Author Jaclyn Fowler holds a copy of her book in Abide Coffeehouse in downtown Wilkes-Barre, as charming a place as you’ll ever find for an interview.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Local author pens historical novel about Molly Maguires
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Author Jaclyn Fowler holds a copy of her book in Abide Coffeehouse in downtown Wilkes-Barre, as charming a place as you’ll ever find for an interview.
When author Jaclyn Fowler was growing up in Delano, Schuylkill County, her father and namesake, Jack Fowler, took her to visit a cemetery in Tamaqua.
She remembers being about 8 years old, entering the cemetery’s front gate and then walking and walking, past all the tombstones. Dad and daughter trudged through the whole place, and exited by the back gate.
But why hadn’t they stopped at any of the graves inside the cemetery?
The answer lay outside its hallowed ground, where Jack Kehoe, a tavern owner and reputed leader of the secretive Molly Maguires, had been buried after he was convicted of murder, excommunicated by the Archbishop of Philadelphia, and hanged on Dec. 18, 1878 in Pottsville.
Kehoe had been falsely accused and convicted, Jack Fowler told his daughter, but in the late 1800s everyone from the Coal & Iron Police to the local newspapers to the Catholic church was influenced by Franklin B. Gowen, the anti-union owner of the Franklin & Reading Railroad, who wanted Kehoe eliminated.
Jaclyn Fowler never forgot her early introduction to Jack Kehoe, who later received a posthumous “pardon” from Gov. Milton Shapp, and her book “Jack: The Almost True Story of the Molly Maguires” has recently been published by Europe Books.
“I spent two years in the Schuylkill County Historical Society,” Fowler said, remembering her excitement when she found a letter Kehoe had written to Pennsylvania Governor John Hartranft “crammed into the bottom of a drawer.”
She also remembers with a shudder how the museum curator showed her the hangman’s noose that had slipped during the final minutes of Kehoe’s life. The rope dug into his eye and prolonged his suffering.
“Jack” is classified as a historical novel, with much of it based on records and court transcripts and some of it based on imagination. “It’s plausible,” she said that Kehoe might have encountered Sophia Coxe, the kind-hearted wife of mine owner Eckley Coxe, as he does in her story.
One thing she’s sure about is that Pinkerton detective James McParland, sent by Franklin Gowen to go undercover to gather information against the Molly Maguires, presented himself as an uncouth and not very clean drunkard — certainly different from the character portrayed by Richard Harris in the 1970 movie version of “The Molly Maguires.”
The movie character was charming enough to have a love interest, but as Fowler pointed out, “That’s Hollywood.”
The story she wrote is no doubt more realistic, and she sees it as paying tribute to the miners who struggled against a rigged system, calling them “men of courage … they didn’t have political power or economic power, but they believed in humanity. It’s a beautiful story of bravery in the face of unequal justice.”
“I wrote it for my dad,” Fowler said, noting he was able to read her first draft before he died, and approved of everything except one character — “the prostitute I created.”
“I don’t think he wanted me to know such things existed,” she said with a gentle laugh.
When Fowler served several years as vice president/academic head of school at MMI in Freeland, a fringe benefit was being able to live in the house where Sophia Coxe once lived.
“I feel she’s like a kindred spirit,” Fowler said of the woman who became known as the “Angel of the Anthracite” because of her kindness in helping to establish a hospital and distributing toys to miners’ children.
After she left MMI Fowler taught English at Canadian University Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and also ran a school for younger children with special needs. Fowler has been working on her memoirs of time spent in the Middle East, where her son, Collin, now 25, graduated from high school, and her daughter, Katlyn, now 29, visited from college.
Now chair of the English Department at American Public University System, Fowler is author of several books and short stories. Her next book, yet to be published, is about the 1922 murder of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins.
Currently a resident of Wilkes-Barre, Fowler earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Wilkes University and holds a doctorate from Penn State. Her undergraduate degree from Franklin & Marshall was in government and Russian.
“I wanted to be a spy,” she said with a laugh.
How do we know you didn’t become one? a reporter asked.
“If I had,” Fowler said, “I would speak better Russian.”