The Brooklyn Bridge novel

In the winter of 2010, I first heard about Isambard Kingdom Brunel--a kick-ass Victorian civil engineer with an equally kick-ass name. In the 1830s, 40s and 50s he constructed bridges and railways across England, designed the largest ship in the world, and assisted his father with the first tunnel under the Thames (or any river, for that matter.) This rather expensive tunnel was initially for pedestrians and tourists, and, of course, soon became home to a Dickensian cast of peddlers, pickpockets, and prostitutes. I thought, "Hey, that seems like an interesting setting for a play." But my uncle, Tim, reminded me about another fascinating sub-fluvial environment: the caissons beneath the bed of the East River during the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Ah, now this had real potential.

Of course, as I often did at that time, I approached the subject as a play, and began to toy around with dialogue and just how exactly to produce this unusual space with a stage set. As I listened to David McCullough's comprehensive history of the project, The Great Bridge, I focused on my potential protagonists--chief engineer Washington Roebling, and his immigrant workers--at one of the most critical times in the entire 14-years of the construction: the spring of 1872 when workers started dying of the bends just as the foundations of the bridge's final tower is nearing bedrock. Allow me to unpack that for you.

a cassion cross-section

Inside an enormous wooden box the size of a city block, the workers excavated the riverbed--hauling rock, gravel, and sand in dank, hot, and humid conditions--almost entirely by hand. (They did actually develop some ingenious methods of transporting the material to the surface, but the excavating was done with picks and shovels ... and sometimes dynamite.) The box, or cassion, was filled with fresh but compressed air to allow the workers to breathe as well as to support the box against the weight of the river, riverbed, and the enormous granite tower being constructed simultaneously on top of it. If they emerged from these pits without allowing their bodies to return to normal pressure slowly, then gases, like nitrogen, that were dissolved in their bodies in the high pressure zone would form bubbles in their joints rather than dissipate harmlessly. These bubbles often cause pain when trapped in the joints, rashes if within the skin, and paralysis and other neurological issues if they should affect the spinal chord. Seemingly healthy workers died days after recovering from these pains, and even Washington Roebling, due to the many hours he endured while personally supervising the work in the caisson, succumbed to these attacks several times until extensive nerve damage prevented him from even leaving his home, let alone visiting his bridge. But before he was debilitated, he had to decide if the digging would continue until it reached a stable foundation of bedrock while putting the lives of the workers who would accomplish this task in peril. Quite the dramatic dilemma, huh? Spoiler alert: Roebling thought the compacted sand they were excavating at that time to be sufficiently solid, and halted the descent a few feet above the rock. As it turns out, Roebling made the right call: the bridge you see today is still just as stable and structurally secure as it was when it opened in 1883.

While this is fascinating, and the characters would be interesting, I'm not sure this could be a truly compelling story on stage--and that what good plays usually require. Besides, there's so much outside of those few scenes that couldn't be properly explored, e.g. the culture of 1870s New York. And to include all of that, this story had to be a novel or movie. And with my student loans piling, I thought a novel might just be the cheapest way to potentially secure a little extra income (and actually put that degree to use.) And considering that I know someone who knows people in the children's book world, this novel would feature a teenage protagonist and be directed toward a young adult audience. So I did more research and began to write bits of scenes during lunch breaks. But like most of my projects over the past few years, my commitment dwindled well short of completion. However, it never left the back of mind; I continued compiling sources and noting little details for the day when I finally set my self to writing the novel I'm more prepared and eager to write than anything else.

On Monday, I began to renew my grasp on this novel project. As it turns out I had a lot of ideas back in 2010. I filled a thick little journal with prose, as well as some research notes, plot ideas, timelines, character backgrounds, and sources to consult. It's kind of great not having to start from square one; it's like a baker beginning with a sourdough starter, or biga: there's already a core of flavor that can be expanded and enriched, fashioned and formalized (or baked in this analogy) into my final product. I just need to add more flour, let it rise, and knead, knead, knead (aka edit.) Seems like if this writing stuff never pans out I may have to check out a baking career. Ugh, but those hours ...

Back to the story. I have pages of material, and more details and ideas to flesh out, but then there's everything new I have yet to create. This, needless to say, is a very exciting period. Its especially fun to imagine walking the streets of 1872 New York; it's challenging, but this does add an intriguing new dimension to being in the contemporary city. This week and next I will be reviewing my sources and gathering new ones, while also considering the creative construction/destruction to come. Currently, my text is organized by subject or character, and are only loosely arranged in their narrative sense. There a still many (MANY) decisions to come, and many of them elemental: point of view and narrative voice, structure and style, and whether to include ancillary features like quotations, maps, and the so-called "crap at the front/back". I might just be a fraction of the way toward completing this and already it's difficult to unite the whole thing in my head.