This is the fifth week that the beautiful creative nonfiction journal Broad Street magazine has published one of the pieces from my chapbook Kin Types along with documents and photographs that helped me piece together these old family stories.
This week is about Louise Noffke’s death and the family history (including domestic violence) that surrounded that tragic event. Read it at Family Laundry: “Half-Naked Woman Found Dead,” by Luanne Castle
Louise was buried with her husband Charles Noffke, my great-grandmother’s brother. The “together forever” headstone is a bit ironic considering one of the newspaper articles that I uncovered.
This next is the headstone of the daughter of Louise and Charles. She is also mentioned in the Broad Street article.
The first feature article is “Family Laundry: “An Account of a Poor Oil Stove Bought off Dutch Pete,” by Luanne Castle”
The second feature article is Family Laundry 2: “What Came Between A Woman and Her Duties” by Luanne Castle
The third feature article is: Family Laundry: “More Burials” by Luanne Castle
The fourth is: Family Laundry: “The Weight of Smoke” by Luanne Castle
An introduction to the series can be found here. SERIES INTRODUCTION
The Family Kalamazoo 
Reblogged this on Luanne Castle's Writer Site and commented:
Some of my relatives whose lives I wrote about in my chapbook Kin Types were heroic, but for week five at BROAD STREET magazine, I discuss the research for family history that is not heroic. Instead, I found it to be devastating.
Indigestion seems such a ridiculously unlikely cause of death, participylsrlybin the circumstances. If ever a time machine would be useful, it’s for unravelling this mystery.
I need a time machine!!! I feel that we are so close to getting one :). Isn’t that crazy that it says indigestion?!!!
It is one of the strangest and most unlikely CODs I’ve ever seen. I just can’t imagine how the coroner could have reached that conclusion.
… or even “particularly in” 😬
Such a sad and gruesome story. I do remember this one well. But I didn’t know the back story of how you pieced it all together.
Yeah, it’s a pretty unforgettable story!
What a strange and sad story, Luanne!
Congratulations on your publications! It’s a sad and mysterious story and I’m delighted that you’re pursuing it. Alcoholism is such a deadly disease. It runs through my family too. In my family people are self-destructive (ultimately), but there is a long history of psychological abuse. I’m using these “themes” in my new novel. It’s hard work to uncover the past, isn’t it?
I couldn’t help noticing the styles of those times. Those puffy dresses the girls wore at graduation remind me of the time I commented to my teen aged daughter the the looks of current teenagers, with their tattoos and piercings, were so unflattering. Her answer: “It doesn’t matter whether its flattering. It matters that you feel one of them.”
Hahaha! She had a good answer. And now they aren’t very flattering–then or now.