Q&A with Lori Rohda

Lori Rohda is the author of the new novel The Mill of Lost Dreams. A former assistant dean of students at Boston University and management consultant, she lives in Boston and in Whistler, British Columbia.

Q: You write that you originally wanted to tell your grandmother’s story. How did that idea develop into The Mill of Lost Dreams?

A: At first, I wanted to write about Annie (my grandmother) as a way to remember and honor her; not simply to describe our relationship but to learn about her life before me since she was 30 when I was born. I was curious about the people and events that shaped her life – as she had shaped mine.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I had always known that Annie was an orphan and ran away the day after her 11th birthday to find a job in one of the textile mills along the river.

But I knew nothing about textile manufacturing, so I started reading the historical accounts of the city and what drew that industry to Fall River, Massachusetts (it was the largest textile manufacturing center in America by 1878). The next step was to learn about the actual processes and the machinery required to turn 450-pound bales of cotton into cloth.

But, in the end, I was most curious about the people who toiled in these mills – the expressionless men, women, and children in the historical photographs I’d viewed. Who were they? Where did they come from? What were their lives like? What was Annie’s life like as a “mill girl”?  What I learned about them changed the story I would later write and became The Mill of Lost Dreams.

In a word, they were immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1847 and 1915.

Regardless of where they came from, they were people who had already endured the kind of heart-breaking losses and humiliating conditions that crush the human spirit – which helped me understand why so many were willing to risk everything, including their lives and the lives of their children, for the chance of a better life.

Most came on ships where entire families were assigned to single, straw-covered platforms in the windowless, foul-smelling steerage decks, crammed together like kernels of corn on cobs. In such unhygienic conditions, serious diseases like cholera and dysentery spread swiftly, killing many whose bodies were then dumped overboard.

I surmised that after such long and dangerous journeys, immigrants were probably relieved to accept the jobs and housing offered by mill agents whose sole purpose was to troll the docks and railway stations recruiting human grist for the mills.

Memoirs by “mill girls” detailed the cruel and dangerous working conditions, the shameful, substandard housing and the unkindness of others. They reported having to stand at or bend over their machines for 10 to 12 hours a day, which caused such painful swelling in their ankles and feet that most worked barefoot or wore large boots.

Similarly, according to the same authors, the cacophony of hundreds of metal looms running simultaneously left many of them with hearing loss, blinding headaches and, in some cases, deafness – helping me understand why in so many historical pictures the women and girls at their looms had cotton stuffed into their ears.

And the machines were dangerous, moving so terrifyingly fast that hair, sleeves, and hands were regularly snagged and pulled into the machines.

But the silent killer was the air. Because the thin cotton threads broke when dry, water was sprayed by overhead nozzles to keep the air moist and the windows were kept closed so work rooms were warm, humid and filled with floating cotton lint which resulted, eventually, in a fatal respiratory disease which doctors called “brown lung.”

The historical research and the wretched biographical accounts left me feeling ashamed and deeply disturbed. I realized that I couldn’t just tell my grandmother’s story (whose parents were believed to be have immigrated from Ireland) without telling the bigger story about the lives of the thousands of other immigrants who worked in textile mills.  

As a psychologist, I believe that sometimes you learn something or see something and your life can never be the same because the truth doesn’t always set you free.

Q: What do you think the book says about the history of immigration to the United States?

A: The Mill of Lost Dreams not only paints a picture of the perilous process of immigration but also describes the cruelty, discrimination, and dangers immigrants faced in the new world.

Few would ever find the better lives they risked everything for. I wonder what the human cost of all these lost dreams is. What happens to people when they cannot build the lives they dreamed about or when they realize that, despite their sacrifices, their new lives are not terribly different from the lives they left behind.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

A: It is utterly shameful that the treatment of immigrants from the time period described in The Mill of Lost Dreams until today continues to be indecent and inhumane.

Last year we all watched the television coverage of masses of people desperately trying to escape their homelands.

We all saw the heart-breaking photographs of people crammed into or clinging onto small boats begging for help; we turned away from the photographs of the dead bodies of children washing up on beaches and inconsolable toddlers being forcefully separated from their parents.

I want readers to understand that this is our legacy – as a country and as a people. We need to pay attention to and care about the human consequences of the actions we have, and are, taking. I hope readers do both.

Q: What are you working on now? 

A: My book is being released on Aug. 11 and I am focused on marketing strategies.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb