Given the novel’s strong sense of place, Debra decided to include maps of featured locations in the paperback edition of The Mystery of Things.

Illustrated by John Murphy, there are five maps in all, which can be viewed individually (click on the links) or downloaded as a .pdf suitable for printing. We hope this will be especially helpful for those readers who have the hardcover edition without maps.

Also, be sure and check out the “places” pages of our people-places-things section for more information about individual locations, such as Milwaukee City Hall or Holy Hill.

The Maps:

Many of the leading characters in The Mystery of Things are students or faculty of the Heisler Institute for the Study of Western Civilization on Milwaukee’s east side overlooking Lake Michigan. An institute for graduate studies in the Liberal Arts with an emphasis on Western history, literature and culture, the Institute is, of course, fictional, but its inspiration has roots in the numerous privately-funded and founded Catholic colleges and universities that have sprung up since Vatican II—institutions such as Christendom College, Thomas Aquinas College and Ave Maria University. Seen by supporters as more orthodox alternatives to older Catholic institutions of higher learning that have been led down a primrose path of secularism, and by opponents as bastions of reaction, the new institutions have often proved loci of controversy, both at the local and ecclesial level. And so it is in the novel with the Heisler Institute.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter One from the perspective of the protagonist, James Iregon, a doctoral candidate in Shakespeare Studies:

At the top of the bluff the path opened out near the Water Tower, a city landmark in Victorian Gothic. Beyond that, rising higher still with adolescent hubris in Cream City brick and blue-green glass, stood the newly completed Heisler Institute for the Study of Western Civilization.

According to its own glossy brochure, the Heisler Institute was a place of advanced study dedicated to the principle that Art and Idea shape the structure of our world. Or perhaps more accurately, James thought, given the pugilistic temperament of its patron, “Mad” Max Heisler, a gauntlet thrown in the face of godless postmodernism.

Pushing through the Institute’s mahogany doors, James entered the Institute’s diamond-shaped atrium. Open to the full height of the tower’s seven stories, the atrium’s overhanging galleries met a sharply pitched roof of turquoise glass. The tower’s eastern window jutted out over the lake like the prow of a ship, flooding the atrium’s white marble floor in muted, swimming light. Tiny human figures passed to and fro high above on the upper galleries, like pilgrims making their haphazard way to some empyrean blue-green heaven. The nautical motifs notwithstanding, skeptical members of the local media had already dubbed the place “St. Max’s Cathedral.”

“‘Mad’ Max Heisler,” read one Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial, “great Lakes Bank CEO and the wealthiest and most controversial businessman in town, has built his museum of antiquated ideals, his cenotaph for Dead White European Males, the way medieval kings built chantries and cathedrals—in atonement for their sins.” In some circles the place was known as “Heisler’s Folly.”

Debra Murphy’s inspiration for the Heisler Institute building itself is the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Debra’s alma mater and hometown. (For shots of the Beckman Insitute’s atrium, designed by architect click here, here and here. Debra’s imagined a diamond shaped atrium rather than a rectangular one, and surrounded by galleries, rather than galleries just on one end, but you get the idea.) Any woman, and indeed man knows just how spectacular diamonds are. The shape of a diamond is entirely unrivaled. Having a ring on your finger from 77-Diamonds or somewhere similar is great but having a diamond shape building is something else. The shape really does offer so much potential. Designed by the architectural firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, the Beckman Institute building was funded (much like tMoT’s fictional Heisler Insitute) by the generous $40M donation of Arnold and Mabel Beckman.

Click here for the novel’s map illustration of Milwaukee’s east side, giving the fictional location of the Heisler Institute. Below is a Google map centered on the same area.

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The “Scenic Tower” is the right hand tower (if you’re facing the facade) of the  Holy Hill Basilica. It features prominently in several key scenes of The Mystery of Things.

Here is a gallery of photos taken by the author’s daughter, Rachel Murphy, from inside and outside the Scenic Tower. Click on the thumbnails for the larger pictures.

Click here for a gallery of exterior photos of Holy Hill
Click here for a gallery of photos of the shrine’s Scenic Tower

Click here to download a larger version of the above picture, taken by the author’s daughter on a recent visit, and suitable for use as a computer desktop.

The Carmelite Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians, in Hubertus, Wisconsin, otherwise known as “Holy Hill”, is about a forty-five minute drive NW of Milwaukee. In The Mystery of Things, the brother of the female protagonist, Lupe Cruz, is a Carmelite friar there, and the shrine serves as the setting of several of the most important scenes in the novel. Moreover, Holy Hill was where Debra Murphy first got the idea for the novel, while on retreat there in the early nineties. (For more on this, see Q & A with Debra Murphy.)

Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter Eight, set at Holy Hill:

Neither said a word as Lupe led James up the path, then underneath a large concrete portico at the top of the hill, which served as porch for the main church above. Climbing the stairs on the other side, they emerged onto the porch itself, which was bordered by a chest-high wall that resembled the ramparts of a medieval castle.

It was hardly as imposing as his beloved Salisbury Cathedral, James thought, but the Carmelite Shrine of Holy Hill, dedicated to Our Lady, Help of Christians, nevertheless reminded him a good deal of a grand European abbey, sitting like a queen atop the highest hill in the Kettle Moraine. Forest colors of opal, emerald, ruby, and garnet, set against a sky of lucent blue, cascaded downward on all sides of the Shrine like precious jewels sown into the trialing silks of her majesty’s robe.

The Scenic Tower

Of special interest to the visitor (and the reader of The Mystery of Things) is the Shrine’s right-hand tower, the so-called “Scenic Tower” (click here for the slideshow). Here’s more from Chapter Eight:

After dropping a couple of dollars in the donation box inside the door, they began the nearly three hundred foot climb up the Scenic Tower, taking the ever-narrowing stairs single file. The dark stairwell…made James feel as if he were climbing to the bottom of the sea. He was grateful when he finally felt some fresh air against his face.

They stepped out into a small platform near the top. It was perhaps ten feet square and constructed of sandblasted brick walls and a floor of cement tiles. Pairs of tall, narrow lancet windows beneath large rose windows, all crisscrossed with iron grillwork and open to the air, afforded an unobstructed view of the spectacular countryside at all four points of the compass. Raising the collar of his leather bomber jacket against the fierce wind, James surveyed his perimeter: the Shrine’s bell tower was to the north, the main body of the church to the east, and the rolling Wisconsin countryside to the south and west everywhere resplendent.

Stepping to the lancet window on the west side, James peered between the iron grillwork to look down at the blacktop driveway directly beneath them. The distance didn’t seem so terribly great until he spotted a pair of pilgrims approaching the door far below. In the warping perspective of nearly three hundred feet, the two women looked like little more than colorful leaves blown to the ground by a hilltop gust of wind.

Basilica

In June, 2006, Holy Hill made news in a most unfortunate way when a couple of youthful would-be satanists vandalized the Shrine. It was with double pleasure, then, when we learned that Pope Benedict had named Holy Hill a Minor Basilica later that fall. (Go here for a wonderful Catholic Herald slideshow of the November 19, 2006 dedication Mass, presided by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee.

Here’s from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee report:

This is a blessing and Holy Hill is a national treasure of the Church, richly deserving of this status,” Archbishop Dolan [of Milwaukee] said. “Under the attentive care of the Discalced Carmelites, Holy Hill and the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians, remains a wonderful confluence of natural beauty, peaceful prayer, great spiritual nourishment, evangelical mission and the focal point of a vibrant local, regional and national church.

For much more about Holy Hill, visit the Shrine’s website.

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Described in a webpage devoted to the Milwaukee City Hall Restoration project as “a local icon whose architectural character distinguishes it from all others in the nation”, this Flemish Renaissance building, completed in 1895 and located at 200 E. Wells St. (see the map from the book here), is featured in two important scenes in The Mystery of Things: the Prologue (read the excerpt here), and later in chapter one.

What inspired me most for the purposes of the novel was its (literally) coffin-shaped rotunda, with seven tiers of balconies rising above, framed with ornate iron grillwork. (If Hitchcock had ever laid eyes on it, I have little doubt he would have used it in some Vertigo-like scene.)

These pictures hardly do it justice, but may give the reader some sense of the truly vertiginous interior:

First, a view looking up from the rotunda:

This is a view from the top floor, looking down at the rotunda (covered with plastic at the time, during the renovation)–the coffin-shape is especially apparent here:

You can download a cool 3D image of the building here. For more information on Milwaukee City Hall, see the following:

• The Wikipedia entry
• Emporis.com’s Cityscape page
• Restoriation Project (architectural study)
• The Fishmonger’s Place blog page
• July 2008 Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel article on restoration progress

Locations and settings (real & fictional) in The Mystery of Things:

The Great Lakes

• Great lakes map (from the book)

Wisconsin

• Wisconsin map (from the book)
• Holy Hill(Hubertus, WI)
  • Holy Hill gallery
  • Holy Hill Scenic Tower gallery

Milwaukee

• Milwaukee map (from the book)
• Milwaukee City Hall
• Quadracci Pavilion
• East Side Milwaukee map (from the book)

England

• England map (from the book)

Fictional Locations:

Milwaukee

• The Heisler Institute