The paragraphs below are the opening to my work in progress, currently titled Ramapo. The top paragraph was last edited in December 2023 before I started keeping copies of every edit, but I remember starting to work on this book in the spring. The bottom paragraph was last edited in March of 2025. I must have rewritten this opening 20 times. I’ve made a pact with myself not to change it unless an agent or publisher has an idea that’s better than mine.

Version 1 from 12/28/2023

Paterson, New Jersey

1874

The late afternoon sun was streaming in through the kitchen window in just such a way that it made Mama’s pretty green eyes glow like glass marbles. Four-year-old Lillian Coleman focused on Mama’s freckled face as she guided Lillian through the difficult process of carefully sucking on the cannabis cigarette while controlling the urge to cough, and counting to try to slow her breathing down. She’d had a hard time learning all this, and she absolutely hated the taste of the smoke, but she had to admit it did relax her and ease the attack. Now Mama stubbed out the cigarette in a small brown earthenware bowl, and gently encouraged Lillian to sip lukewarm black coffee from a pewter mug, saying, “I know you don’t like it, darling, but look, I’ve put a little sugar in it. Please try for Mama, won’t you? I promise you’ll feel better.” And Mama was right. Mama was always right.

Final version 3/27/2025

July 1889

Paterson, New Jersey

Lillian

Mama had eleventy-seven hundred freckles. Lillian knew this was a pretend number, but when she had to count her breaths through an asthma attack, it seemed less scary to pretend she was just counting Mama’s freckles – and Mama did have a lot of cute, light-brown freckles. Between long, slow, ragged breaths, she took a drop of “cannabis tincture” – some nasty-tasting medicine -- under her tongue. It calmed the coughing and wheezing and made the scariness float away. Now, Mama encouraged Lillian to sip black coffee from a wooden mug, saying, “I know you don’t like it, darling, but look, I’ve put a little sugar in it. Please try for Mama, won’t you? I promise you’ll feel better.” And Mama was right. Mama was always right.

I made these changes for a number of reasons.

1. After many drafts, I realized the manuscript was far too verbose and my word count too high. I’m in the process of going through it one last time with my imaginary XActo knife, cutting here and there to eliminate over 13,000 excess words. My target word count is 100,000, standard for the historical fiction genre.

2. The chapters from Lillian’s point of view originally used advanced grammar and vocabulary – my own voice, not hers. No matter how precocious she is, Lillian has to have the voice, simple grammar and limited vocabulary of a child.

3. While doctors did recommend cannabis cigarettes for asthma in the 1880s, I decided to make the medicine just a little more palatable for modern audiences, with Mama dispensing it in a tincture. This method would also have been easier for a child to use. I wanted to also make it clear that the cannabis was relaxing and calming, but not a bronchodilator. Nothing like that existed at the time.

4. Black coffee has always been a recommended treatment for asthma. I decided Lillian’s parents would have wooden mugs instead of pewter. I eliminated “lukewarm” for Reason #1.

5. I made Lillian a year older so she could be a little more articulate – a four-year-old’s thoughts and speech would be so babyish, I didn’t think I could convey them in a lifelike manner. I moved the story five years forward so that the historical events to come would be accurate.

6. On the suggestion of another writer, I added tags at the beginning of each chapter to show which character was speaking, but as I do this final edit, I’m not convinced they’re really helpful. I won’t delete them, however, until an agent or publisher advises it.

7. I took an editing course as I was working on this manuscript. It taught me the importance of simplicity and conciseness and provided me with valuable practice with mechanics like punctuation.

Gritting his teeth, George distributed four quarts of decent-but-not-excellent quality whiskey into eight quart jugs, then topped off each with water. He hated tasks like this because he considered himself an honest man, and this was just one of many dishonest things he was expected to do at the Falls General Store. “Them factory slobs won’t know the difference,” his employer, John Ney, had said many times. “Fuck it, they’ll just need twice as much whiskey to get drunk on, and it keeps ‘em coming back.”

George finished the distasteful task with the whiskey and moved on to checking mousetraps, every one of which had an unfortunate occupant. While George tried to keep the place as clean as possible, Ney did not consider cleaning an important task and often kept George occupied in foolish, sordid little tasks that did nothing to serve the customer. He finished emptying the mousetraps, and instead of putting out clean ones, he reused the old ones. “Mousetraps cost money, Coleman, and your job is to sell ‘em to the people, not to use ‘em here. The old ones are fine, just wipe ‘em off. Ye gods, this guy thinks I’m made of money,” Ney always said.

George had often fantasized about what it would be like to work in a quality establishment with an honest, clean, fair employer, none of which qualities Ney possessed. Being Ney’s sole employee, George worked long hours and lacked the freedom to search for a better job. That was one of the many reasons George detested Ney: when George had answered Ney’s newspaper advertisement for a general store manager, Ney had promised him a number of benefits, not least of which were decent hours and regular raises. None of that had materialized, and George was trapped, working fourteen-hour shifts for a dollar-ninety a day. His wife was raising their children, with limited input from him, in a squalid little apartment which she at least kept spotless, but everything around them screamed of the poverty that was rampant in Little Dublin.

Walking north on Jersey Street now in the gloom, George narrowly missed stepping in a puddle of God-knew-what that was soaking into the plank sidewalk, performing an ungainly hop-skip to avoid it at the last second. From one of the slightly wider alleys between the close-spaced houses, a cackling female voice called out, “Just like a cat, Sugar, you jump just like a cat!” From the corner of his eye, George spotted the emaciated prostitute, who cupped her breasts for him. He tucked his lunch sack under his arm, shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his head down between his shoulders, hurrying away before she could approach. “Aw, too bad, Sugar, I likes me a pretty one now and again,” the woman called after him, breaking into peals of harsh laughter.

**

Note: Reading this now, I notice a dangling modifier, but since my agent is already shopping the book around as is, I’m going to leave it and fix it once it’s safely in the hands of a reputable publisher.

Matilda was ready to scream with tension and had just pricked herself for the thirty-seventh time when Carlotta came out of the boys’ room, looking exhausted. Pushing a stray wisp of hair back from her face, she said, “As you can imagine, that wasn’t an easy bedtime.”

“No,” Matilda squeaked out past the lump in her throat, and a single tear forced its way out past her rigorously maintained control, ran down her nose and dropped in her lap, making a dark spot on her embroidery. Matilda had wanted to be mature and in control of herself with Carlotta, but suddenly all the tension of the evening boiled over, and she burst into tears as Lillian had earlier. She wanted to say how sorry she was, but she couldn’t get a single word out. Her handkerchief was useless against the onslaught. Carlotta saw and offered hers, and after all that had happened, that little gesture of kindness undid her. Heedless of her project in her lap, Matilda dropped her head into her hands and bent forward over her knees. Carlotta said nothing, just collapsed into her chair opposite.After what seemed a long while, the outburst spent itself, and Matilda wiped her face with what was left of Carlotta’s handkerchief. She looked up at Carlotta, took a ragged breath and wailed childishly, “You’re going to put me out, aren’t you?”

Carlotta gasped, looking truly shocked. It took her a long moment to close her mouth. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That I would put you out? Oh, Matilda, really, after all we’ve been through together, and all you’ve done for this family?” The still-thin hand that had flown to Carlotta’s chest dropped into her lap now. “Of course I’m thoroughly upset by what happened today, but I wouldn’t put Lillian or Martin out for their role in it, would I? Honestly!”

“Then…you’re not angry with me?”

Carlotta looked thoughtful. She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, I’m not angry with you. If anything, I’m angry with myself for putting so much responsibility on you. Sometimes I forget how young you are, and if marketing with four children is exhausting for me, how easy can it really be for you?”

“But I love marketing with the children!”

“Maybe so, but I think today proves that Martin requires more than one set of eyes. All it took was for him to sense a little fear in Lillian and he completely lost his mind. No, I think we should divide and conquer. I’ll go marketing with you, and I’ll take Olive and Harold, and you can take Lillian and Martin. That way we can get all the marketing done in half the time, and each of us only has to handle two children. Doesn’t that make sense? I wish I’d thought of it sooner!”

“Well, of course, it’s your decision…”

“I can tell you think I don’t trust you, and it isn’t that at all. I’ve trusted you all this time, and I still trust you, with each and every life on this property.” Carlotta rose, knelt before Matilda’s chair, and took Matilda’s still-wet face in her hands. “You have been a godsend to this family, and don’t think I’ve forgotten the debt of gratitude I owe you. However, I do think I’ve overburdened you, and there are a lot of things around here that go better when we do them together; so, from now on, we do the marketing together. To make it easier on all of us, all right?”

Matilda was completely overwrought after the emotional day. She truly had expected to be thrown out of the Coleman household for losing track of their children for even a minute. She was still not convinced the danger was past, as she had no idea what George would say or do when he heard the news. His continued absence felt ominous to her. Unable to speak, she made a squeak of assent and nodded her head shakily, tears continuing to leak down her puffy face.

“Oh, darling, you’re one of the family, don’t you know that?” Carlotta said, divining Matilda’s thoughts. “Why don’t you just wash up and go lie down for a while? I’m sure George will want to speak with you when he gets home, and by then maybe you can be in better command of your emotions.”