A Matter of Happenstance: Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick Visits the North Shore Library

Author Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick lives in Mequon.  You might remember her account of the terrorist account of 9/11 that was published on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  She says that when she is not writing or revising, she is often biking or “swatting golf balls into sand traps.”  But don’t worry – you don’t have to go dodging golf balls to see her.  She will be at the on  May 10 from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. to introduce her brand new book, A Matter of Happenstance (New Adult fiction).

A Matter of Happenstance is the tale of four generations of a merchant family from St. Louis.  It all starts in 1878 when George Reinhardt invests every penny and more in his idea for a new retail store.  He sold it by saying, “Think about shoppers choosing from dozens of silk parasols, hundreds of mother of pearl buttons, cabinets filled with twill corsets…We’ll offer clothing, housewares and toys at a higher quality and lower price, and in a more enjoyable atmosphere.”  On opening day 45,000 people visited his new idea.

But what is fun about this book is that it doesn’t just follow one family, but rather several families and not just at one moment, but throughout a century.  There is Paul LaChapelle, a Montreal canal-digger, who moved to Hannibal with his pregnant wife.  There is Leatham Smith who had a bank job waiting for him when he graduated from Washington University, but rejected the “monotonous desk job in a dreary office” for stabling horses out of town.  There was the Conrad family that left Ireland when their potato shop became blighted. 

Antonio Gibaldi was a Sicilian fisherman who set sail to America with a “$24 ticket for passage in steerage, $10 dollars in cash and the family grappa recipe.”  Gatty Bordelon, a scullery girl, had a hard start to her life in New Orleans with no place to go, no family to belong to.  And Esmie Hobbs was a store clerk who traveled north from Mississippi on a mule wagon. 

Different people from completely different walks of life and yet these family lines intersect.  The story culminates in an unexpected tragedy.  How could something so small have such a big effect?