While I grew up hearing some general family lore about Felix and Nancy, most of what I know of my great grandfather comes from three of his original journals, and a collection of hundreds of letters sent by Nancy’s grateful recipients. Everyone who had known Felix was dead by the time I was old enough to appreciate his story, so as a kid I would crawl into the attic and pore over Felix’s journal entries, or read the letters people had sent him. I wanted to understand the ancestor who would undertake such an interesting life’s work. And I wanted to inhabit the bygone world where large groups of people gathered after dinner to listen to Felix recite passages from Nancy instead of watching television, and where Nancy’s recipients wrote letters of thanks instead of emails.
The key to answering these questions lay in a pile of dusty books and papers. Thus began my fascination with the archive. Ultimately Taking Leave of Nancy is a case study for distilling a large archive of letters, journals, and personal interviews into a series of parallel narratives that combine to give compelling insight into the character of the people involved.