Ready for a close-up

Words may be the steak of a book, but images add sizzle.

I recently finished writing the first half of my book, Welcome to Eureka Springs: The I-Sh*t-You-Not History of America’s Quirkiest Town.

Natural beauty, historic architecture, and a destination arts scene mean that the story of Eureka Springs has to be shown as much as told. I’m now wrestling with Photoshop to prepare fifty-two photographs for those thirty chapters.

You don’t have to wait for my book to peek into the town’s past. I picked up several collections from the Eureka Springs Historical Museum.

Eureka Springs: A Pictorial History features large-format photos from the town’s early history.

Kay Marnon Danielson’s Images of America: Eureka Springs, Arkansas has more than a hundred pages of photos from the same era, with little overlap. Many of these came from family albums.

Susan Schaefer’s Postcards of the Past is a little harder to find. It views Eureka’s history through the lens of vintage postcards.

The photo on this post shows St. Louis business mogul Richard Kerens standing on the steps of his private rail car. A private rail car! Swank!

What does Kerens have to do with Eureka Springs – and Indiana Jones? I’ll read that chapter of my book at this month’s Poetluck. Come and enjoy good food, company, and stories next Thursday evening at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow.

The next stage of the book will be more fun, so I gotta get back to those photos.