It's often quite moving, especially when the characters look back on the deaths of family members, including Mrs. Kuzo's young sister, whose death has continued to affect Mrs. Kuzo throughout her life. Blues is also very perceptive in its look at the lives of Eastern European immigrants in the Pittsburgh area. I thought it might be a bit of a turnoff to readers. In my own mind, they were sort of Slovaks, but I never come out and use the word. In a recent telephone interview from her home in Germany, Campbell said that Turnip Blues was not based on any specific trip she had ever taken or on any specific characters she has known, although she does have relatives in Pittsburgh and has spent some time in Philadelphia.
None are specific people, however.
After reading a newspaper article about Bessie Smith in 1987, Campbell said, she did go to Mount Lawn Cemetery in Darby Township to try to visit the singer's grave. She had a marvelous voice. Those places include a number of stops along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, including Tuscarora, Kittatiny, Blue Mountain and Breezewood, names that serve as chapter titles in Turnip Blues. Campbell moved to Germany after her husband took a job as a U.S. Army psychiatrist there in 1991. When she returns to the United States for a book tour this month, she said, she'll be driving from New York to Pittsburgh and hopes to revisit a lot of the sites mentioned in the book.