Athens author mines diaries, family history for her novels

When Denise D’Angelo Jones’ mother died three years ago, she left her daughters a valuable family artifact that has already spawned two books, the latest of which comes out this month.

“My mother, Shirley Conner Baxter, was a family historian and genealogist and wrote four books,” said the Athens resident, who with her sister and co-author Deanna Falchook grew up in Rockford, Illinois. “When she died, she left me my Aunt Hilda’s diaries.”

“Aunt” Hilda Dorathea Zapf, who lived in a Victorian house on Indiana Avenue in Mendota, Illinois (about an hour from Rockford), started a diary at the age of 12 and wrote daily entries for the next 88 years, recording the events of her family’s life from the early 1900s until her death in 1994.

The diaries provided the background for Jones’ first book, “Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919,” published in 2020. Her latest book, “Henry’s Children and Other Stories,” again mines Aunt Hilda’s journals and includes posthumous contributions from other family members.

“A cousin called me and asked about Aunt Hilda’s 1919 diary and what happened to our family during the Spanish Flu epidemic 100 years ago,” said Jones, who called herself “a chiropractor and musician who now writes.” “I looked it up the diary and my aunt had 23 pages written about the Spanish Flu. Her entries were so profound and so entertaining to read and there were so many different details I thought I’d write a book about it.

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“People were telling me that they didn’t want the book to end because they got so close to the family. Some people said it reminded them of a cross between ‘The Waltons’ and ‘Call the Midwife.’ And I had so much material, I decided to do a follow-up.”

“Henry’s Children” – which is set for release on July 10 on Amazon – includes contributions from Aunt Hilda’s diary, Jones, Falchook (who wound up buying Aunt Hilda’s home in Mendota a few years ago) and three other family members, including Baxter, Claire Zapf Segall and Kent Rogers.

“Claire Zapf Segall was my aunt, and she died in 1981,” said Jones. “She was Aunt Hilda’s sister and was a world traveler and was considered the wild sister. Kent Rogers was my cousin, another world traveler, who wrote an amazing story in 1982 and died at the age of 35 in 1986.”

Jones, a prolific composer whose husband is Dave D’Angelo, jazz studies instructor at UGA’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music, said she wrote four pieces for the book and her sister wrote a story about buying the Mendota house they knew as children. Other stories came from the diaries and from a manuscript Claire Zapf Segall wrote but never published.

“I compiled the book because I had most of the material already, so I asked my sister to write a chapter about her experience in the Zapf family and the story about getting the house back. She wrote a beautiful chapter,” said Jones.

“I didn’t know (Segall) had a manuscript called ‘Henry’s Children’ until after she died. My mother found it and gave me my aunt’s diaries and ‘Henry’s Children’ and said, ‘One day, one of you will do something with these diaries and all this writing done by the family.’”

There’s an added book bonus, courtesy of Henry Zapf – an immigrant from Germany who originally owned the Mendota house and is Jones and Falchook’s great-grandfather.

“What’s wonderful is my great grandfather was a photographer, and during the late 1800s and early 1900s people didn’t have cameras,” said Jones. “He was taking selfies and all sorts of pictures and developing them on his own. After my mother died, I got all the negatives. Some of these pictures look like they were taken yesterday even though they’re 100 years old and some of those pictures are in the book.”

Jones, who for 20 years had a chiropractic practice in New York and New Jersey, also wrote a novel (“The Pond of Awakening,”) in 2020 and is now writing a book exploring dementia titled “The Lady With the Purple Hat.” She feels certain that she will once again return to Aunt Hilda’s diaries for more material.

“There’s so much more,” she said. “I envision an entire series and I also envision either a play or a screenplay. That’s also on the horizon. I want to pursue screenwriting.”

For more information, visit www.denisedangelojones.com.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Athens novelist uses diaries written by her aunt as source material