Elizabeth Letts' Backstory

The Virgin of Planned Parenthood

It started simply enough. Stolen Doritos, Our Lady of Guadeloupe, and a can of white paint. It was the winter of 2004 and I had just sold my first novel, Quality of Care, in a two-book deal. I needed to come up with an idea for the second book quick. But I figured that with my new status as a contracted (i.e. “real”) novelist, inspiration should be no problem. I had always imagined how published novelists got their inspiration—long walks in the woods, quiet days spent leafing through volumes of poetry and staring out the window…

Except that I have a confession to make. I work for a living. And no, I don’t mean the “oh lucky me, I’m a novelist and I go to work in my jammies,” kind of job. I mean the “is it okay if I go to lunch now?” kind of job. I work for Planned Parenthood, in a little clinic, on the edge of a mushroom farming community. If you go to where the Philadelphia suburbs start to peter out, and then head out just a little farther, that’s where it is.

The place where I work is called Toughkenamon (that’s pronounced tuff-ken-a-mon) and, when you get right down to it, it’s hard to feel like you are living the life of an inspired novelist in a place like Toughkenamon. There are the used car lots (two,) the Mexican groceries (three,) the Planned Parenthood office, the WIC office (for when Planned Parenthood didn’t work,) a migrant education office, a bunch of houses, a Wawas and a Mexican restaurant. There is a constant stench of manure from the mushroom houses. There are several trailer parks and an abandoned quarry. And in the workaday world of my day job, my tasks are pretty darn humble—for example, I wash speculums. Yeah, that’s it. The glamorous novelist, at the end of the day, while searching for inspiration, dons a pair of rubber gloves, grabs a toothbrush and some antibacterial scrub, and washes the speculums to get them ready for the autoclave.

So what’s a girl to do? Where does one find inspiration while washing speculums?

The Virgin of Planned Parenthood had not henceforth made her presence known, but in the season of my need for inspiration, there were changes afoot in Toughkenamon. Our Lady, quiet but majestic, was painted on the wall of a largely unused upstairs room. We who worked in the health center had little reason to go there. It was used by the youth group that met on Mondays, but otherwise, mostly stood unoccupied. We went there only to steal the occasional snack-sized bag of chips from the youth group’s cache or to use the upstairs bathroom, when the downstairs bathroom was on the blink.

I was fond of Our Lady. We all were. She was beautiful, she was benign, and she lent a loving air of appreciation to both our toileting and our thievery. Did we think that she brought small blessings upon us? Well, if we did, then is that such a terrible thing?

At that moment, there were many upheavals in our small organization, the senior management were coming and going at an alarming rate, and there was a constant trickle down to us, in our small end of the organization, that things were amiss. Eager to please potential sources of funding, at one point, somebody among the powers-that-be came to visit our little clinic (which was an outlying site of a larger affiliate,) and someone stumbled upon Our Lady.

A Virgin? In Planned Parenthood? Much sweating and fretting and worrying about offending potential donors who might just happen to be touring the premises (though no one could remember any potential donor ever going into the upstairs room in Toughkenamon either to use the facilities or steal Doritos.)

Hail Mary, Mother of Grace.

It was to be a white wash.

Our beloved Virgin would soon be Our Lady of White Paint.

You know, without me even telling you, that there were further mysterious occurrences…. How about the time that the woman who was bringing the white paint didn’t come because her car broke down on the way? And how about the other time when there was a big rainstorm and she couldn’t come because we had to close early….?

In real life, the can of white paint won out. In a novel, there are infinitely more possibilities.

So that’s where I got the inspiration for Family Planning…. A group of women with outsized senses of humor who work in a family planning clinic, but whose own families don’t seem to go according to plan, and a beautiful painting of the Our Lady of Guadeloupe who has a way of seeming to work a little magic. I started with the face in the painting and with the can of white paint, and somehow, a story evolved from that. As a novelist, I believe that the source of inspiration is all around me, even in the novelist’s least favorite of all places—the day job. Now, can I go to lunch?

Elizabeth Letts is the author of Family Planning.

Comments

[Carolyn]

If FAMILY PLANNING is as good as Elizabeth's Backstory telling of its near immaculate conception, then it's destined to be a classic.

[Leslea]

but whose own families don’t seem to go according to plan...hmmm, that might be a more compassionate way of describing how certain families end up in the WIC office, too.

[Louise Ure]

Wonderful backstory, Elizabeth (and MJ). But oh, how I wish you'd titled the book The Virgin of Planned Parenthood!

Louise

[Ericka Gray]

I first became aware of Elizabeth Letts' at the local book consignment shop. I first read Quality of Care which to me was a good story but if your in the medical field it kind of read like a medical text with some story thrown in. I enjoyed it well enough and went back to get her next one which I happened to remember was there.I must say that this time the story writing seemed more formed and flowed better. The fact that I live in Kennett tickled me and I got the homey feeling when I could actually picture a lot of the familiar goings on. My one complaint about this story is the disservice that Ms. Letts does to LPN's every where. In the story the clinic is described as needing money(what clinic doesn't) and at first they started out with nurses (read RN) but the RN's found they could make more money elsewhere(so could the lpn's if your being factual) so they had to get an LPN. As a Licensed Practical NURSE I take offense to the fact that a person in the field would describe us as glorified nurses aides. I know that RN's have more education but LPN's certainly get more clinical experience. LPN's have come a long way. Our education is way more advanced then in the days of learn on the Job. LPN's are the eyes and ears of the MD's in long term care facilities. We are trained in many areas so we are flexible and adaptable. We do med administration both oral (PO) and injections both subcutaneous and intramuscular along with administering IV's. We do a very large array of things in many different fields. Most important of all though is our training in nursing assessment and the long hours we put in on our feet caring for people. If that is not a nurse then I don't know what is.

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