About the Book

Hazy Memories: The Inspiration Behind Vinegar Hill - Reproduced courtesy of Harper Collins US

Vinegar Hill came about as a result of series of conversations I had with my mother about what it was like to balance the demands of Catholicism, motherhood, and individual freedoms in the 1970s, when I was very young. The plot evolved out of hazy memories of a very brief period of time in which my family lived in my grandparents’ house. It was there, at the age of five, that I became keenly aware that my mother and I were not considered family the way that my father and brother were—my mother because she was an Ansay by marriage, me because I’d lose the name (or so it was assumed) when I married. The fierceness of my grandmother’s affection for my father and brother, coupled with her chilly distance toward my mother and her absolute indifference to me, only served to underscore the irony of her own situation: she was not family, either. Her position as an Ansay was every bit as precarious as our own. And to make matters worse, my grandfather knew something about her: a secret. Whenever she raised her voice to him, he’d threaten to tell.

I never learned what this secret was, but there were several clues. When I was fourteen, my grandmother had pulled me into the bathroom by my wrist. There, speaking through tears, she told me that sex was for the sole purpose of bearing children, and that once I passed out of childbearing age, I was free to deny a husband anything more. My grandfather had persisted, but she’d known her rights. She’d gone to the priest—on her mother’s advice—and the priest had made my grandfather leave her alone.

And then there was this: she’d been past twenty-five, an old maid by the standards of the day, when she’d married. Her father had approached my grandfather, and the two had negotiated until my grandmother’s dowry was sweetened with the promise of good land. My grandfather told me the story several years after my grandmother had died.

“No one else would have her,” he said.

Vinegar Hill was published in 1994. It was simultaneously a meditation on my grandparents’ secret and a critique of the Catholicism which had bound them to each other for life. I had finished it when I was twenty-five, but I was twenty-eight by the time I’d found a publisher for it, and I’d just turned thirty when I finally held the first copy in my hand. After all that waiting, I’d expected to feel something like joy. Yet, what I experienced was cold, clichéd dread at the thought of what my Catholic relatives would have to say about it. In fact, as I soon discovered, I was looking in the wrong direction. My relatives’ reactions were enthusiastic and proud—though one of my aunts did express a mild concern for the state of my soul. The negative reactions I received came from an audience I hadn’t considered: the citizens of Port Washington, Wisconsin: population seven thousand. My hometown.

Port Washington is a blip on the best of maps, set on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan. At the top of the hill is St. Mary’s, an old Catholic church made of stone. Lodged in its steeple is a four-faced clock, one of the largest in the United States. Growing up, it seemed to me that no matter where I was, or who I was with, or what we happened to be doing, the eye of that clock was fixed upon me, unblinking as the eye of God. Who could resist such a landscape, so ripe for metaphor? I borrowed the hill, the church, the clock for the fictional town where Vinegar Hill is set. I also borrowed my grandparents’ house, which resembled many houses in Port Washington, furnished with the same hanging Jell-O molds, the same framed biblical portraits, the same avocado carpeting. I borrowed Lake Michigan—it is, after all, a big lake—and I borrowed a few other general details. The swimming pool downtown, for instance. A particular tourist-trap restaurant.

Not exactly the town’s crown jewels.

To be fair, I was expecting some flack about the church and its clock; I’d expected to be asked if it was St. Mary’s. Yes, I’d planned to say. You figured it out, you’ve got me there.

That, I thought, would be the end of it.

What I wasn’t expecting were the people who would accuse me of setting the novel in their home. Who claimed to recognize my protagonist, Ellen, as their own mother, their own best friend, even their own self. Who showed up at the readings I gave in the Milwaukee area to chant the refrain of my childhood: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. In a bookstore, during a question-and-answer exchange, the mother of a childhood friend stood up with tears in her eyes.

“Nothing like this really happened to you!” she said.

“You’re right,” I agreed.

We stared at each other helplessly.

Fortunately, the vast majority of reactions were positive ones.

- Discussion Questions -

- Discover the inspiration behind Vinegar Hill -

- Visit Manette Ansay's Website -

- Read more about Blue Water -

- Buy the book -