A balmy 85 degrees in West Palm Beach. A sultry kind of Christmas Eve, not typical of winter in Florida, even this far south, even in 1973. Tonight dinner and dancing, but for now, for Eva, a moment in the sun, in that white bikini she’d worn back when she met Will, her eventual husband; back before she’d any thoughts of having children, Rainey, a daughter as beautiful as she; back before she became a war widow.
Figures we picture when writing characters: for Eva, it was Grace Kelly, Faye Dunaway, Bridget Bardot. Look and Life magazine covers. Eventually, though, characters become themselves, more than the reflections that inspired them. They take on lives, which deepen and color and align with surrounding characters, reliable or unreliable in the way they navigate their fictional paths.
As a group they take on meaning, create a reason for being on the page, inform us of what was going on back in the late 60s and early 70s. And in the end, their individuality and relationships to each other stir the moment they were caught up in. In Sybelia Drive, for the women, it was the first glimmer and glance of feminism. One might not see this at first, but within the pages, there it is, billowing, slowly, and in its own way.
Back in October, Women Writers, Women’s Books featured an essay on the men and boys of Sybelia Drive. This December Sybelia Drive’s women and girls are up in lights: Minnie, Eva, Lillian, LuLu, Rainey, Hélène, Vita, An, and Esther. Inspired by a reflection on hope from writer Rebecca Solnit in her book of essays, Hope in the Dark, “The Women and Girls of Sybelia Drive” explores the characters in a way that, even after writing the novel, surprised me. Each of these women is strengthened by each other and by a deep thread of hope which they know won’t allow life to return to the way it was, but allows them to move forward into the kind of lives they’ve created themselves. Eva may be the one who has moved the farthest toward a self-fulfilled life, and so, she sits on the beach, awaiting and aware of the next adventure.