Joan Jacobson has written for newspapers, magazines, and law firms. She is the author of the literary novel “Small Secrets: A Tale of Sex, Shame and Babies in Midcentury America” and the award-winning imaginative nonfiction book “Colorado Phantasmagorias: A Mashup of Biography, Fantasy, and Travel Guide.”
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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Joan Jacobson: I first heard the story of the polygamous wife beating her husband at the polls for Utah State Senate [in 1896] during a tour of the Salt Lake City Cemetery. My group of churchy Lutherans was playing tourist in Mormon country, gawking at Dr. Cannon’s grave. She and her husband and his five other wives were (still are) all lined up like matches in a matchbook. It was such a great story, it couldn’t be true. Our tour guide had to be jonesing for a tip. It had to be a legend. At a minimum, exaggerated.
An unrepentant fact checker, I went straight back to my hotel room and started investigating. It was true. Dozens of yellowed newspaper clippings from 1896, available online with a click, confirmed it. All of it. Truth really is stranger than fiction. And more sensational and salacious to boot.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Jacobson: I chose this excerpt because it’s a love story — and who doesn’t enjoy a love story? The book covers all the idiosyncrasies of the Victorian era in America, not just the Mormons and not just the election of the first female state senator. Still, the true story of the indomitable Dr. Mattie Hughes Cannon is its heart and her marriage and later electoral victory over her own husband is what makes it remarkable.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Jacobson: Back in the 1980s, during the heyday of Victorian nostalgia, when cupolaed bed & breakfasts were all the rage, I wrote for Victorian Homes magazine and guided tours in a 19-century log mansion outside Denver. Part of my schtick was relating that its original owner, Dr. Josepha Douglas, was a female physician. My tourists were surprised to learn about a female doc in Colorado 100 years earlier. And Dr. Jo wasn’t the only one. In 1899 an African American woman, Dr. Justina Ford, established her medical practice in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. She would practice for 50 years.
The story of Dr. Mattie Hughes in Utah lit a fire under that old kettle of Victorian trivia. An idea burbled to the surface. Maybe Dr. Mattie’s story isn’t a historical anomaly at all. Funny as it sounds, maybe her doctor-polygamous wife-politician tale is not a historical aberration. Maybe it’s an encapsulation of the entire Victorian world and all its weirdness.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Jacobson: The Victorian era is utterly fascinating, and researching this book gave me an excuse to take a deep dive into all of it. As a reader and writer, I had been looking for an opportunity to try my hand at injecting humor and snark into nonfiction, inspired by two of my favorite authors, Sarah Vowell and Mary Roach. Online reviews almost all mention how funny my book is, so I guess I succeeded pretty well.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Jacobson: This book all but wrote itself! I was so lucky. I started research just as the COVID quarantine locked us down, so I had loads of time to scour old newspapers online. Plus, for my research I needed access to scholarly journal articles on history.
And while normally I would have had to pay for journal access, during quarantine Jstor, the premier academic digital library, offered its entire collection for free. By the time Jstor started charging again, I had everything I needed.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing readers should take from this book?
Jacobson: That our assumptions about a conservative past are usually wrong. Our great-great-great-grandparents were a randy bunch. Pioneer Mormons were way more progressive than today’s are, especially regarding women’s rights. There were more women M.D.’s in 1890 than at any time up to 1970. And so on.
SunLit: You say our ancestors were “randy;” what do you mean?
Jacobson: We like to imagine our Victorian ancestors as buttoned-up and corseted prudes, but that’s only half the story. The 1800s were also when free love communes popped up all over the United States. The most famous and long-lived was the Oneida Community.
Because the Oneidans were often compared to the polygamous Mormons, I have a whole chapter on them. Now we just know Oneida as a stainless-steel flatware brand, but they were quite the lovers back in the day. There’s a famous quote (among historians anyway) where Oneida’s founder describes sex as a boat ride. It’s hilarious and it’s in my book. You have to read it.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Jacobson: I’m updating my second book, the Colorado Authors League award-winning “Colorado Phantasmagorias: A Mashup of Biography, Fantasy, and Travel Guide,” which is a collection of whimsical biographies of 15 Coloradans who left a legacy: Wade Blank and the ADA, John Walker and Red Rocks, Adolph Coors, etc. I’m adding a chapter on Earle Haas and Gertrude Tendrich who, in my opinion, are the Coloradans who probably left the biggest legacy of all.
Dr. Haas invented the modern tampon and sold his patent to fellow Denverite Gertrude Tendrich, who founded Tampax. It’s a tough research project, though, because not much has been written about the invention or the founding of the company. I can, however, tell you every car that Dr. Haas purchased and every vacation Mrs. Tendrich took. Those are the things that got reported back in the day.
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“Dr. Martha Cannon of Utah”
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SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Jacobson: Both are fun, but research tops both. I love learning new things.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Jacobson: In my junior year of high school my English teacher, Mrs. Otto, taught us how to find resources, organize, write, and footnote nonfiction. In hindsight, my thesis was baloney, but I did a heck of a good job making the argument for it. I actually used Mrs. Otto’s old-timey note card organizational method when researching and writing this book. It worked great.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Jacobson: John McPhee, Sarah Vowell, and Mary Roach. We’d all learn a bunch of interesting stuff and die laughing.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Jacobson: “A writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.” – Anne Lamott
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Jacobson: My mind’s a mess, or shall we say, eclectic. My shelf contains fine literature, trashy thrillers, history and politics, comic books, geography and anthropology, cozy mysteries, memoirs, you name it. Except bodice-rippers, I don’t have any of that.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Jacobson: Silence in the background; I need to hear the voices in my head.
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
Jacobson: Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Jacobson: I think I wrote my first story when I was 8 years old. My mother taught me how to write dialog within quotation marks because we hadn’t learned that yet in school. Nowadays a lot of writers skip the quotation marks. Drives me nuts.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Jacobson: That nobody will read it.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
Jacobson: That people read it!