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Travel Tuesday: Philadelphia


Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, PA

It's Travel Tuesday! Did you know that BREATHE wasn’t always set in Philadelphia? When I first started doing research fifteen years ago (15!!!), I decided that the Jacksons should live in Nashville. Nashville is a cool place and rich with history, right? But then I found out about Baltimore. Ooh. Baltimore is cool, rich with history, and has an interesting seaport twist. Then one day, I stumbled across PBS’s American Experience show on the Spanish Flu. I’m not sure if this PBS American Experience (click here to go to the show) is the same program I watched a decade ago or if it was updated and repackaged. Regardless, the special is still cram-packed with interesting Spanish Flu information, interviews with survivors, and archival photos and footage. Cue Sara geeking out and deciding that Baltimore is great, but Boston…oooh, is even better. Then they got to the part about Philadelphia, and I was hooked. I went back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia for a long time before picking Philly. What sealed it? In the mid-1990s, I lived outside of Philadelphia. I’ve walked along the banks of the Schuylkill River. I’ve sat in the park near the statue of the lion crushing a serpent in Rittenhouse Square. I used to work close to Bryn Mawr College and went to Villanova University for a year. All these bits and pieces from my real life layered nicely on top of my book research. If (when!) you read BREATHE, you will see that some of the information from the TV show turned into the backbone of my book. The Liberty Loan Parade, in particular, came in very handy. That’s all I’m going to say though. I didn’t totally give up on Boston. In the end, I decided to send Virginia’s BFF Anna there instead to do battle against the deadly disease.

Photo credit: Tanja Bauerle

 

Want to learn more about how real spots in Philadelphia tie into BREATHE? Stick around for future Tuesday Travel posts. Want to order your own copy of BREATHE? Click here for the paperback version and here for the Kindle eBook.

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