Karen Abbott: Sin in the Second City
Book Club Guides

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

This book was written so well, I had to remind myself that it was non-fiction! Was it hard for you to write it that way?

Thanks so much for the kind words! I think the style of SIN evolved from the type of writing I enjoyed doing most as a journalist. One of my favorite assignments was to pick a random name out of the Philadelphia phone book, and profile that person. It was a sort of populist experiment, the idea that every life story is one worth telling. I picked a woman named Cora Bell Ellington, an elderly lady born in the segregated South of the 1930s who was now living in the housing projects of Southwest Philly. I basically moved in with her for a month and uncovered every secret dream and dark corner of her past. She was so fascinating I ended up writing a 7,000-word profile of her, and then made it a series, picking two more names from the phone book. I think delving deeply into people's lives, and having the freedom to write at length about them, really prepared me for a book-length project.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

What made you decide to write a book about the white slaves and brothels in Chicago?

It's actually a very personal story. My great-grandmother and her sister immigrated to the United States from Slovenia in 1905. One weekend, the sister took a trip to Chicago and was never heard from again. I was always intrigued and haunted by this bit of family lore, and when I began researching Chicago, and learned all about the "disappearing girls" around the turn of the century, those tales really captured my imagination. Chicago was a fascinating city at the time but also very dangerous. There were entire guidebooks that warned visitors about which streets and establishments to avoid. They had these vivid, melodramatic titles: "Chicago and Its Cesspools of Infamy,""“The White Slave Hell: With Christ at Midnight in the Slums of Chicago," etc. It was easy, especially during my research trips to the city, to imagine my relative falling victim to some nefarious force. Of course I also imagine that she might have become a "sporting girl," so to speak. And I would hope that she was Everleigh Club material!

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Minna and Ada didn't seem to have a problem with lying about their past. Why do you think that is? What do you think they were trying to hide?

The sisters were from a very distinguished, wealthy Southern family, counting among their ancestors doctors, lawyers, surgeons, senators, and even a descendent of Andrew Jackson. But like many Southern families, they fell on hard times during the Civil War, and their circumstances became so dire that their father (according to the sisters' great niece) eventually forced them into prostitution. I think part of the sisters' motivation for creating a lavish, plush, exclusive place like the Everleigh Club was to try to recapture the lost grandeur of their childhood. They glimpsed it long enough to miss it when it was gone, and they strived to recreate it in Chicago—without any of the messy, undignified secrets of their past.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

I may be mistaken, but your writing style seemed to show favor towards the sisters. Is that true? If so, why?

In a way, theirs is a classic story of the American dream. They had a very difficult past but were determined to be successful, and they were incredibly inventive in their approach. They rewrote their own histories and presented themselves as these two aristocratic debutantes, women of social standing and grace. These personas were just as vital to their business as their décor and the beauty of their girls. And their unique bond was one of my favorite things about the sisters. I don't think they could have become who they became if it weren't for each other. These are two women who never lived apart from each other, who watched several family members die, who vowed to die for each other. They shared both their painful truths and their pretty lies. And I think it was their pasts that made them so protective of their girls, which I really admired. They helped these girls when everyone else was merely paying lip service to the idea. So I came to not only admire the sisters, but to love them. I'm not a very sentimental person—I don't really cry at movies or books or at Major Life Events—but when I typed the last sentence of my book I bawled like a baby. I felt like I was living with the sisters every day for a very long time, learning everything about them there is to know, and now I miss them horribly. I hope that my affection for them is apparent in the story—I want the reader to love them as much as I do. That said, I didn't want to dismiss the reformers; I wanted to present their ideas and actions in a way that shows just how threatening they were to the sisters' livelihood. I wanted that tension and conflict to be evident throughout.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

What is your honest opinion about the lifestyle that Minna and Ada chose to live?

In this Gilded Age era of robber barons and captains of industry, women didn't have much choice in terms of making a livable wage. A girl working in a factory could make about $6 per week; in a lesser whorehouse she could make $20 per week; and at the Everleigh Club she could make $100 per week, which was an astronomical salary at the time. Of course the Everleigh Club was a mercenary operation, but I think the sisters genuinely cared for their girls. They paid them well, fed them gourmet good, clothed them in couture gowns, let them sleep in fine sheets. The sisters believed they were exploiting their male clientele, not their girls—or "butterflies," as they were called.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Writing a book that obviously took huge amounts of research and the subject matter you were dealing with, must have taken a toll on you after a while. How did you relax during your down time while writing this book?

Truthfully, I found the research invigorating. Every morning I put on some Scott Joplin just to get in the mood, and to transport myself as thoroughly as possible back to the turn of the 20th century. Once immersed, I got frustrated when I had to leave that time and place. I can certainly understand the reluctance of the character Simon Morley in Jack Finney's Time and Again.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott

Can you tell us anything about your current or future writing projects?

I just finished a draft of my second book for Random House, tentatively titled American Rose. It's about Gypsy Rose Lee and the Depression-era New York that made her a legend, with a cast of characters that includes H.L. Mencken, Condé Nast, Lucky Luciano, Abbott and Costello, Fanny Brice, and Fiorello La Guardia. It was a really dynamic time in New York's history. Tammany Hall was about to fall, F.D.R. was jockeying to run for president, prohibition was in full-force, the literary scene was flourishing. Gypsy, too, is endlessly fascinating; her life story really is a microcosm of 20th century American history. She saw it all: WWI, vaudeville, Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, WWII, McCarthyism (she was accused of being "red" herself), the freewheeling 60s, Vietnam. She was able to adapt and reinvent herself for each era—one of the first people, to use Daniel Boorstin's conceit, who was famous for being famous. I'm very drawn to women who make their own lives, who aren't privileged enough to have their lives handed to them. In that respect, Gypsy Rose Lee is very much like the Everleigh sisters, and it's been great fun getting to know her.

Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Abbott