Prologue

My name is Lucy Redfield and I am 83 years of age. Where I was born exactly is unimportant --the details of my life are irrelevant to this story -- but I have spent most of my years living here in the quiet, rural landscape of Winterset, Iowa. The story I am going to tell you is something Hollywood would love to make a movie out of. In fact, they tried. But that glorious film did not tell the whole story of Francesca Johnson; nor did it fully tell us how remarkable she was.

Francesca came to my door for the first time in September 1965, offering me a yellow cream cake with butter-cream frosting. At first, I was suspicious of this slender, auburn-haired woman with a European accent appearing out of the blue on my doorstep, and, given the circumstances leading up to why she called on me in the first place, I was reluctant to receive this stranger into my home. But I did, and almost instantly we became inseparable. We eventually got used to the townsfolk whispering about the two of us and our relationship, but it grew tiresome to worry about their gossip. Didn't they have better things to do than stand around blathering about old ladies out for a shopping spree in Des Moines? This was small town Iowa, so I guess we were singled out like criminals for living our lives a certain way. Anyway, Francesca and I were firm friends for thirty years, and we came to know all of each other's secrets.

Before Francesca died in 1995, she let me read three journals she had written, all of them describing the unbelievable life she experienced during four hot days in the summer of 1965. This secret, which I alone protected for many years, formed the basis of our friendship, but as I was soon to discover, there was so much more to Francesca than met the eye. In addition to reading every detail of her journals whilst sipping copious amounts of brandy by the fireside, I also came to know all about this farmer's wife with a teaching certificate who loved the music of Maria Callas, knew the poetry of W.B. Yeats by heart, and who, ultimately, sacrificed her own hopes and dreams for the sake of her children.

You may ask why I have chosen to write this book now that Francesca is not here to defend herself. I will just say this: she wanted this story to be told, and I am respecting her wishes. When it became known that she did not in fact wish for her remains to be interred with her husband in the family plot at Cemetery Hills, it was the talk of the town, her husband Richard's family having lived in Iowa in that very farmhouse for over a hundred years. And talk they certainly did. But it is out of that idle gossip that this book found its gravitas: Francesca has become an influential role model for those romantics amongst us who continue to dream passionately. As a young girl growing up on the East coast of Italy, Francesca dreamt often. And even though her life didn't turn out the way she wanted it to, she lived with enormous passion and "quiet desperation," eventually accepting that the perfect lover she had longed for all of her life would never again return to her farmhouse in Madison County.

This, for the first time, is the real story of Francesca Johnson...

Reflections of Winterset

The blogger is currently working on a biography of Francesca Johnson, farm wife from Iowa, in collaboration with Francesca's best friend Lucy Redfield. The biography will be released in weekly instalments via this blog and then published as a book. The working title of the book is Getting off the Train Because it Looked Pretty: The Life and Passion of Francesca Johnson. Stay tuned for the first instalment...