The Suicide Table
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The Suicide Table is a formally experimental novel composed of narrative, primary source material, and fictionalized historical accounts. It opens in present-day Reno, Nevada, and follows Nellie, a historian by training. It's not just her work that is rooted in the past. She avoids as many aspects of modernity as she can, dressing in vintage clothing and carrying around a flip phone that she rarely charges. In hopes of getting a grant from a historical preservation society, she pitches a project about women who lived through the 19th-century mining bonanza in Virginia City, Nevada. Soon, her focus narrows on Julia Bulette, a beloved historical figure and local legend, whose fictionalized diary entries appear early in the novel to form a narrative thread of their own. The novel concludes with Nellie's discovery of the diary, which had been secreted away in the famed Delta Saloon Suicide Table that her grandfather acquired at his pawn shop after the saloon-turned-casino went out of business. In conversation with the Western novel tradition that influenced its creation, the novel explores points of intersection between historical records, folklore, and fictional stories.
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Ph. D.