By Emma Barhydt
I had the opportunity this weekend to talk with travel author extraordinaire and Greenwich resident Stasha Healy regarding her new book Secret Connecticut: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure which was just published March 15. Quirky, interesting, and informative, Secret Connecticut paints a new picture of our “drive-by” state, and brings its rich history to life.
During our call, Healy spoke of being in a professional development session with the Society of American Travel Writers and Reedy Press. Reedy Press is the publisher of the Secret series where authors from all over the country can write their own Secret guidebook for a particular town or state and be a part of the series. “After the webinar,” Healy recalled, “I looked at Reedy Press’s website and they didn’t have Secret anything in Connecticut.” This didn’t sit well with Healy who was “sure that Connecticut has a lot of secrets.” With everything shut down and an inability to travel outside of Connecticut, Healy began a quest to discover the hidden mysteries of her own state.
Before our call I spent the day reading Secret Connecticut wondering what kind of unusual tales I would discover. Being a bit of a history buff myself I was surprised to find that out of the 84 stories covered in her book, I knew almost none of them. Asking Healy what her favorite story that she found proved to be a difficult question, but she did eventually land on the story of Martin Luther King Jr. spending his summers in Simsbury, CT and how much she “loved reading his letters and quotes to his mother about what that experience meant to him.”
In theme with the books subject, the next logical question was what was the most unusual thing in the book? According to the author, diving horses. “The concept of diving horses was very odd to me… And this was a thing until very recently.” All the way up until the 1970’s, in fact, the attraction of diving horses was fairly widespread, though it reached its peak in popularity about a hundred years ago. There’s even a 1991 Disney movie on the subject of diving horses.
Turning more serious, Healy and I spoke about what the most difficult part of writing Strange Connecticut. “Covid made the reporting pretty difficult. I was trying to reach people at different organizations, and they weren’t in their offices, and sometimes they weren’t checking their emails or their phone messages.” But Healy was undeterred and found creative ways to get in touch with them anyway. “I had to track down people in person and I tracked down people over social media.” If not for social media, the story regarding Greenwich’s Roebling Bridge never would have made it to press. “I thought it wouldn’t be that difficult to track down information on the bridge, because I had heard it was designed by the Roeblings who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. But what I found was that [information] was not out there and readily available and what I did find was contradictory.” With no straight or consistent answers to be found, the bridge became a mystery that was solved only with the help of social media. “I tracked down the Roebling museum in Roebling, New Jersey — I never even knew this existed — and the chair of the board of trustees is a Roebling descendant and she had given a presentation on this bridge [in Greenwich] so I tweeted at her and she gave me the information.” The mystery of the Roebling Bridge in Greenwich had been definitively solved, and just in time for the book to go to print.
Speaking of difficulty, the timeline for writing, researching, and publishing the book was nothing to scoff at. Healy had four months before she had to go to print, spending two months researching and two months writing. “The webinar… was in June and by the time I got my contract, it was July.” To begin, Healy pulled out “every book in the Greenwich Library with the word Connecticut in its title” which ended up being about fifteen books. “I didn’t take out books that I knew weren’t relevant.” She took the leads she found from the books and followed up in other ways, both online and in person. “The executive directors of a lot of the historical societies and the curators were very helpful.”
“I was pleasantly surprised about Bridgeport,” Healy noted to me. “I knew that P.T. Barnum had a relationship with Bridgeport, but I didn’t know the extent of Bridgeport’s History.” In a book of 84 stories, Bridgeport is mentioned four times. That may not sound like a lot, but the only place mentioned more is Greenwich with four and a half mentions. “Anybody who’s a movie producer, I want to see a movie about this community in this time period!”
Why Connecticut? Healy has been to all 50 states and has decided to call Connecticut her home. “Connecticut is so beautiful,” she began, “Connecticut has everything. It’s all the natural beauty – it’s woods, it’s shoreline, it’s town greens, it’s colonial architecture, it’s art, it’s history. It’s just so culturally rich and naturally beautiful.” I couldn’t have said it better.
So what is next for Stasha Healy? She shared with us that Secret Connecticut was “happily sidetracked” from her young adult novel that she is currently working on based on her experiences at Prep school. As for getting back to travel, her next trip is booked for New Orleans as soon as it’s safe. “People don’t see New Orleans as a place that children would enjoy, but there’s so much for children in New Orleans and I want to have my kids experience that and to write about it as well. As for Secret Connecticut: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure; you can hear Stasha Healy speak about the book over zoom and in person starting in May and the book is available for purchase everywhere fine books are sold. For more information about the book and the author, check out https://stashamillshealy.com/
