Beneath the famous monuments of Chicago's most storied cemetery lie thousands of untold stories - and Adam Selzer, longtime Graceland tour guide and Chicago historian, has spent years ucovering them.
This second volume ventures deeper into the stories and secrets of a city, many of which have slipped through the cracks of history: William Bradshaw Egan, the Falstaffian Irish gardener who helped give Chicago its motto and its trees; Celia Wallace, the "Diamond Queen" whose scandals kept the rumor mills running for years; Mary Landon Baker, the "Vanishing Bride" of the 1920s; and a dime novelist whose early life resembled one of his own cliffhangers. There are murderers and marshals, coroners and con men, explorers and folksingers, poets and soldiers, wigmakers who worked on the Underground Railroad... and at least one self-proclaimed vampire hunter.
Structured - like the first volume - as a series of self-guided walking routes through the cemetery's paths, this book is equal parts field guide and archive: built from letters, diaries, court records, and newspapers most of these people's own families never saw. Drawing on newly uncovered documents and years of on-the-ground research, Selzer brings back to life the everyday Chicagoans who built, scandalized, entertained, and occasionally terrorized the city - proving again that the most interesting grave in Graceland isn't always the one with the biggest statue.
Whether you're walking the grounds with this book in hand or reading from your armchair, Graceland Cemetery: More Chicago Stories, Symbols, and Secrets is a reminder that everyone has a story - and Chicago's cemeteries are full of the ones we've been forgetting to tell.
Praise for Volume 1:
"Tantalizing... A prolific and stylish writer, tireless tour guide, and passionate researcher." - Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
"A truth-seeking research glutton....(the book is) an adept melding of the tours, the research, and the writing." - Chicago Reader
"Emblematic of...hipster tour guides. Selzer goes beyond mere trivia. He turns up fascinating individual stories of cemetery residents without leaning too heavily on the big names." - Third Coast Reviews
Adam Selzer is a Chicago author, historian, and longtime cemetery tour guide. He is the author of Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and Secrets, along with several other books on Chicago history and true crime.
