They say you’re only as sick as your secrets.
In 1942, a fourteen-year-old girl named Emmaleen Kimball began to grow suspicious. She felt certain the Kimball family into which she was born held secrets to which she was not privy. Furthermore, those secrets had something to do with her.
Being a fanciful sort, Emmaleen’s imagination led her down numerous roads. Some days she felt convinced she’d been born to a band of roving Romani people who left her on the Kimballs’ doorstep. Whether or not that piece was accurate, she was certain she’d had an identical twin named Darleen. Did Darleen die? Was she stolen? In any case, Emmaleen sensed she had not been placed in the correct spot on the Kimball family tree, if she belonged there at all.
If only her big brother Charlie wasn’t off fighting a war. He’d level with her, even if her other family members were no help. Dad never said anything about anything no matter how much Emmaleen quizzed him, and Mother spent her days lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Her sister April was too busy with her husband and four kids. Her sister Bernadette carried a chip on her shoulder so enormous, she’d probably tell Emmaleen she was a chimpanzee being raised as a human, just for spite.
When Emmaleen became dangerously ill, she feared her mother’s illness must be hereditary. Instead, the sickness led to a horrendous series of events that ultimately forced the secret out and threw the entire family into turmoil.
The Kimball family lived on a farm near a fictional town called Mainsfield, Manitoba. The town is fictional because the Kimballs are, too. They are characters in my new book, April’s Promise, releasing this fall.
There is nothing uncommon, however, about family secrets.
In an interview with The Guardian’s Rachel Cooke, author Dani Shapiro shared her big family secret and the long journey to uncovering the truth. As a child who never felt she belonged in her family, she was not entirely surprised when, years after her parents’ passing, DNA tests led to a sperm donor other than the dad she’d always known and loved. In her case, the term was literal as her parents had sought treatments for infertility.
In the moment of her discovery, she felt traumatized and alone. Why had her parents gone to their graves carrying so huge a secret? So affected was Shapiro by the breakthrough that it led her to create a popular podcast called Family Secrets. She felt floored at first by how many families were hanging onto secrets.
“In every audience,” she says, “there is a significant number of people who have discovered family secrets of their own: adoptees who were never told, donor-conceived people who never knew, parents who made a decision not to disclose the truth to their children.”
In an interview with The Today Show, Shapiro stated that in the past, parents often believed what their children didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. Science no longer allows us to get away with these secrets, as DNA testing has become a popular pastime.
April’s Promise, while fictional, explores what can and does happen in many real-life communities when pride, fear, and shame rule over truth and grace. Even when kept out of love and protection, secrets always create burdens. May my story help point to a better way. I hope my readers enjoy the story but more importantly, I pray they’ll be encouraged to follow a path of life free from shame and secrets. Watch for it next month.
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