Anyone who's ever done serious research will tell you that the digging part is mostly tedious. But the feeling you get when you find a shining nugget makes it all worthwhile. I've got a passel of nuggets after years of work on No Truer Hearts, many of them placed in my hand by Beverly and her friends and relatives. Here's one I stumbled upon while trying to find maps and photos of the area around Wickham Drive, the setting for the book's first chapter. It's an aerial photo taken in 1951, the year Beverly was born. It shows mostly open fields and golf courses in Amherst, northeast of downtown Buffalo. The photo gives me a wonderful window on how this area changed during the course of Beverly's life, from a bucolic space of fields, streams and woods, to an orderly grid of suburban streets and homes.
A current satellite image of the same area illustrates the dramatic changes that development have brought. The story of Wickham Drive is the story of the rise of suburbia, repeated thousands of times around the country. It is the story of the baby boomers growing up with backyard cookouts, go-cart races in the streets, block parties, and sock hops in garages. Beverly's summers on Wickham Drive tell that story through the eyes of a creative and optimistic girl.
