I didn’t expect to consider that possibility when I set out to write Unacknowledged: The Possible Biological Mother of Howard Hughes. But as I researched, I had to wonder. Hughes was a household name for decades, but was his oddball behavior a product of a well-hidden past?
This is the cover for my new mixed-genre book. Told in dual timelines, Unacknowledged combines a past that partly fictionalizes the gaps in my great-grandmother Emma’s life and a present that recounts my saga of discovering the facts behind the son Emma gave away in 1905.
Unacknowledged asks the question: Did Howard Hughes Jr.’s ambiguous life begin in secret? (For those who don’t know who Howard Hughes was, recall the movie The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchet.)
A family letter shrouded in secrecy initiated the writing of Unacknowledged. It’s a re-imagining of the possible truth hidden in the scandal of one woman’s past in Galveston. Fourteen-year-old Emma had to do the impossible to survive. Fleeing her alcoholic father, she sold her body to start a new life. Eventually struggling to climb out of poverty and shame, financial setbacks and her sordid reputation pushed her into the arms of the wrong kind of man. When the charismatic Howard Hughes Sr. moved on, sentencing her to the lonely life of a single mother, she reluctantly relinquished her son to him and his wife Allene, hoping to cover up the secret of her illegitimate son and her life of prostitution.
For years, both Howard Jr.’s birthplace and his birthdate have been argued by biographers. At the time, rumors flew that Allene had never been pregnant, yet a baby appeared in her home.
In Unacknowledged, I explored my heritage through my great-grandmother Emma. It’s a story of family identity and what that might mean for all of us.
This historical narrative provides a plausible explanation of how the ultra-rich, award-winning film producer and aviator, the almost mythical and mysterious Howard Hughes Jr. may have come from humble, even illicit, beginnings. This deeply researched re-creation of the life of a poor Texas prostitute and her almost inconceivable choices begs the question if Howard Jr.’s early life and long-buried family pain could have had something to do with his bizarre behavior as an adult.
Those vowed to secrecy have died. But the world’s curiosity is still very much alive. Find the possible answers in this thoroughly probed account of Howard Jr.’s early life.
