I have a confession to make: I like graveyards. In fact, I’ve always been fascinated by them, especially the older ones. I rarely think of sadness and death when I’m in a cemetery. Instead, I love wandering through the maze of headstones, reading the epitaphs on the graves, and thinking about all of those stories and personalities from the past represented in each acre of cemetery ground.

I used to think I was a little strange for feeling this way, but since beginning the research for my newest novel Here Lies Linc, I’ve found that plenty of people—especially kids—share my fascination. Out of all of the field trips that the schools in my town organize each year, one of the most popular is only a short bus ride away— to nearby Oakland Cemetery, established in 1843, where students can learn about local history by studying the graves.

Of course a big part of our curiosity about cemeteries probably has to do with the fact that most of us can’t resist a good ghost story and graveyards are chock full of them. Take the story of the Black Angel, for instance. As soon as the school bus rolls up to Oakland Cemetery on one of those field trips I mentioned, chances are that several kids will start begging to run over and see the legendary Black Angel—an eight and a half-foot tall bronze statue of an angel with her huge wings drooped and her mournful face turned to the ground. Dark legends and superstition have swirled around this mysterious burial monument ever since it was erected during the early 1900s.

I began hearing the stories shortly after moving to Iowa City. As one legend goes, a preacher’s son is buried beneath the Angel and the statue turned from gleaming bronze to forbidding black as a symbol of the evil truth—that the preacher had actually murdered his son. Other tales tell of the unlucky fortunes, even deaths, that continue to befall those who touch the Angel or foolishly dare to kiss her at midnight on Halloween.

Gradually, I became more curious and began to research the facts behind the statue. I learned that a Bohemian midwife named Teresa Feldevert had erected the memorial to honor her dead husband and a son who tragically passed away at eighteen. And I also began to realize that the true stories behind graveyards and “haunted” sites like the Black Angel are often much more interesting than the ghost stories that surround them.  

Soon I was conjuring up a character named Linc who can't seem to escape graveyards no matter how hard he tries. He happens to live next-door to Oakland Cemetery. Through a school project, Linc becomes drawn into sorting out the pieces of the Black Angel puzzle and along the way, manages to solve several mysteries of his own family's history.

Below, you can take a look at the first page of Here Lies Linc, my new novel-in-progress. . . .