NORWAY — Maine author Jennifer Wixson will sign copies of her just-released novel, “The Songbird of Sovereign,”  at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 19, at a publication kickoff event hosted by the Norway Memorial Library.

“Songbird” is the third book in her series of rural Maine novels and is set in the 1940s at Windmere, a fictitious sanatorium for the treatment of TB, which is based upon the former Western Maine Sanatorium in Hebron

At the event, Wixson will talk about “san life” as well as former Norway music teacher Bess Klain, who was the inspiration for her character Miss Hastings. Light refreshments will be served and autographed copies of the book will be available for purchase.

The novel is actually a prequel to the other two books in Wixson’s four-novel series, and moves back and forth between the 1940s and the present day as the main character, 88-year-old Miss Hastings, recalls her childhood at Windmere. In August 1941, when she is 16, Jana Hastings, a musical prodigy then performing on the stages of New York as The Songbird of Sovereign, finds her career cut short by TB. She’s sent to Windmere in central Maine to recover. At Windmere various events – including first love, first loss, and the thundering approach of World War II – catapult the self-centered teenager into mature womanhood.

Wixson spent months researching “san life”—as so-called “lungers” (TB sufferers) described their daily life at the Western Maine Sanatorium. Before the advent of antibiotics those who contracted TB, a highly infectious disease, were isolated from the general population and treated at three sanatoriums in Maine (the Central Maine Sanatorium in Fairfield and the Northern Maine Sanatorium in Presque Isle being the other two). “I want my readers to feel as though they’re at Windmere with Jana,” Wixson says. “To make that work I needed to get a good understanding of the patient’s daily life at the sanatorium. I relied heavily upon the Maine Memory Network, which has wonderful photographs and stories of San Life at the Western Maine Sanatorium.”

The “fresh air” concept of the sanatorium evolved in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, and quickly became popular in the United States in the early 20th century. Initially, sanatoriums were run by such charitable aid associations as the Maine State Sanatorium Association, which opened the facility in Hebron in 1904, then called the Maine State Sanatorium.

The Maine State Sanatorium was one of the earliest TB treatment facilities in the nation. Dr. Estes Nichols served as its first medical director. The Maine State and later Western Maine Sanatorium accepted only those patients whose outcomes looked promising, however, so late-stage cases were often without hope until the state took over the responsibility for the care of TB sufferers in 1915 and opened the other two sanatoriums. Antibiotics for the treatment of TB were discovered in 1946, and by 1970 sanatoriums in the United States were all but extinct. The Western Maine Sanatorium closed its doors in 1959 and the Central Maine Sanatorium, the last to close, was shuttered in 1969.

Many Maine families – including Wixson’s own – had members who were treated at one of the three state sanatoriums. Patients were at the facilities for months – sometimes years – and thus romances often developed. “My great-uncle met his wife at the Central Maine Sanatorium in Fairfield,” says Wixson. “I always thought it was quite romantic when I was a child. The love story that I tell in Songbird between Jana and Henry is certainly something that could have happened at Windmere.”

 For those who can’t make it to the publication event Books ‘N Things (430 Main St., Norway) will also carry autographed copies of Songbird. For more information on the publication event contact the Norway Library at 743-5309 or [email protected]. For more information on Wixson’s Sovereign Series of Maine-based novels visit www.TheSovereignSeries.com

 Maine farmer, author, and itinerant Quaker minister, Jennifer Wixson writes from her home in Troy where she and her husband raise Scottish Highland cattle.

An interview with the late Norway music teacher Bess Klain done as part of the Oxford Hills Oral History Project is being re-mastered on CD to coincide with the release of Jennifer Wixson’s newest novel, “The Songbird of Sovereign.”  Klein, a long-time Wixon family friend, was an inspiration for and mentor to the author, who fashioned the title character of Miss Hastings after the Norway musician.

“I first had Bess as a music teacher in fourth grade, and then later I came to know her and love her as a personal friend when I lived with my grandmother Winona Palmer in the ’70s and ’80s,” Wixson says. “Bess was a big supporter of my writing. She always told me I was going to do great things someday. Of course, she never suspected I was going to borrow her personality for a character in one of my novels!”

The oral history interview with Klain (and Vera Emerson) was taped in 1990, when the musician was 88-years-old—the same age as Miss Hastings in The Songbird of Sovereign. In addition to Klain’s reminiscences of the past and her thoughts about teachers and children, the re-mastered CD—entitled “God Has Been Good To Me”—contains songs that Klain plays (and occasionally sings) on her Steinway grand piano. Klain was awarded the Steinway, which belonged to the famous opera singer Madame Scalar (wife of the author C.A. Stephens) for her dedication to music and children. Upon her death, Klain willed her piano to the Norway Universalist Church where it’s used Sundays when church is in session by choir director and popular singer/songwriter Heather Pierson.

Five dollars from the sale of every copy of “God Has Been Good To Me” will be donated to the Norway Universalist-Unitarian Church, which is in the middle of a capital fund raising campaign. The CD will be available at the kick-off publication event for The Songbird of Sovereign,  July 19 at the Norway Memorial Library and also at www.TheSovereignSeries.com. For more information contact: [email protected].