Under the Same Blue Sky (40 page)

Unlike your first two books,
Under the Same Blue Sky
has elements of magic realism, most noticeably in Hazel’s discovery of inexplicable healing powers during her time in Galway.

In some of my short stories I experimented with elements of the inexplicable in otherwise realistic settings. I won my first short story award with a tale of an American woman in Italy who can’t get her landlord to deal with bathroom mold. When the Blessed Virgin Mary seems to appear in the mold and apparently eases arthritic pains, our heroine’s bathroom becomes a public shrine. I thought there was far more to explore here. As the setting and themes of
Under the Same Blue Sky
began to coalesce, I was drawn to an intriguing “what if”: What if healing powers come unbidden? Will the consequences be wholly good? Probably not. Will there be costs to the healer? Probably. What if the parceling out of miracles in a small community is not seen as “fair”? What happens when the magic stops happening? Is there a kind of “magic healing” more subtle and yet more sustained? I wanted to find out.

On this subject, I want to clarify that I have no strong position on spiritual or spontaneous healing. I’m sure that many have experienced sudden relief of symptoms that confounds medical opinion. I’ve seen this happen around me. I can’t posit why medical miracles happen—or in other cases don’t happen. There’s so much we don’t know about how our bodies heal themselves—or fail us, or how the mind, pure grace, and other apparently nonmedical factors influence outcomes. It seems arrogant to claim that whatever we can’t explain
can’t
happen,
or that person A deserves to be miraculously healed while person B does not. These are complex issues of theology, psychology, philosophy, ethics, and medical science. A novel is something different. My concern was the impact of sudden and extraordinary powers on an ordinary person who did not ask for this power and is unprepared for its unfolding consequences. Beyond this question, in what other ways do seemingly magical, profound changes happen in our lives, relationships, and communities?
Under the Same Blue Sky
explores this question.

Gudrun’s Stollen

H
AZEL’S FIRST
C
HRISTMAS MEAL
after the armistice includes
Christstollen
, the traditional German Christmas bread. Hazel comments that the rich, slightly sweet, fruit-studded bread becomes for her the taste of peace.

You can make the taste of peace yourself. This recipe was generously provided by my dear friend and the best baker I know, Gudrun Gorla, from Bielefeld, in northern Germany. It’s just-right sweet, moist, and wonderfully satisfying. In southern Germany, stollen is typically made with yeast. This is a quicker version, using baking powder.

Gudrun uses the Dr. Oetker brand of vanilla sugar, found in many grocery stores. You can make your own, but consider the Dr. Oetker motto: “Ein heller Kopf nimmt stets Oetker” (Bright minds always use Oetker).

Directions
(For two loaves)

4 C flour

1 C sugar

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 pkg. Dr. Oetker’s vanilla sugar or 1½ tsp. homemade vanilla sugar (recipe below)

Pinch of salt

1 tsp. almond extract

1 tsp. lemon extract

1 tsp. rum extract

Pinch of ground cardamom

A trace of mace

2 eggs

½ C (1 stick) cold butter, cut in pieces

3 Tbsp. lard

1 C cottage cheese (drain before measuring)

½ C currants, rinsed and drained

1 C raisins, rinsed and drained

¾ to 1 C peeled, ground almonds and/or hazelnuts

⅓ C candied fruit, chopped

For brushing: 3 Tbsp. melted butter

For dusting: 3 Tbsp. powdered sugar

Sift together the flour and baking powder onto a board. Make an indentation in the mixture and put in sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, spices, extracts and eggs. Mix together with part of the flour, making a thick mash.

Add the butter pieces, lard, and drained cottage cheese. Then add, in order, currants, raisins, nuts, and candied fruit. Cover the nuts and fruit with flour. Next, working from the center, quickly knead together all ingredients to make a smooth dough. If it sticks to your board, add some flour. Cut the dough in two and form each half into a rounded rectangle. Put on baking trays lined with parchment paper.

Bake at 350°F for 50–60 minutes until lightly brown. Remove from oven. Brush the loaves with melted butter and dust with powdered sugar. When cooled, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let age for at least a week to blend the flavors. Well wrapped, stollen will keep and improve for 3 weeks.

To make vanilla sugar:
Split a vanilla bean and with a dull knife scrape out the beans. In a glass container, bury the pod and bean in 1 cup of granulated sugar, seal tightly, and let sit for one to two weeks.

Reading Group Guide

1. Hazel’s mother sees signs of an extraordinary future for her daughter. While Hazel’s healing powers in Galway are certainly extraordinary, in what other, quieter ways does her mother’s prediction come true?

2. Discuss the nuanced nature of Hazel’s sudden gift of healing. How might a similar gift impact your life or your community?

3. What roles does Ben Robinson play in Hazel’s journey?

4. Hazel’s choices are often driven by vivid dreams of the past and of the future. Can you compare this to your own experience?

5. Discuss how the events of the novel transform one or more of the central figures in Hazel’s life: Johannes and Katarina Renner, Tom or Georg.

6. How are the qualities of air—smoke, fog, blue sky—woven into the plot and themes of
Under the Same Blue Sky
?

7. Hazel, Tom, and Georg were in various ways “orphaned.” How does this fact help bring them together?

8. As Hazel discovers, her legacy from Margit Brandt is complex. What challenges and unexpected gifts comprise this legacy?

9. When Tom returns with what we would now diagnose as PTSD, what
experiences and personal qualities help Hazel accept this challenge?

10. Communities in this novel struggle with cultural and ethnic diversity. How has this struggle changed or not changed in the last century?

11. “We’re not the same,” Jim Burnett says after the war. How does the experience of World War I transform characters and communities in this novel?

Read on

Suggested Reading

H
ERE ARE SOME BOOKS
I
READ
, reread, or remembered keenly in writing
Under the Same Blue Sky.

Perla
, Carolina De Robertis

Benediction
, Kent Haruf

Miracles
, C. S. Lewis

No Great Mischief
, Alistair MacLeod

Transatlantic
, Colum McCann

In the Company of Men
, Hisham Matar

When the Emperor Was Divine
, Julie Otsuka

All Quiet on the Western Front
, Erich Maria Remarque

Jewelweed
, David Rhodes

Imagining Argentina
, Lawrence Thornton

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
,Mark Twain

Reunion
, Fred Uhlman

Have You Read? More by Pamela Schoenewaldt

WHEN WE WERE STRANGERS

Too poor and too plain to marry, and unwilling to burden what family she has left, twenty-year-old Irma Vitale sees no choice but to flee her Italian mountain village. Risking rough passage across the Atlantic and the dangers facing a single woman in an unfamiliar land, Irma boldly pursues a new life sewing dresses for gentlewomen.

Swept up in the crowded streets of nineteenth-century America, Irma finds workshop servitude and miserable wages, but also seeds of friendship in the raw immigrant quarters. Her journey leads to Chicago, where Irma blossoms under the guidance of an austere Alsatian dressmaker, producing masterworks more beautiful than she’d ever imagined. Then tragedy strikes and her tenuous peace is shattered. From the rubble, and in the face of human cruelty and kindness, suffering and hope, Irma prevails, discovering a talent she’d never imagined and an unlikely family, patched together by threads that unite us all.

SWIMMING IN THE MOON

Italy, 1904. Fourteen-year-old Lucia and her young mother Teresa are servants in a magnificent villa on the Bay of Naples, where Teresa soothes their unhappy mistress with song. But volatile tempers force them to flee, exchanging their warm, gilded cage for the cold winds off Lake Erie and Cleveland’s volatile garment workers’ community.

With the voice of a nightingale as soaring and varied as her moods, Teresa becomes a singer on the vaudeville circuit. Clever and hardworking, Lucia blossoms in school until her mother’s demons return, fracturing Lucia’s dreams.