How it Began

These stories are told in Living Landmarks of Chicago, a labor of love and a true passion project that got me through cancer treatment.

This book was supposed to be easy.

It began with a simple concept. My husband and I were hiking in one of our local conservation areas. It was August 2019 and he knew I was feeling a bit out of sorts because I wasn’t writing another book. I’d written my first in 2017 and my second in 2018, but we had - wisely - decided that taking another month-long road trip to research my third Two Lane Gems travelogue would have been too much. Too much for me, too much for our cat, and too much for us. So, he had an idea: why don’t I take the guides I’d already written about Chicago landmarks for my website, TheLocalTourist.com, and combine them into a book?

Brilliant! That’s a fantastic idea! And it will be so easy, since they’re already done! I’ll add a few more. Bada bing, bada boom.

Bada waitaminute - what if I find out how these landmarks came to be in the first place? I can tell their whole stories. I am a storyteller, after all.

The simple idea turned into something much, much more involved. It’s also much, much better, and is a work of which I’m truly proud.

It’s taken a long time to get here. I was swimming along, researching and writing. This would be a non-traditional guide book. Readers would learn the history of each landmark and then find out everything they needed to know to visit today. The launch party was set. We’d be, appropriately, in the English Room at the Blackstone Hotel on March 26, 2020.

And then...COVID-19. We canceled the launch party. I still had chapters to write, but I couldn’t think. I wrote intermittently as I tried to figure out how we were going to survive. I’m a travel writer. My business—my income—disappeared overnight. I was in panic mode. I’d write a chapter here and there, but it was slow. So very slow. I was also contributing the Illinois and parts of the South Dakota sections for Midwest Road Trip Adventures, a commitment I’d made pre-pandemic and which involved ten other authors. It wasn’t something I could set aside.

And then...cancer. I turned fifty in May 2020 and I knew I was about ten years behind on getting a mammogram. Turns out, I got one at the exact time I needed it. The test came back abnormal. They ordered an ultrasound, which confirmed a mass. The biopsy proved it was cancerous.

Book? What book.

Fortunately, my tumor was tiny. So tiny that it would have to grow five times its size for me to have felt it in a manual exam. (Women - schedule your mammograms!) My treatment has been relatively easy, compared to what I’ve seen friends of mine who have more advanced cancers experience. Chemo sucks and this is the worst thing I’ve ever gone through, but I am grateful deep in my soul that we found it when we did.

As we went through the months and months of lockdown, and I went through my additional cancer-dictated isolation, I realized that I wanted to write something that was less of a guidebook, however non-traditional, and more of an exploration into what made Chicago, a city I love, into what it is today. I wanted to bring these landmarks to life.

This book has saved me. Once I got through the first debilitating round of chemo (there’s a reason they call it Red Devil), I dove back into researching and writing with everything I have. Sixteen hour days, six days a week - the seventh reserved for treatment and the ensuing mental fog. Chemo brain is real. Sometimes I wondered if I was doing too much, if I might be hampering my treatment because of sheer exhaustion. And I’ve realized that it’s just the opposite. It kept me focused on something bigger than myself, on creating something that people will love. That I love.

I have poured my heart and soul into this book. It is the best thing I’ve ever done, and it has made the most difficult time I’ve experienced in my life, both personally and on a global scale, much more bearable.

These stories illustrate, one after another, intense drive, passion, and vision. These landmarks aren’t simple buildings and parks. They’re life.

I love this city. I love this book.

I hope you do, too.

Theresa L. Goodrich

April, 2021