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In this episode, I bring to a close my journey through Edna, His Wife by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Margaret Ayer Barnes, a novel that paints a hauntingly intimate portrait of a family navigating life in the shadow of the 1915 Eastland Disaster.

This final section steps past the catastrophe itself and into the tangled aftermath: the paperwork of loss, the quiet unraveling of marriages, and the daily rituals of mourning that linger long after the headlines fade.

Through Edna’s sorrow, Barnes reveals how loss reshapes who we are, transforms our connections, and changes the very tempo of our lives.

A mysterious letter from a figure in Edna’s past, with no return address, becomes a lifeline to her former self, a reminder that identity endures despite shifting circumstances. I also explore how memory, literature, and genealogy weave together, and why honoring history through careful research is so vital.

I recount the thrill of finding an autographed copy of Barnes’ novel and reflect on the deep responsibility storytellers and genealogists share to preserve history with honesty, compassion, and devotion.

Resources:

• “Miss Cornelia Otis Skinner Skillfully Presents ‘Edna His Wife,’” The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.), February 22, 1938, accessed via Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
• Edna His Wife, Broadway production, December 7, 1937–January 1938, Little Theatre, New York, Internet Broadway Database (IBDB).
• Margaret Ayer Barnes, Edna, His Wife: An American Idyll (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935), accessed via Internet Archive.

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