Why write about the Lady in White

The book is coming out tomorrow, October 5th! Over a year of work and collaboration has lead to this moment and it always feels unreal when it arrives.

I also always feel like there is something unsaid by the time release day is over, something I struggle to convey well after the excitement of our subject has settled down, and we’re looking for new things to write about. This year, I’m trying to get ahead of it. If I can, because writing about this legend and reading and editing the work of my co-authors felt somewhat serendipitous.

The Lady in White felt like the proper guide for 2020, when we first conceived of writing about her. She belong to no single country or culture. She is isolated, unable to reach her home, to connect with people, and completely alone in the dark. As authors we could do anything with the stories of her legends, but each author, independently came to her from an aspect of grief.

Grief for a lost loved one, the end of a relationship, grief over lost freedom, over a broken past, an uncertain future. Grief comes in many forms and manifests in many ways, and as a world, we saw all of those ways unfold both publicly and privately in 2020.

We all felt the struggle of trying to reach some place that felt like home again, that was now forever out of our reach.

This isn’t why we chose the Lady in White as our subject initially, at least not consciously. I personally was hoping to crank out a killer ghost story, but it is what she came to mean to us. Loss. Disillusion. Grief.

But also finding new connections, new ways.

Hope?

We speculated on the origins of the Lady in White, the Vanishing Hitchhiker, and we found her stories were rooted in loss, but blossomed into strength, love and redemption.

There can be no shadows without light.

And there is hope in the Lady in White.

So there must be hope for all of us as well.

I hope you enjoy our most recently collection of utter speculation, and thank you so much for your support.

-LCWA