September Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Walking a Fine Line

Time Setting: 1920

Genre: Historical Thriller

Minimum Word Goal: 120,000

Timespan: March–June

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Main Characters: Joseph Neil

Background Information: 

Born the third of five sons and seventh of thirteen children to a first-generation Irish-American father and an Irish-born mother who made their home on Chicago’s South Side, Joseph’s existence has been for the most part a decent one, even if it’s been somewhat of a lonely one.

The main reasons it’s been lonely are because, firstly, Joseph was five years younger than his oldest brother; secondly, his second brother was a sickly baby who lasted only ten days, and thus was long gone before Joseph was born almost eighteen months later; and thirdly, Joseph’s two younger brothers were born when he was nine and eleven years old, respectively.

Joseph, thus, was closely surrounded by sisters, and although he became close with his immediately younger sister especially, his oldest brother would mock him for playing with girls, and even hampered his abilities to develop relationships with other boys by telling those boys that Joseph played dolls with his sisters, even though the doll he played with was a boy doll made for him by his mother.

Thankfully, Joseph’s father worked a steady job, bringing in good money for the family, ensuring they were on good financial footing, and even though he went out drinking with his friends regularly, he didn’t usually get horribly drunk, and he was never bellicose when under the influence either.

Nevertheless, Joseph found his father a strict disciplinarian with all of his children, not just Joseph’s difficult and unruly oldest brother, and thus struggled to please his father with anything that he did, even though he put his utmost effort and then some into everything he did for his father.

When Joseph was ten years old, his oldest brother was killed in an incident of mischief-gone-awry with his friends, which shocked and devastated the whole family, and prompted Joseph’s father to become even stricter with him, not wanting Joseph to run with the same unsavoury crowds his older brother had run with, which his parents believed had been a contributory factor to their son’s demise.

The devastation of the tragedy was somewhat tempered by the fact that Joseph’s oldest sisters started getting married around the same time — his oldest sister having married a scant four months before his brother was killed — and thus started giving Joseph’s parents grandchildren, and Joseph himself nieces and nephews.

Nevertheless, tragedy remained close to the family, as within five years Joseph’s father’s health started to deteriorate, culminating with him collapsing at work in the spring of the year Joseph turned fifteen, causing him to be hospitalised. The diagnosis was the beginning of liver failure brought on by his years of regular and moderately heavy drinking.

Although it was expected that his death would be swift, he lingered until June of that year, with the hospital bills he incurred for his lengthy stay depleting the family’s savings and leaving Joseph — still three months shy of fifteen — as the oldest male in the house.

Additionally, Joseph’s mother was pregnant with her thirteenth and final child, who was born in November, and with much difficulty that resulted in Joseph’s mother being hospitalised for a period of time that further affected the family’s savings, putting them in a far more difficult financial position than they’d been in just a year before.

It looked like Joseph was going to have to quit school and get a job, but his married sisters were opposed to that idea as Joseph was a good student — his sisters were sure he would be the top of his class if he actually put the kind of effort into his schooling they thought he ought to — and they wanted him to be able to complete school and maybe even go to college so as to be able to get a better-paying job to support the family.

As a result, his sisters, along with his numerous prevailingly maternal relatives in the area, and the congregation of the Catholic church his family attended devoutly, were generous in their gifts to the family — financial and material — in order to keep Joseph in school.

In addition, his mother recovered enough to be able to sew again as she had before, and took advantage of her reputation as an excellent seamstress to make some money by taking in mending, altering, and even tailoring work in addition to keeping on top of all of the mending other sewing she had to do for her own children as they got older with each passing year.

Even still, Joseph took summer jobs to provide something for the family until he graduated shortly after the United States entered the Great War that had been raging in Europe since a little over a week prior to his fifteenth birthday.

Desiring to have some adventure in his life, and seeing being in the military as a chance for him to get paid for having just that, Joseph fudged his birthday by a couple months so that he’d be allowed to sign up.

His family were worried about letting him go to war, so his three brothers-in-law signed up to keep a semi-paternal eye on Joseph, as none of them had necessarily been in a hurry to sign up for the army otherwise.

Joseph quickly distinguished himself as having a keen eye and was trained as a sniper, but he was attached to the infantry unit with which his brothers-in-law were serving so they were still able to keep an eye on him, and he, in turn, on them.

In the months of action they were able to have before the hostilities concluded, Joseph managed to survive unscathed, and the oldest of his brothers-in-law by age — but the second to join the family when he’d married Joseph’s second-oldest sister in February 1915 — survived with minor physical wounds, but his other two brothers-in-law were killed.

Since Joseph’s going to war had been the main impetus behind his brothers-in-law deciding to go, Joseph felt a measure of guilt at two of them having died, leaving behind not only their widows, but a combined eight fatherless children, and resolved that he was going to do what he could to help his widowed sisters until they got remarried — if, indeed, they decided to pursue remarriage at all.

Additionally, as they headed home following the war, Joseph noticed that his remaining brother-in-law seemed to have suffered some deep psychological wounds that made Joseph question whether he would be as capable of supporting his wife and five children as he’d been before the war, causing Joseph to add another burden to his pile.

Following some time spent laid up sick with influenza before they could be discharged from the army, Joseph and his brother-in-law returned home where Joseph, despite having graduated school, was unable to find any job other than working for the same Polish shopkeeper he’d worked the summer for before the war.

Since his family needs the money and he’s intent on providing some financial support to his married sisters because of the fact that his going off to war made their lives more difficult than they’d been before, Joseph hasn’t even considered going to college — not that he’d had any ideas of what he might study at college before the opportunity to go to war had become an option — and is more than certain that his family wouldn’t be able to afford it even if he wanted to.

Also, if Joseph is perfectly honest, he wishes he wouldn’t have sought discharge from the army as he’d enjoyed the lifestyle and was sure he could’ve had the chance to have some further adventures, plus he’s disappointed to think that he’s not likely to have any sort of adventure in his life back in Chicago like he had participating in the conclusion of the greatest war mankind had ever seen.