I rummaged in the backseat and found it—warm and soft and smelling deliciously of Coop. I pulled it over me, shut my eyes, and enjoyed the feeling of floating at sixty miles an hour through the countryside, drifting in and out of sleep.
What happened next could only have been a dream, though it didn’t feel like one. I leaned back to watch the landscape speed past, and, drenched in moonlight, the hilly roadside dipped and swelled, its undulations soothing. Wind tossed the tops of the trees just beyond the shoulder, and I noticed two distant figures walking hand in hand along the edge of the woods. Though it was a perfectly ordinary sight—a slender girl, her long hair whipping around her, and a tall, angular boy—it struck me as extraordinary, almost miraculous. I thought to point them out to Coop, but couldn’t seem to find my voice. For a long time we approached them, then, too quickly, we were flying past, close enough for the car’s motion to send the girl’s hair whooshing back from her face.
I turned in my seat for a better look and caught my breath at how lovely and familiar their two moonlit faces were, even as they receded and grew as distant as twinned stars. As I stared, they turned right and vanished from the roadside into the dark woods. Turn back! I wanted to urge Cooper, but the words wouldn’t come to my lips, and the highway was hurtling us on toward our futures and, anyway, there could be no turning back.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same….
Those words, spoken by Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, thrilled me the first time I read them. I was seventeen and shy to the point of barely being able to speak to boys I liked, but I dreamed of someday feeling that same connection with someone—a love so intense it could last for the rest of our lives, and beyond. I fell in love with Heathcliff, and with Wuthering Heights itself—a love that led me, quite a few years later, to write Catherine, my own take on Brontë’s novel.
Wuthering Heights is the kind of thick, delicious book that transports a reader to another world—the remote and windswept moors in which ghosts walk and the living are as harsh and cruel as the weather. So when I set out to write a modernization of Wuthering Heights, I needed a setting as exhilarating in its own way as England’s Yorkshire Moors. I decided on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, mecca to artists, musicians, and writers. The raw energy and excitement of New York’s underground music scene seemed like the right environment for a modern-day Heathcliff and Catherine.
Once I picked a setting, the plot of Catherine began to fall into place. My Heathcliff would be an aspiring punk rocker, hot tempered and wounded by an unspeakable past. And Catherine, a nightclub owner’s daughter, would be talented, spirited, and a bit spoiled. Like the characters who inspired them, they are flawed and sometimes selfish, but capable of an intense and electrifying love.
Of course Wuthering Heights, with its multiple narrators and multigenerational sweep, is more than just a great classic love story. When the love between Heathcliff and Catherine is thwarted, their lives are twisted out of shape like the wind-blasted trees on the moors. This blighted love casts a shadow over the lives of their children. As much as anything else, Wuthering Heights is the story of how Catherine’s daughter finds her way out of that shadow and into the sunlight. It was important to me, in writing Catherine, that the story unfold over the course of two generations—which is how the character of Catherine’s daughter, Chelsea, came into being. Though I could never hope to approach the richness and complexity of Wuthering Heights, I wanted Catherine’s story to be told in more than one voice: her own, and that of a daughter struggling to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.
Wuthering Heights has haunted the imaginations of readers for generations. Like Heathcliff, who begs Catherine’s ghost to visit him so he can feel her presence once more, I return again and again to Wuthering Heights, eager to be haunted anew by its characters. Writing Catherine was my way of returning to that ghost-riddled landscape—of stepping into Catherine and Heathcliff’s story, however fleetingly. I hope that readers who enjoy my retelling of Brontë’s great novel will be inspired to return to the original—or, maybe, to read it for the first time, and allow themselves to be swept away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Julie Scheina, who smoothed my path with patience, generosity, and know-how. Thanks also to Amy Williams, agent extraordinaire, and to Ann Green, Ted Fristrom, and Jamey Gallagher, who provided feedback and encouragement.
Extra-special thanks to Eric Coulson, who lent me his considerable expertise on guns and gunshot injuries, and to Dan Courtenay, owner of the venerable Chelsea Guitars. Thanks to Jesse Malin and Bowery Electric for a jolt of inspiration and a glimpse into the real thing.
I’m also grateful to Denise Duhamel for her memories of the Hotel Chelsea circa 1989, and to my Facebook brain trust for their input on all sorts of cultural ephemera: Ali Barsanti, Alli Hammond, Diane Wilkes, Ned Balbo, Shenandoah Lynd, Chris Bamberger, Melody Lindner, Lori Askeland, Cindy Gagnon Raschke, Lydia Ricker Butler, Laura Pattillo, Daisy Fried, Cecilia Ready, Victoria R. Palmer, Beth Kephart, Monique St. Amant, Susan Sink, and Ann E. Michael, among others.
Finally, hugs to Andre St. Amant, for his willingness to share me with my imaginary friends.
CONTENTS
Welcome
Dedication
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Catherine
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Catherine
Catherine
Chelsea
Catherine
Chelsea
Chelsea
Chelsea
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by April Lindner
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
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ISBN 978-0-316-21471-1
April Lindner, Catherine
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