Coat checkers, airport aides, plumbers — these are the working-class people Connie Schultz has been introducing to readers of her columns for over 30 years. Her honest, heartfelt depictions won her a Pulitzer Prize while at The Plain Dealer, but those sorts of working-class heroes are rarely featured in fiction. Schultz’s editor, Kate Medina, challenged her to change that — by writing a novel.
“The working class had been so underrepresented in modern literature,” says Schultz, who is also a journalism professional in residence at Kent State University. “I would take it a step further and say not only that — they’ve been misrepresented. So often they’re oafish, they’re props, they’re not very bright … which doesn’t represent so many of the people I knew.”
Schultz started writing, and more than a decade later, her debut novel, “The Daughters of Erietown” ($28, Random House), was released this June, skyrocketing to The New York Times Best Sellers list.
“Erietown” is set in Northeast Ohio and will feel familiar to locals, who if not from the working class, are just a few generations away, as Schultz says. The novel spans three generations of women from the 1940s to 1990s, taking readers inside the hopes and struggles they pass on to their children — or try not to.
Longtime readers of Schultz’s columns will recognize similarities to her personal story. Like her parents, the main characters, Ellie and Brick, are a nurse’s aide and a utility worker stamping a union card, and both were sidelined by teenage pregnancy. Ellie and Brick shelved their big plans to go off to school and do what they love, instead falling into a working-class life full of regret. But they never let go of their dreams and drive to create better lives for their children.
“Working-class people are just like lucky or affluent people. We have our aspirations, particularly for our children,” Schultz says. “The difference comes when the big problems arrive, and we don’t have the money to fix them.”
Time flows fluidly in the book, flashing forward and backward, to show how every move — even something as simple as cooking eggs in a cast-iron skillet — is informed by the past. Spending time inside characters’ heads brings readers closer to understanding how their circumstances have a ripple effect on how they see themselves and treat others.
“So often the characters don’t think they’re entitled to much and become increasingly bitter about what they thought their lives were supposed to be,” Schultz says.
But the novel shows that you can shake the chains of the past in subtle ways and reshape generations. For example, Ellie is modest but buys her daughter an informative book on sex, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” as both a cautionary tale and empowerment to have autonomy over her future.
“That is a moment of quiet heroism because for all the years, for all her disappointment about her own life, she’s decided that she’s going to prioritize her daughter’s future,” Schultz says.
Female friendships through a coffee klatch, canasta club and more play a large role in how Ellie escapes her pain and regains her sense of self — even later in life.
“I want to communicate that women are not done at a certain age,” Schultz says.
Schultz certainly isn’t. She released her first novel at 62 and is already working on another novel that isn’t a sequel, but a new story about a grandmother and granddaughter set in Northeast Ohio. She’s hush on the details, but she divulges that it involves working-class people and a bookstore plays into the narrative. It’s those kinds of moves — including a bookstore to show that working-class people read and writing up her “Erietown” characters with good grammar — that help Schultz recast the narrative of working-class people as smart, vibrant and full of potential.
“Erietown” reminds us that even in the smallest ways, we can change our narratives and move closer to living out the dreams we harbor in our hearts.
“The only constant in our lives is change. How we respond to that change really determines the trajectory of our lives, but it’s never too late to change the trajectory,” Schultz says. “I see that as a particularly important point for women.”
