The Gallows Bird is a work of historical fiction.
How does this historical fiction fit into our adoption community?
In ancestral mathematics, tracing back six generations reveals sixty-four fourth-great-grandparents. Go back twelve generations – 400 years – and you’ll have over 4000 genetic ancestors. Large stretches of DNA are passed down from generation to generation, all of it contributing to our existence today.
I have always lived as if I had no ancestors. As if a family tree were something I would always be excluded from. As if I descended from no one and came from nowhere.
But what if a family tree is a living entity on multiple planes?
It was only after the manuscript went to the publisher that I discovered two main characters were my ancestors, even down to their occupations and first and last names.
The wild and brave Sarah (Birdie) Bird and the tailor Mr Finkelstein were my direct ancestors, one from my maternal and the other from my paternal family line.
What if we matter to our ancestors?
I do not know how this happens. But what if I did not conjure them from thin air?
What if, in their long patience, they conjured me?
Certainly, I was compelled to write this story in a way I could not explain. No matter how often I wanted to move on, I could not. I am a little (quite a lot) embarrassed to say it took almost 30 years. I would write a little, put it away and then my characters would visit me in the night, insisting I keep going.
What if they placed themselves in my mind like a flag so that I would find them and, in doing so, reclaim a small fragment of our shared DNA.
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