— Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (p. 155)

I do not fully understand why my grandma Simone was targeted by Kesey for public humiliation. Her depiction in the book feels like a violent response as there was no attempt by Kesey to shield her personal identity. Given the context of living in the small town of Florence, Oregon where reputation is everything, I cannot shake the feeling that this was dark and personal. Sometimes a Great Notion was published in 1964. At the time she had not yet turned 40 years old, yet she had lived through more misfortune than anyone should have to endure – Wartime evacuations, air raids, Nazi occupation, leaving her country, culture shock, extreme poverty, multiple divorces, and losing a child to meningitis. Through all of this, she was always kind and never knew a stranger.

I appreciate all of you that are supporting my Substack and helping me to piece together some of our local history. Thank you to my first batch of paid subscribers. I am touched that my former teachers, classmates and extended family have blindly chosen to support me in this endeavor.

Subscribe now

“Her name was Simone and she was French. After marrying a paratrooper in 1945 she had come to Oregon, like a character strayed from the pages of de Maupassant. She hadn’t seen her husband since he’d disappeared without so much as a parting Geronimo of farewell seven years ago, leaving her a mortgaged car, a down-payment washer and dryer, and five children owned largely by the hospital.”

— Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (p. 155)

1. Character Compilation or Character Assassination?

Kesey drew from the people he knew along Oregon’s central coast while creating the fictional town of Wakonda. Among them was my grandmother—a French war bride who crossed an ocean after World War II to join her first love and build a new life in Oregon. She was one of the people whose lives shaped the world Kesey immortalized in fiction.

I was in my early thirties when I learned that she was a named character in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. This is more than family lore. The description of her would lead anyone to believe Kesey was writing about Simone Campbell. He changed some aspects of her description. For example, my grandfather was stationed in Paris as a military policeman, not a paratrooper. He abandoned my grandmother with six kids, not five. It’s true that he never paid child support and putting food on the table was a struggle. After my grandma threw my grandpa out of the house, she was in a precarious situation. She was not a US citizen and she could barely speak English. Her mother-in-law had tried unsuccessfully on at least three occasions to remove the children from her care, claiming that she was an unfit mother. Her situation was so dire that her own mother Yvonne, my namesake, traveled from Paris to help her get on her feet and file for divorce. The photo below was taken during her visit.

This newsletter is my attempt to tell her story and uncover the reason why Ken Kesey chose to use her real name and backstory. Did this public humiliation stem from something dark and personal? Did they meet at Andy’s Tavern? My grandfather was a logger, did Kesey know him? Why Simone? Of all the people Kesey met who eventually became characters in this book, why did he choose to keep her name? A minor character for sure, but also a real woman struggling to survive.

The initial description of Simone continues like this:

“Though slightly embittered by the treachery, she had nevertheless managed to keep her head above water by keeping her buoyant little body under the covers, sleeping from charitable bed to bed with beneficent logger after logger.”

— Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (p. 155)

2. Uncovering the Past

Beyond Wakonda is where I will attempt to uncover why Kesey publicly humiliated my grandmother by characterizing her as a “muffin of misfortune” with loose morals. There are two sides to every story, and in this case, a story within a story.

The historical novel will take shape from her real life experiences that have been told to me and other family members over the years. These stories are corroborated by documentation that was left behind in family records and other historical sources. This is not a memoir, but rather a reimagined story of a woman loved by her family and friends, and immortalized through literature.

The novel begins around the time Simone and her younger siblings were evacuated from Paris — shortly before the Nazi’s seized control. Subscribers will watch the novel unfold chapter by chapter while following the historical research behind every scene. I’ll share archival discoveries, family photographs, interviews, maps, forgotten local history, writing decisions, and the moments when the historical record challenges the story I thought I was writing.