Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they would like. This week, Ari Phillips writes about Grow Old and Don’t Die from Rand-Smith Books.
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I discovered Berkeley Springs because I had it in my mind to visit some hot springs within a few hours drive of Washington, D.C.. While the mineral waters flowing out of the Appalachian Mountains just north of Shenandoah Valley aren’t hot, they are a remarkably consistent 74.3°F year round. As the stifling D.C. summer set in, I packed the Prius for a long weekend in small town West Virginia, ready to escape into greenery and refreshingly cool water. I knew very little about Berkeley Springs other than that it’s very small, home to under 1,000 people, and that George Washington used to visit the town, which was formerly known as Bath, and soak in the rejuvenating waters. For those in the know, Berkeley Springs is considered the oldest spa in the country, having been in use since Colonial times. The original one-room bathhouse was built in 1791 and the larger Roman Bathhouse in the early 18th century.
Oh yeah, and I also knew it had a castle. Aside from the springs, the Berkeley Springs Castle is the town’s other big attraction. I’m no history buff, but I’m not familiar with many castles this side of the Atlantic. The town’s main street runs through a valley with a quaint central park (which is also a state park) serving as an anchor. Within the park is a swimming pool fed by the springs, a more rustic water play area where fish nibble your toes, and the Roman Baths, a long building with a mini-museum foyer and a row of tubs where you can pay for an official soak. Partway up the steep hill rests the castle, looming over the town at about one-tenth the size of the medieval Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, England, that it’s modeled after. And it is a model; never meant to fortify anything, it was built by Samuel Taylor Suit, a wealthy late-nineteenth century politician, to woo a much younger woman to become his wife. The ploy worked, the only hitch being Suit died shortly after the castle was completed. Since then, the unique residence has revolved through many uses: An artist’s retreat, a museum, and more recently the property of Peter Brimelow, the founder of the VDARE Foundation, an anti-immigration organization.
My young children loved wandering the spring basin, where crumbling pools, including the one George Washington once used, provide an ideal exploratory, if slippery, terrain. After passing the heat of the day by the water, we wandered the town, charmed by the assortment of local shops and the massive scoops at the ice cream parlor. But the business that stuck with me was a thrift store that doubled as an art gallery. The wiry owner, who also created the bulbous blown glass pieces lining one wall, sat at an overflowing desk in the front of the store. As he chatted with my kids and offered us a free upside-down wine glass (at least that’s how it looked to me), I felt he could’ve occupied the spot for centuries.
Back in D.C., the summer wound down and I searched for a book project to carry me through the year. I’ve written five full-length manuscripts since COVID, and the book based on Berkeley Springs, Grow Old and Don’t Die, is my third to be published. I knew my writing improved and the process went more smoothly when I incorporated historical elements into the narrative, both to provide some guardrails and also because I’m a journalist and working with facts makes me feel more at home. Also, I like to read historical fiction and I strive to write what I like reading.
I started fixating on the castle and its backstory. After Samuel Taylor Suit died, his young widow, Rosa Pelham, the 27-year-old daughter of U.S. Representative Charles Pelham of Alabama, became known for living lavishly and hosting extravagant castle parties. An 1891 newspaper wrote that during one such event, she was “attired in black crepe with an elegant train that gave her a queenly air in her efforts, in order that her guests be well entertained.” Other publications mentioned mysterious deaths rumored to have occurred at the castle, including two of Rosa’s lovers, one of whom either jumped or was pushed from the castle tower.
The foundation of a story took shape. As with my last novel, Earth Jumped Back (published under pen name Philip Reari), time took on the role of a central character. In this instance, not in the form of time travel, but a spring—not Berkeley Springs but another spring hidden in the nearby mountainside—that acted as a sort of eternal spring, preventing anyone who drank its water from dying.
No authoritative history of the castle or the town exists, or at least none came up in my search. A good omen, considering I prefer under-the-radar events, but also one that made research challenging. I found a few old magazine articles, some news stories on things like changes of ownership, and a short bio of Taylor Suit, who also ran a whiskey distillery and is the namesake of the Maryland town Suitland. But I’m not interested in accurately depicting historical events; I prefer to take a sparse historic scaffolding and create something new to fill in the space.
And so I began with an imagined scene of one of Rosa’s lovers leaping to his death. When Rosa searches his pocket, she finds a note revealing the location of the life-giving spring. The second chapter flashes forward to the present, where Rosa’s son Wyeth, who also drinks the spring water, operates a thrift store and mostly idles away the days having never recovered from the death of his best friend more than 75 years earlier. Enduring friendship was one of a few explicit themes I wanted to explore. Having that thematic tethering is critical in helping me navigate relationships as I write. The next chapter followed Pawpaw, a character named after the rare North American tropical fruit that grows from Appalachian pawpaw trees. She is the daughter of an oil industry scion (I work in the environmental world) who acquired several barrels of the eternal spring water through blackmail sometime in the late 1800s. However, he doesn’t know water’s source, and as his supply runs out he becomes increasingly belligerent trying to locate it. Rosa, Wyeth, and Pawpaw provided the three interweaning narrative threads. I pursued them through another chapter cycle before sensing the novel needed something else to justify the long story arc. That’s when George Washington came to mind.
On top of learning about the sliver of life Washington spent in Berkeley Springs, where I visited both his house and his tub, I’d also read Ron Chernow’s gripping biography of Washington and several other American history books that had emphasized his life and accomplishments. Also, I lived in his city, with his estate, Mt. Vernon, just south of town and his monument pretty much always only a head-swivel away. I felt I had a decent notion of his personality—pensive, wry, willing and able—if not exactly his thought process. So I gave him a voice to let him comment on what he saw below as he hovered above, trapped in some sort of purgatory where he could communicate with certain people while they bathed in the Roman bathhouse. Threads connected to other threads and eventually wove into something that clung together. I wanted to leave the reader tasting something of the bittersweet ache that reflecting on long-lost friendships evokes, and I tracked towards that emotion to help home in on the conclusion.
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Ari Phillips (www.ariphillips.com) lives in Washington, D.C., and works for an organization trying to reduce industrial pollution and improve public health. He used to cover the environment for a number of news outlets and has published two novels under the pen name Philip Reari, Eat Your Damn Vegetables, shortlisted for Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award, and Earth Jumped Back.