Novelist and screenwriter John Irving in his Toronto home in October, 2022.JENNIFER ROBERTS/For The Globe and Mail
For readers or moviegoers who know The Cider House Rules, a familiar character reappears in my 16th novel, Queen Esther.
Dr. Larch, the obstetrician and abortionist at the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Me., is younger than you remember him – as are Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela. And there’s a different cast of characters among the unadopted orphans at St. Cloud’s, where the same rules apply. Dr. Larch will give you what you want – a baby or an abortion.
The orphans who get adopted are the infants. Nobody wants the kids who are old enough to have some memory of who they are or where they came from; nobody takes those orphans. In the state of Maine – in most of New England – when unadopted orphans were 14, going on 15, they became “wards of the state.” In many cases, these young teenagers became virtual indentured servants; working families took them in for cheap labour.
In Queen Esther, there’s an unusually philanthropic couple: the Winslows. Thomas Winslow is a schoolteacher; his wife, Constance, is a town librarian in New Hampshire. They don’t make a lot of money, but they come from wealthy, well-born families. There were Winslows on the Mayflower, and Constance Winslow’s maiden name is Bradford. There were Bradfords on the Mayflower, too.
The Last Chairlift is a first for John Irving
The Winslows have four daughters – Honor Winslow is their fourth. For each of their first three daughters, the Winslows went to orphanages and found a young 14-year-old girl who was about to become a ward of the state. These girls are hired nannies – they’re live-in babysitters and caregivers to the newborn Winslow daughters – but the Winslows really look after these 14-year-olds. The Winslows send them to colleges and universities; the Winslows provide for these unadopted orphans, long after they’ve stopped working as nannies.
The townspeople in this small New Hampshire town resent the Winslows – the way rich people are resented, but worse. The townspeople resent the Winslows because they’re do-gooders. Worse still, the first three nannies are truly wonderful young women. Yet the townspeople keep hoping that the Winslows will take in a bad one.
What the Winslows learned from a couple of their unadopted orphans is that some orphanages didn’t just deliver babies; they also provided abortions. The Winslows support abortion rights, which alienates the townspeople, too. Not that Thomas Winslow is entirely free of illogical eccentricities. He wants to get his unadopted orphans from New Hampshire, where he lives. Thomas looks down on his neighbouring state of Maine. He’s heard of Dr. Larch and the orphanage at St. Cloud’s. Thomas likes the idea of an orphanage run by a physician with no religious affiliation; he just puts off going to St. Cloud’s because it’s hard to get to. At times of the year, the roads are impassable; you have to take the train.
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There have been letters back and forth between Dr. Larch and Thomas Winslow; the two men have respect for each other, and Dr. Larch believes he may have an unadopted orphan who suits the Winslows’ needs for their fourth daughter.
There’s one more thing you need to know. Thomas has no tolerance for intolerance. Although there are very few Jewish people in the small town where the Winslows live, Thomas senses and despises the townspeople’s antisemitism.
This small excerpt from Queen Esther is taken from Chapter Six, “The Jewish One.”
It was a cold, snowy night when the little girl was left on the front porch. Nurse Edna was with the infants when she heard the loud knocks on the door. Edna had to settle down a baby before she went to see who it was. Dr. Larch had gone to bed, but he was still awake; the knocking was loud enough for him to hear it.
“When a child is left on the porch after dark, a child that young is usually crying – not this girl,” Edna told the Winslows. The abandoned girl was angry; she was kicking the newel post at the top of the porch stairs, but she didn’t try to go after the woman who’d left her. In the dim glow cast by the porch light, Nurse Edna could see the woman who was leaving – already on her way back to the train station. “Please don’t go – please tell me something about her!” Edna called to the woman. That was when Nurse Edna realized there were two women. One of the women was beyond the reach of the porch light, in the darkness. The unseen woman’s voice resonated in the dark.
“She’s Jewish!” the invisible woman shouted.
“She knows,” said the woman Edna could see. “She also knows her name and how old she is – that’s all she knows,” the woman added; she was receding from the porch light, into the darkness.
“Is one of you her mother?” Nurse Edna asked the woman she could still see.
“She has no mother!” the invisible woman cried; by now, the two women had disappeared in the darkness.
“What is your name, dear child?” Edna asked the angry little girl, who was still kicking the newel post.
“Esther, like the queen – Queen Esther,” the girl answered. She enunciated with unusual clarity; she didn’t speak like a child.
As E. M. Forster said, “Yes – oh, dear, yes – the novel tells a story.” In the case of this novel, if Dr. Larch had found a Jewish family to adopt Esther, there wouldn’t have been a story. And Larch has been trying – for more than a decade. Dr. Larch knows the Winslows are the best family for Esther he’s going to find. At the time, there was a small Jewish community in the Lewiston area – a bigger one in Portland, a seaport. At first, there is no verification that Esther is Jewish. By the time Larch traces her to Portland, where he finds the rabbi who knew Esther’s mother and met Esther as a child, Esther is a teenager. Truly no one but the Winslows would adopt a teenager, especially this one. Esther was born in Vienna in 1905. Her mother and father hoped they were saving their baby from the antisemitism they encountered in Austria. Her father died on board the ship from Germany. As Larch learns from the rabbi, Esther’s mother was murdered by antisemites in Portland.
The final chapter of Queen Esther is set in Jerusalem in 1981, when Esther is 76. Until recently, 1981 was the last time I was in Jerusalem. In July, 2024, I went back. I needed to refresh my memory of the visual details – I needed to see again everywhere I was, more than 40 years ago. In the evenings, my Israeli friends were at anti-Netanyahu protests. I’m anti-Netanyahu, too, but I needed to read over the day’s notes I’d written, and I wanted to map out where I was going the next day.
A historical novel foreshadows the future. My Esther is an empathetic embodiment of the Esther in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. This novel ends in Israel in 1981, when the seeds of an eternal conflict were already sown.
Queen Esther publishes Nov. 4 by Knopf Canada