For 60 years, Laurie Klein has been holding on to her family’s secret. Now, she is letting it go.
Her new book of poetry, “House of 49 Doors,” is her cathartic way of releasing this secret, not out of disrespect for her family, but out of love and loyalty, “albeit misplaced loyalty, because I made a promise 60 years ago not to tell,” Klein said.
But “after I shut it all away, I did not realize how much it was still harming me. It has been this underlying menace I didn’t realize I was carrying.”
“House of 49 Doors” is about Klein’s childhood home, a sorrowful time in her family’s past and a 60-year-old promise.
This book is narrated by Klein’s younger self, referred to as Larkin, and Elder Girl, Klein’s present-day self. Both narrators take the reader by the hand and lead them through Klein’s memories, which poetry is more equipped to describe than expository or narrative writing.
“With poetry, it allows me to condense three years of experience into small, vivid, compelling bursts,” Klein said. “It’s coming out the way memory does, in little scenes, and it isn’t all linear and chronological, we remember imperfectly, so we get glimpse and echoes and tracings.”
Klein used poetry to soften the blows of the locked-away memories.
“There’s a music to it,” she said, “and when you’re telling a sad story, if it has some music in it, that too makes it easier, makes it more accessible, and more pleasurable.”
Klein’s narrator, Larkin, is curious and kind and helps the reader see the world and the things happening with “stubborn hope and relative innocence.”
According to Klein, using a child’s perspective helps “undercut the tragedy to make it bearable.”
Elder Girl gives the reader an “occasional reality check and furnishes little detours that tap into the kind of discernment that has been so hard won over the years,” Klein said.
Elder Girl is the necessary step of understanding and accepting in the healing process that is “House of 49 Doors.”
As a child, faced with a dark reality, “I just locked all that away in a really deep basement. Sub-sub-SUB basement,” Klein said.
For 60 years, Klein couldn’t talk about or even look back on what happened for fear of revealing the secret and breaking her promise.
With the help of Larkin and Elder Girl, “I was able to go down the stairs to the deep dark basement and crack open the door and really look at it all,” she said. “It was not only cathartic, but deeply healing, and I feel changed by having done so.”
Because of the healing this writing has caused for Klein, she said she feels her younger self coming into the light again.
“She is more present in my life,” Klein said. “I hear Larkin’s voice in my head from time to time. It makes me laugh out loud. I feel lighter.”
Although her childhood was marred by what happened, Klein still looked back fondly on her dear childhood home.
“It’s a pretty sad story, but I still had a very privileged childhood in a big old wonderful rambling magical house.”
Her house had such an impact on her childhood that it is the structural base upon which her entire book rests.
“I divided the book into sections: the premises, shotgun hall, street level, clothes chute, stairwell, half-flight to the next story, attic, roof.”
Throughout her book, Klein uses Larken’s childlike wonder and “delight to relive different places in the house and the stories that go along with them,” which is why she is giving all her proceeds from her book to Habitat for Humanity.
“That house sheltered me through so much trauma, and we all deserve shelter, warmth, safety, water and light, as well as delight.”
On Sunday, Klein will be launching “House of 49 Doors” at Colbert Presbyterian Church. She will be reading excerpts from her book, and anyone who donates to Habitat for Humanity will receive a free book.
By writing this book, Klein has come to terms with her family secret, and she can finally let go of the past. As for that family secret? Only readers of “House of 49 Doors” will be let in.
“Now I don’t feel like I’ll ever be haunted by the details again, because I looked at it all. It was graphic and grizzly, but it doesn’t seem to have the power to horrify me anymore,” Klein said. “I had to relive it so as to relieve it.”
