in O’Keeffe’s shadow.

But this was in the early days of the internet and Maria was a mystery: there was no biography, no sources, no paper trail. Perhaps because so little was known, there was plenty of gossip about the women’s relationship in Santa Fe, the nearest city. I was intrigued. Was Maria an employee? A friend? A lover? She’d been involved in a long and loving relationship with Santa Fe artist Dorothy Stewart. What was her role in the life of Georgia O’Keeffe?

I kept thinking about that question and over the next couple of decades, more information began to emerge. A massive collection of letters, unfortunately layered with editorial interventions and interpretations that may influence the reader’s understanding. Maria’s papers, expertly archived at the recently established O’Keeffe Museum. New and discerning work by scholars. Newspaper archives newly available on the internet. I had already written about Rose Wilder Lane (the woman behind Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books), Lorena Hickok (the woman who helped Eleanor Roosevelt find her own self-confidence), and Kay Summersby, who stood behind Dwight Eisenhower while he fought the war. It was time to explore the story of Maria Chabot and Georgia O’Keeffe.

In Someone Always Nearby, I’ve tried to bridge the space and time that separated Maria and Georgia as they dealt with urgent obligations of work and family, apart from each other and away from the vast mesas and silent mountains of the Northern New Mexico desert that both longed to call home. Theirs was an often-tumultuous relationship across a rollercoaster decade of world war and start-and-stop recovery, through which the two women supported, sustained, depended on, rejected, and reconciled with each other. It began with the creation of Georgia’s home at Ghost Ranch and continued with Maria’s rebuilding of the ruined, centuries-old adobe hacienda that the artist purchased in Abiquiu—a remarkable feat that made visible the dreams and desires of the woman who built it for the woman who would live in it for the rest of her life.

Maria, Brackinridge High School (San Antonio TX) yearbook, 1929

Biographical fiction—a currently popular subgenre—is tricky. Some writers indulge in heavy fictionalization, some treat it more like creative nonfiction. That’s the way I work. Someone is as true as I can make it to documented events, people, and places. Its scenes and storylines are crafted from real events described in letters, biographies, and unpublished archives. Much of its dialogue is based on the letters and on the women’s other writings. The landscapes are real, evoked in part by my own two decades of life in New Mexico. All this and much more is documented in the extensive Reader’s Guide that you can download, free, from the book’s website.

After Someone was in galleys, poet, playwright, and Substacker Sandra de Helen told me about a recent two-woman play by well-known playwright Carolyn Gage: Georgia and the Butch, an adaptation from that massive collection of letters. I read it immediately and was delighted to see that it was built on many of the same letters I had found relevant for the novel. And I absolutely agreed with Gage’s assessment of the women’s relationship. Maria might be recognized, she says, as an “archetypal lesbian butch who is rejected by a mother who cannot accommodate a gender-non-conforming daughter, and who finds herself compelled to seek out older women as romantic partners, mentors, and surrogate mother- figures.” And about Georgia: “If lesbian narratives were more culturally accessible, Georgia . . . might appear to reflect the archetypal ambivalence of the deeply closeted lesbian or bisexual who craves the attention and companionship of an ‘out’ lesbian, but who fears for her reputation, alternating between cultivating emotional intimacy and actively discouraging it.”

Someone Always Nearby is available in hardcover (check with your library), paperback, ebook, and audio (Audible and Libby). Be sure and download your free copy of the Guide. And for a compelling taste of the women’s voices, please do read Carolyn Gage’s adaptation. It’s masterful.

If you’ve read Someone and have a comment or a question, I’m here and happy to discuss. Fannie Couch will be with us on Wednesday for the last episode of “Fannie and the Back Fence Gang.” If you’re traveling, be safe. If we don’t connect before Thanksgiving, have a wonderful holiday weekend!