A century-old family mystery — and 2 shipwrecks — inspired this Utah author's debut novel

SALT LAKE CITY — Since she was a child, Claire Carusillo has been haunted by a piece of her family history: Not just one, but two of her ancestors were involved in shipwrecks.

First her great-great-grandmother, Fanny Mounsey, was on a ship that sank on its way to England in 1914. Then, just a year later, Fanny's daughter, Sarah, was on the infamous Lusitania, which sank when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. But, miraculously, Sarah survived — and, in a mysterious turn of events, it seemed possible that Fanny had, too.

"The shipwrecks were something that loomed really large in my mind as a child," Carusillo told the Deseret News. "I thought that was the most haunting story I'd ever heard."

There was more to Fanny and Sarah's story, though, which raised questions for Carusillo throughout her life. And it was in an attempt to explore these questions that she ended up writing her first novel, "The Responsible Party."

Writing the novel — which jumps back and forth in time between a fictionalized version of Fanny and Sarah's story and a modern narrator, also named Claire Carusillo — was a 10-year process. During part of that time, she and her partner, Galen DeKemper, also worked together to open Storyboard, a combination bookstore, skateboarding store and coffee shop in Midway, Utah.

And this week, Carusillo saw the culmination of her efforts when she celebrated the release of "The Responsible Party" with a community party at Storyboard. The store officially opened earlier this summer, and Carusillo called the response to the book release party "the most overwhelming thing in the world to me."

"The amount of time that I've waited for this book to be in the world has been many, many years of my life," Carusillo said. "So it's still kind of sinking in."

Merging truth and fiction (and shipwrecks) in 'The Responsible Party'

Fanny Mounsey's story didn't end after that 1914 shipwreck. The reason that her daughter Sarah was on the ill-fated Lusitania a year later was that their family had received the startling news that a woman had washed up at an almshouse in Liverpool — and even though she had given her name as Kate Fitzgerald, she had been mumbling the name Fanny Mounsey.

So Sarah set off from Chicago with her father and husband to investigate this mysterious woman. Unfortunately, neither of the men survived the Lusitania. But Sarah did — and she trudged ahead to that almshouse in Liverpool to meet Kate.

It was here that truth and fiction diverged in "The Responsible Party." In reality, Sarah is unconvinced by Kate Fitzgerald and returns to Chicago alone. But the novel gives the mother and daughter a different ending.

"Even as a little kid, I always knew parts of this story didn't quite add up for me," Carusillo said. "And I never really quite understood, like, who this woman Kate Fitzgerald was that was mumbling in a Liverpudlian almshouse or whatever. So a lot of this book, I had to go into it with a mind frame of working through real-life problems with fictional solutions."

Carusillo said she used that same mindset on a smaller scale while writing the novel's present-day timeline, which follows another mother-daughter relationship between the narrator, Claire, and her mother, Kath. Claire and Kath find themselves embroiled in an unsolved murder mystery from the '70s, which leads to Kath sharing with Claire the story of her own life as well as the story of Fanny and Sarah — who, in the novel's version of events, end up returning to the U.S. and launching a career in vaudeville.

Carusillo shares a name and certain biographical details (including a former career as a beauty writer) with her narrator, but she did change the names of Claire's parents. She said that her own parents and siblings have been supportive of the novel, including attending the book launch at Storyboard earlier this week.

"This is ultimately a book about a mother and a daughter, but ... there's a lot about being a sister or being an ancestor from people who are obsessed with securing a legacy for themselves," Carusillo said. "And even though this book is sort of wacky and is primarily supposed to be like a comedic novel, I do hope that the lessons that the narrator learns can speak to my actual feelings about the strength of the relationships that I have in my own life."

Balancing a bookstore and a book deal

"The Responsible Party" has been a work in progress for Carusillo for the past 10 years, ever since she was a 25-year-old grad student. Through revisions and the ups and downs of the publishing world, Carusillo kept working on the novel.

Then, about two years ago, Carusillo and her partner, DeKemper, moved from New York City to rural Midway, Utah, where they purchased a building to begin their dream of opening a combined bookstore, skateboarding store and coffee shop. The building, which had previously been a bakery and coffee shop, had a separate building for baking in the back, and Carusillo and DeKemper planned to immediately begin renovating that building to turn it into a small house for themselves.

It was a massive undertaking — and then, about a month or two after buying the building, Carusillo said she received a book deal from Henry Holt & Co., a subsidiary of Macmillan.

It was a challenge balancing the work of renovating both the house and the store with the edits and other work necessary to prepare "The Responsible Party" for publication. But after two years (and "a bit of a nervous breakdown" last summer, Carusillo said), both the store and the novel have made their way into the world.

Storyboard opened in June, just in time to host the launch party for "The Responsible Party" earlier this week, where Carusillo read from the novel and a band performed. She guessed that around 170 people attended, and she was grateful for the support.

"It was honestly like the most overwhelming thing in the world to me," she said. "We've only been open eight weeks ... and the amount of people that like came out to a bookstore/skate shop on a Monday night for a book reading, ... it was like such a special thing to me, because these people were strangers to me maybe a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago. And it really made me feel affirmed in what we're trying to do here."

Why open a bookstore/skateboarding shop?

Carusillo called her partner, DeKemper, "the biggest reader I've ever met," and he is also a skater. He taught her some of the basics of skateboarding when they met, and she said she learned through him that reading and skateboarding are surprisingly similar in some ways.

"They require like a real mental focus," Carusillo said. "And they're activities that you can and should do alone, because it's about your body and mind. And yet, when you have people around you that are like-minded that are doing the same thing, it makes the experience all the better."

For that reason, she and DeKemper wanted to open a store that could serve as what she calls a "third place," a space outside of home and work where people can hang out, which she says is lacking in many towns and cities across the country today.

"We know people love hanging out in bookstores, people love hanging out in coffee shops, and, you know, the skate shop culture is something that I didn't get into until I was an adult, but that's also a place where people like hanging out. So we thought, like, why not try combining the three?"

So far, she said, the response from the community has been positive, and they even have regulars coming into the store already.

"It's like been totally unexpected and unbelievable, especially because we took so long to open," she said. "We're feeling so supported. So it's been an amazing thing to see."

Though Carusillo hopes that Storyboard becomes an attraction for tourists and visitors from outside of Midway, she said that she primarily hopes that it will serve as a space for the local community. Her eyes were opened even more to the support of the community after the launch event for "The Responsible Party" earlier this week.

"We sell these hats and T-shirts that sort of tongue-in-cheek say, 'Midway, Utah, the cultural center of the universe,'" she said. "And that was like, kind of a joke, you know, it's like a rural community in some ways." But after seeing the response to the event, she said, "That was really like, oh ... maybe this is the cultural center of the world."

Related topics