Could be, but this was also an
ongoing story in Oregon
newspapers almost a hundred
years ago, a series of shocking
events that took place right
here in my own home town of
Corvallis.
The story
is part of our town lore, a
scandal often referred to with a
certain amusement, a smirking
reference to the rumor of girls
running naked out on Kiger
Island. But what about the
mob violence? The
commitments for insanity?
The murders and suicides?
Surely, I've always thought, for
the people living through this,
it must have been heartbreaking.
Preparing
to shape the story into a novel,
I studied all the old newspaper
clippings, comparing them to
accounts of modern day cults.
The similarities were amazing,
not only in the group dynamics
of the cults themselves, but
especially in the shocked
disbelief and frustration of
those who watch helplessly as
their loved ones become
enmeshed. Then, as now,
the question is the same: what
power could make people fall so
completely under the spell of a
man who's obviously a fraud,
maybe even a madman?
This is
the mystery I've tried to
explore in BRIDES OF
EDEN. Since
it's the cult's victims that
interest me most, I've chosen to
relate the tragedy in the voice
of sixteen-year-old Eva Mae
Hurt, whose sweet, haunting
photo seemed to speak to me
across the years when I first
unearthed it from a museum
archive.
And this
is Eva's true story, as near
as I could reconstruct and
imagine it. While I wanted
to use fictional techniques to
bring the characters to life, it
was important to me that readers
know the events described
actually happened to real
people. Truth can be
stranger than fiction, and in
this case, it definitely
was!
The more I
uncovered in my research, the
more I felt I had been walking
among ghosts. Here in Corvallis,
I pass many settings of the
story every day. On the
rugged Pacific coast, where the
story takes a further strange
turn, I worked two college
summers at the Cape Perpetua
Visitor's Center, daily driving
the high and twisty road around
the cape, unaware that long ago
a group of desperate girls had
hiked that route barefoot and
starving, waiting for their
messiah, waiting for the world
to end.
For three years I've been
obsessed with the details of the
Creffield cult; now I look
forward to sharing the results BRIDES
OF EDEN: A TRUE STORY IMAGINED.
I hope readers will join me in
my fascination with the
incredible and compelling story.
Linda Crew
